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Best Famous Fusillade Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Fusillade poems. This is a select list of the best famous Fusillade poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Fusillade poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of fusillade poems.

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Written by Henry Van Dyke | Create an image from this poem

Storm-Music

 O Music hast thou only heard
The laughing river, the singing bird,
The murmuring wind in the poplar-trees,--
Nothing but Nature's melodies?
Nay, thou hearest all her tones, 
As a Queen must hear! 
Sounds of wrath and fear, 
Mutterings, shouts, and moans, 
Madness, tumult, and despair,
All she has that shakes the air 
With voices fierce and wild!
Thou art a Queen and not a dreaming child,--
Put on thy crown and let us hear thee reign 
Triumphant in a world of storm and strain! 

Echo the long-drawn sighs
Of the mounting wind in the pines;
And the sobs of the mounting waves that rise
In the dark of the troubled deep
To break on the beach in fiery lines.
Echo the far-off roll of thunder,
Rumbling loud
And ever louder, under
The blue-black curtain of cloud, 
Where the lightning serpents gleam.
Echo the moaning
Of the forest in its sleep 
Like a giant groaning
In the torment of a dream. 

Now an interval of quiet
For a moment holds the air
In the breathless hush
Of a silent prayer. 

Then the sudden rush
Of the rain, and the riot
Of the shrieking, tearing gale 
Breaks loose in the night, 
With a fusillade of hail! 
Hear the forest fight,
With its tossing arms that crack and clash 
In the thunder's cannonade,
While the lightning's forked flash 
Brings the old hero-trees to the ground with a crash!
Hear the breakers' deepening roar, 
Driven like a herd of cattle
In the wild stampede of battle, 
Trampling, trampling, trampling, to overwhelm the shore! 

Is it the end of all?
Will the land crumble and fall? 
Nay, for a voice replies 
Out of the hidden skies, 
"Thus far, O sea, shalt thou go, 
So long, O wind, shalt thou blow: 
Return to your bounds and cease, 
And let the earth have peace!" 

O Music, lead the way--
The stormy night is past,
Lift up our hearts to greet the day,
And the joy of things that last. 

The dissonance and pain
That mortals must endure,
Are changed in thine immortal strain
To something great and pure. 

True love will conquer strife,
And strength from conflict flows, 
For discord is the thorn of life
And harmony the rose.


Written by Alan Seeger | Create an image from this poem

Champagne 1914-15

 In the glad revels, in the happy fetes, 
When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled 
With the sweet wine of France that concentrates 
The sunshine and the beauty of the world, 

Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread 
The undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth, 
To those whose blood, in pious duty shed, 
Hallows the soil where that same wine had birth. 

Here, by devoted comrades laid away, 
Along our lines they slumber where they fell, 
Beside the crater at the Ferme d'Alger 
And up the bloody slopes of La Pompelle, 

And round the city whose cathedral towers 
The enemies of Beauty dared profane, 
And in the mat of multicolored flowers 
That clothe the sunny chalk-fields of Champagne. 

Under the little crosses where they rise 
The soldier rests. Now round him undismayed 
The cannon thunders, and at night he lies 
At peace beneath the eternal fusillade. . . . 

That other generations might possess -- - 
From shame and menace free in years to come -- - 
A richer heritage of happiness, 
He marched to that heroic martyrdom. 

Esteeming less the forfeit that he paid 
Than undishonored that his flag might float 
Over the towers of liberty, he made 
His breast the bulwark and his blood the moat. 

Obscurely sacrificed, his nameless tomb, 
Bare of the sculptor's art, the poet's lines, 
Summer shall flush with poppy-fields in bloom, 
And Autumn yellow with maturing vines. 

There the grape-pickers at their harvesting 
Shall lightly tread and load their wicker trays, 
Blessing his memory as they toil and sing 
In the slant sunshine of October days. . . . 

I love to think that if my blood should be 
So privileged to sink where his has sunk, 
I shall not pass from Earth entirely, 
But when the banquet rings, when healths are drunk, 

And faces that the joys of living fill 
Glow radiant with laughter and good cheer, 
In beaming cups some spark of me shall still 
Brim toward the lips that once I held so dear. 

So shall one coveting no higher plane 
Than nature clothes in color and flesh and tone, 
Even from the grave put upward to attain 
The dreams youth cherished and missed and might have known; 

And that strong need that strove unsatisfied 
Toward earthly beauty in all forms it wore, 
Not death itself shall utterly divide 
From the belovèd shapes it thirsted for. 

Alas, how many an adept for whose arms 
Life held delicious offerings perished here, 
How many in the prime of all that charms, 
Crowned with all gifts that conquer and endear! 

Honor them not so much with tears and flowers, 
But you with whom the sweet fulfilment lies, 
Where in the anguish of atrocious hours 
Turned their last thoughts and closed their dying eyes, 

Rather when music on bright gatherings lays 
Its tender spell, and joy is uppermost, 
Be mindful of the men they were, and raise 
Your glasses to them in one silent toast. 

Drink to them -- - amorous of dear Earth as well, 
They asked no tribute lovelier than this -- - 
And in the wine that ripened where they fell, 
Oh, frame your lips as though it were a kiss.
Written by Alan Seeger | Create an image from this poem

Bellinglise

 Deep in the sloping forest that surrounds 
The head of a green valley that I know, 
Spread the fair gardens and ancestral grounds 
Of Bellinglise, the beautiful chateau. 
Through shady groves and fields of unmown grass, 
It was my joy to come at dusk and see, 
Filling a little pond's untroubled glass, 
Its antique towers and mouldering masonry. 
Oh, should I fall to-morrow, lay me here, 
That o'er my tomb, with each reviving year, 
Wood-flowers may blossom and the wood-doves croon; 
And lovers by that unrecorded place, 
Passing, may pause, and cling a little space, 
Close-bosomed, at the rising of the moon. 

II 


Here, where in happier times the huntsman's horn 
Echoing from far made sweet midsummer eves, 
Now serried cannon thunder night and morn, 
Tearing with iron the greenwood's tender leaves. 
Yet has sweet Spring no particle withdrawn 
Of her old bounty; still the song-birds hail, 
Even through our fusillade, delightful Dawn; 
Even in our wire bloom lilies of the vale. 
You who love flowers, take these; their fragile bells 
Have trembled with the shock of volleyed shells, 
And in black nights when stealthy foes advance 
They have been lit by the pale rockets' glow 
That o'er scarred fields and ancient towns laid low 
Trace in white fire the brave frontiers of France.
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Montjuich

 "Hill of Jews," says one, 
named for a cemetery 
long gone."Hill of Jove," 
says another, and maybe 
Jove stalked here 
once or rests now 
where so many lie 
who felt God swell 
the earth and burn 
along the edges 
of their breath. 
Almost seventy years 
since a troop of cavalry 
jingled up the silent road, 
dismounted, and loaded 
their rifles to deliver 
the fusillade into 
the small, soft body 
of Ferrer, who would 
not beg God's help. 
Later, two carpenters 
came, carrying his pine 
coffin on their heads, 
two men out of movies 
not yet made, and near dark 
the body was unchained 
and fell a last time 
onto the stones. 
Four soldiers carried 
the box, sweating 
and resting by turns, 
to where the fresh hole 
waited, and the world went 
back to sleep. 
The sea, still dark 
as a blind eye, 
grumbles at dusk, 
the air deepens and a chill 
suddenly runs along 
my back. I have come 
foolishly bearing red roses 
for all those whose blood 
spotted the cold floors 
of these cells. If I 
could give a measure 
of my own for each 
endless moment of pain, 
well, what good 
would that do? You 
are asleep, brothers 
and sisters, and maybe 
that was all the God 
of this old hill could 
give you. It wasn't 
he who filled your 
lungs with the power 
to raise your voices 
against stone, steel, 
animal, against 
the pain exploding 
in your own skulls, 
against the unbreakable 
walls of the State. 
No, not he. That 
was the gift only 
the dying could hand 
from one of you 
to the other, a gift 
like these roses I fling 
off into the night. 
You chose no God 
but each other, head, 
belly, groin, heart, you 
chose the lonely road 
back down these hills 
empty handed, breath 
steaming in the cold 
March night, or worse, 
the wrong roads 
that led to black earth 
and the broken seed 
of your body. The sea 
spreads below, still 
as dark and heavy 
as oil. As I 
descend step by step 
a wind picks up and hums 
through the low trees 
along the way, like 
the heavens' last groan 
or a song being born.
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

The Lark

 From wrath-red dawn to wrath-red dawn,
 The guns have brayed without abate;
And now the sick sun looks upon
 The bleared, blood-boltered fields of hate
As if it loathed to rise again.
 How strange the hush! Yet sudden, hark!
From yon down-trodden gold of grain,
 The leaping rapture of a lark.

A fusillade of melody,
 That sprays us from yon trench of sky;
A new amazing enemy
 We cannot silence though we try;
A battery on radiant wings,
 That from yon gap of golden fleece
Hurls at us hopes of such strange things
 As joy and home and love and peace.

Pure heart of song! do you not know
 That we are making earth a hell?
Or is it that you try to show
 Life still is joy and all is well?
Brave little wings! Ah, not in vain
 You beat into that bit of blue:
Lo! we who pant in war's red rain
 Lift shining eyes, see Heaven too.



Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry