10 Best Famous Kites Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Kites poems. This is a select list of the best famous Kites poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Kites poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of kites poems.

• All Famous Kites Poems

 UP with the sun, the breeze arose,
Across the talking corn she goes,
And smooth she rustles far and wide
Through all the voiceful countryside.

Through all the land her tale she tells;
She spins, she tosses, she compels
The kites, the clouds, the windmill sails
And all the trees in all the dales.

God calls us, and the day prepares
With nimble, gay and gracious airs:
And from Penzance to Maidenhead
The roads last night He watered.

God calls us from inglorious ease,
Forth and to travel with the breeze
While, swift and singing, smooth and strong
She gallops by the fields along.

 I wish I could take a quiet corner in the heart of my baby's very
own world.
I know it has stars that talk to him, and a sky that stoops
down to his face to amuse him with its silly clouds and rainbows.
Those who make believe to be dumb, and look as if they never
could move, come creeping to his window with their stories and with
trays crowded with bright toys.
I wish I could travel by the road that crosses baby's mind,
and out beyond all bounds;
Where messengers run errands for no cause between the kingdoms
of kings of no history;
Where Reason makes kites of her laws and flies them, the Truth
sets Fact free from its fetters.

 On the fair green hills of Rio
 There grows a fearful stain:
The poor who come to Rio
 And can't go home again.

On the hills a million people,
 A million sparrows, nest,
Like a confused migration
 That's had to light and rest,

Building its nests, or houses,
 Out of nothing at all, or air.
You'd think a breath would end them,
 They perch so lightly there.

But they cling and spread like lichen,
 And people come and come.
There's one hill called the Chicken,
 And one called Catacomb;

There's the hill of Kerosene,
 And the hill of Skeleton,
The hill of Astonishment,
 And the hill of Babylon.

Micuçú was a burglar and killer,
 An enemy of society.
He had escaped three times
 From the worst penitentiary.

They don't know how many he murdered
 (Though they say he never raped),
And he wounded two policemen
 This last time he escaped.

They said, "He'll go to his auntie,
 Who raised him like a son.
She has a little drink shop
 On the hill of Babylon."

He did go straight to his auntie,
 And he drank a final beer.
He told her, "The soldiers are coming,
 And I've got to disappear."

"Ninety years they gave me.
 Who wants to live that long?
I'll settle for ninety hours,
 On the hill of Babylon.

"Don't tell anyone you saw me.
 I'll run as long as I can.
You were good to me, and I love you,
 But I'm a doomed man."

Going out, he met a mulata
 Carrying water on her head.
"If you say you saw me, daughter,
 You're as good as dead."

There are caves up there, and hideouts,
 And an old fort, falling down.
They used to watch for Frenchmen
 From the hill of Babylon.

Below him was the ocean.
 It reached far up the sky,
Flat as a wall, and on it
 Were freighters passing by,

Or climbing the wall, and climbing
 Till each looked like a fly,
And then fell over and vanished;
 And he knew he was going to die.

He could hear the goats baa-baa-ing.
 He could hear the babies cry;
Fluttering kites strained upward;
 And he knew he was going to die.

A buzzard flapped so near him
 He could see its naked neck.
He waved his arms and shouted,
 "Not yet, my son, not yet!"

An Army helicopter
 Came nosing around and in.
He could see two men inside it,
 but they never spotted him.

The soldiers were all over,
 On all sides of the hill,
And right against the skyline
 A row of them, small and still.

Children peeked out of windows,
 And men in the drink shop swore,
And spat a little cachaça
 At the light cracks in the floor.

But the soldiers were nervous, even
 with tommy guns in hand,
And one of them, in a panic,
 Shot the officer in command.

He hit him in three places;
 The other shots went wild.
The soldier had hysterics
 And sobbed like a little child.

The dying man said, "Finish
 The job we came here for."
he committed his soul to God
 And his sons to the Governor.

They ran and got a priest,
 And he died in hope of Heaven
--A man from Pernambuco,
 The youngest of eleven.

They wanted to stop the search,
 but the Army said, "No, go on,"
So the soldiers swarmed again
 Up the hill of Babylon.

Rich people in apartments
 Watched through binoculars
As long as the daylight lasted.
 And all night, under the stars,

Micuçú hid in the grasses
 Or sat in a little tree,
Listening for sounds, and staring
 At the lighthouse out at sea.

And the lighthouse stared back at him,
 til finally it was dawn.
He was soaked with dew, and hungry,
 On the hill of Babylon.

The yellow sun was ugly,
 Like a raw egg on a plate--
Slick from the sea. He cursed it,
 For he knew it sealed his fate.

He saw the long white beaches
 And people going to swim,
With towels and beach umbrellas,
 But the soldiers were after him.

Far, far below, the people
 Were little colored spots,
And the heads of those in swimming
 Were floating coconuts.

He heard the peanut vendor
 Go peep-peep on his whistle,
And the man that sells umbrellas
 Swinging his watchman's rattle.

Women with market baskets
 Stood on the corners and talked,
Then went on their way to market,
 Gazing up as they walked.

The rich with their binoculars
 Were back again, and many
Were standing on the rooftops,
 Among TV antennae.

It was early, eight or eight-thirty.
 He saw a soldier climb,
Looking right at him. He fired,
 And missed for the last time.

He could hear the soldier panting,
 Though he never got very near.
Micuçú dashed for shelter.
 But he got it, behind the ear.

He heard the babies crying
 Far, far away in his head,
And the mongrels barking and barking.
 Then Micuçú was dead.

He had a Taurus revolver,
 And just the clothes he had on,
With two contos in the pockets,
 On the hill of Babylon.

The police and the populace
 Heaved a sigh of relief,
But behind the counter his auntie
 Wiped her eyes in grief.

"We have always been respected.
 My shop is honest and clean.
I loved him, but from a baby
 Micuçú was mean.

"We have always been respected.
 His sister has a job.
Both of us gave him money.
 Why did he have to rob?

"I raised him to be honest,
 Even here, in Babylon slum."
The customers had another,
 Looking serious and glum.

But one of them said to another,
 When he got outside the door,
"He wasn't much of a burglar,
 He got caught six times--or more."

This morning the little soldiers
 are on Babylon hill again;
Their gun barrels and helmets
 Shine in a gentle rain.

Micuçú is buried already.
 They're after another two,
But they say they aren't as dangerous
 As the poor Micuçú.


On the green hills of Rio
 There grows a fearful stain:
The poor who come to Rio
 And can't go home again.

There's the hill of Kerosene,
 And the hill of the Skeleton,
The hill of Astonishment,
 And the hill of Babylon.

 The need to love that all the stars obey
Entered my heart and banished all beside.
Bare were the gardens where I used to stray;
Faded the flowers that one time satisfied.

Before the beauty of the west on fire,
The moonlit hills from cloister-casements viewed
Cloud-like arose the image of desire,
And cast out peace and maddened solitude.

I sought the City and the hopes it held:
With smoke and brooding vapors intercurled,
As the thick roofs and walls close-paralleled
Shut out the fair horizons of the world---

A truant from the fields and rustic joy,
In my changed thought that image even so
Shut out the gods I worshipped as a boy
And all the pure delights I used to know.

Often the veil has trembled at some tide
Of lovely reminiscence and revealed
How much of beauty Nature holds beside
Sweet lips that sacrifice and arms that yield:

Clouds, window-framed, beyond the huddled eaves
When summer cumulates their golden chains,
Or from the parks the smell of burning leaves,
Fragrant of childhood in the country lanes,

An organ-grinder's melancholy tune
In rainy streets, or from an attic sill
The blue skies of a windy afternoon
Where our kites climbed once from some grassy hill:

And my soul once more would be wrapped entire
In the pure peace and blessing of those years.
Before the fierce infection of Desire
Had ravaged all the flesh. Through starting tears

Shone that lost Paradise; but, if it did,
Again ere long the prison-shades would fall
That Youth condemns itself to walk amid,
So narrow, but so beautiful withal.

And I have followed Fame with less devotion,
And kept no real ambition but to see
Rise from the foam of Nature's sunlit ocean
My dream of palpable divinity;

And aught the world contends for to mine eye
Seemed not so real a meaning of success
As only once to clasp before I die
My vision of embodied happiness.

 The Song of Mowgli -- I, Mowgli, am singing. Let
 the jungle listen to the things I have done.
Shere Khan said he would kill -- would kill! At the
 gates in the twilight he would kill Mowgli, the
 Frog!
He ate and he drank. Drink deep, Shere Khan, for
 when wilt thou drink again? Sleep and dream
 of the kill.
I am alone on the grazing-grounds. Gray Brother,
 come to me! Come to me, Lone Wolf, for there
 is big game afoot.
Bring up the great bull-buffaloes, the blue-skinned
 herd-bulls with the angry eyes. Drive them to
 and fro as I order.
Sleepest thou still, Shere Khan? Wake, O wake!
 Here come I, and the bulls are behind.
Rama, the King of the Buffaloes, stamped with his
 foot. Waters of the Waingunga, whither went
 Shere Khan?
He is not Ikki to dig holes, nor Mao, the Peacock, that
 he should fly. He is not Mang, the Bat, to hang
 in the branches. Little bamboos that creak to-
 gether, tell me where he ran?
Ow! He is there. Ahoo! He is there. Under the
 feet of Rama lies the Lame One! Up, Shere
 Khan! Up and kill! Here is meat; break the
 necks of the bulls!
Hsh! He is asleep. We will not wake him, for his
 strength is very great. The kites have come down
 to see it. The black ants have come up to know
 it. There is a great assembly in his honour.
Alala! I have no cloth to wrap me. The kites will
 see that I am naked. I am ashamed to meet all
 these people.
Lend me thy coat, Shere Khan. Lend me thy gay
 striped coat that I may go to the Council Rock.
By the Bull that bought me I have made a promise -- 
 a little promise. Only thy coat is lacking before I
 keep my word.
With the knife -- with the knife that men use -- with
 the knife of the hunter, the man, I will stoop down
 for my gift.
Waters of the Waingunga, bear witness that Shere
 Khan gives me his coat for the love that he bears
 me. Pull, Gray Brother! Pull, Akela! Heavy is
 the hide of Shere Khan.
The Man Pack are angry. They throw stones and talk
 child's talk. My mouth is bleeding. Let us run
 away.
Through the night, through the hot night, run swiftly
 with me, my brothers. We will leave the lights
 of the village and go to the low moon.
Waters of the Waingunga, the Man Pack have cast me
 out. I did them no harm, but they were afraid of
 me. Why?
Wolf Pack, ye have cast me out too. The jungle is
 shut to me and the village gates are shut. Why?
As Mang flies between the beasts and the birds so fly
 I between the village and the jungle. Why?
I dance on the hide of Shere Khan, but my heart is
 very heavy. My mouth is cut and wounded with
 the stones from the village, but my heart is very
 light because I have come back to the jungle.
 Why?
These two things fight together in me as the snakes
 fight in the spring. The water comes out of my
 eyes; yet I laugh while it falls. Why?
I am two Mowglis, but the hide of Shere Khan is under
 my feet.
All the jungle knows that I have killed Shere Khan.
 Look -- look well, O Wolves!
Ahae! My heart is heavy with the things that I do
 not understand.

Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
 And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o'er the combers, looks downward to find us
 At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;
 Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
 Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.

 Usually at the helipad
I see them stumble-dance
across the hot asphalt
with crokersacks over their heads,
moving toward the interrogation huts,
thin-framed as box kites
of sticks & black silk
anticipating a hard wind
that'll tug & snatch them
out into space. I think
some must be laughing
under their dust-colored hoods,
knowing rockets are aimed
at Chu Lai—that the water's
evaporating & soon the nail
will make contact with metal.
How can anyone anywhere love
these half-broken figures
bent under the sky's brightness?
The weight they carry
is the soil we tread night & day.
Who can cry for them?
I've heard the old ones
are the hardest to break.
An arm twist, a combat boot
against the skull, a .45
jabbed into the mouth, nothing
works. When they start talking
with ancestors faint as camphor
smoke in pagodas, you know
you'll have to kill them
to get an answer.
Sunlight throws
scythes against the afternoon.
Everything's a heat mirage; a river
tugs at their slow feet.
I stand alone & amazed,
with a pill-happy door gunner
signaling for me to board the Cobra.
I remember how one day
I almost bowed to such figures
walking toward me, under
a corporal's ironclad stare.
I can't say why.
From a half-mile away
trees huddle together,
& the prisoners look like
marionettes hooked to strings of light.

 The friar had said his paternosters duly 
And scourged his limbs, and afterwards would have slept; 
But with much riddling his head became unruly, 
He arose, from the quiet monastery he crept. 

Dawn lightened the place where the battle had been won. 
The people were dead -- it is easy he thought to die -- 
These dead remained, but the living were all gone, 
Gone with the wailing trumps of victory. 

The dead men wore no raiment against the air, 
Bartholomew's men had spoiled them where they fell; 
In defeat the heroes' bodies were whitely bare, 
The field was white like meads of asphodel. 

Not all were white; some gory and fabulous 
Whom the sword had pierced and then the grey wolf eaten; 
But the brother reasoned that heroes' flesh was thus. 
Flesh fails, and the postured bones lie weather-beaten. 

The lords of chivalry lay prone and shattered. 
The gentle and the bodyguard of yeomen; 
Bartholomew's stroke went home -- but little it mattered, 
Bartholomew went to be stricken of other foemen. 

Beneath the blue ogive of the firmament 
Was a dead warrior, clutching whose mighty knees 
Was a leman, who with her flame had warmed his tent, 
For him enduring all men's pleasantries. 

Close by the sable stream that purged the plain 
Lay the white stallion and his rider thrown, 
The great beast had spilled there his little brain, 
And the little groin of the knight was spilled by a stone. 

The youth possessed him then of a crooked blade 
Deep in the belly of a lugubrious wight; 
He fingered it well, and it was cunningly made; 
But strange apparatus was if for a Carmelite. 

Then he sat upon a hill and bowed his head 
As under a riddle, and in deep surmise 
So still that he likened himself unto those dead 
Whom the kites of Heaven solicited with sweet cries.

 In Rome on the Campo di Fiori
Baskets of olives and lemons,
Cobbles spattered with wine
And the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
With rose-pink fish;
Armfuls of dark grapes
Heaped on peach-down.

On this same square
They burned Giordano Bruno.
Henchmen kindled the pyre
Close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
The taverns were full again,
Baskets of olives and lemons
Again on the vendors' shoulders.

I thought of the Campo dei Fiori
In Warsaw by the sky-carousel
One clear spring evening
To the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
The salvos from the ghetto wall,
And couples were flying
High in the cloudless sky.

At times wind from the burning
Would driff dark kites along
And riders on the carousel
Caught petals in midair.
That same hot wind
Blew open the skirts of the girls
And the crowds were laughing
On that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.

Someone will read as moral
That the people of Rome or Warsaw
Haggle, laugh, make love
As they pass by martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
Of the passing of things human,
Of the oblivion
Born before the flames have died.

But that day I thought only
Of the loneliness of the dying,
Of how, when Giordano
Climbed to his burning
There were no words
In any human tongue
To be left for mankind,
Mankind who live on.

Already they were back at their wine
Or peddled their white starfish,
Baskets of olives and lemons
They had shouldered to the fair,
And he already distanced
As if centuries had passed
While they paused just a moment
For his flying in the fire.

Those dying here, the lonely
Forgotten by the world,
Our tongue becomes for them
The language of an ancient planet.
Until, when all is legend
And many years have passed,
On a great Campo dci Fiori
Rage will kindle at a poet's word.

 Last year we fought by the head-stream of the Sang-kan,
This year we are fighting on the Tsung-ho road.
We have washed our armor in the waves of the Chiao-chi lake,
We have pastured our horses on Tien-shan's snowy slopes.
The long, long war goes on ten thousand miles from home,
Our three armies are worn and grown old.

The barbarian does man-slaughter for plowing;
On this yellow sand-plains nothing has been seen but
blanched skulls and bones.
Where the Chin emperor built the walls against the Tartars,
There the defenders of Han are burning beacon fires.
The beacon fires burn and never go out,
There is no end to war!—

In the battlefield men grapple each other and die;
The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,
While ravens and kites peck at human entrails,
Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees.
So, men are scattered and smeared over the desert grass,
And the generals have accomplished nothing.

Oh, nefarious war! I see why arms
Were so seldom used by the benign sovereigns.

 Wot makes the soldier's 'eart to penk, wot makes 'im to perspire?
It isn't standin' up to charge nor lyin' down to fire;
But it's everlastin' waitin' on a everlastin' road
For the commissariat camel an' 'is commissariat load.
 O the oont*, O the oont, O the commissariat oont!
 With 'is silly neck a-bobbin' like a basket full o' snakes;
 We packs 'im like an idol, an' you ought to 'ear 'im grunt,
 An' when we gets 'im loaded up 'is blessed girth-rope breaks.

Wot makes the rear-guard swear so 'ard when night is drorin' in,
An' every native follower is shiverin' for 'is skin?
It ain't the chanst o' being rushed by Paythans from the 'ills,
It's the commissariat camel puttin' on 'is bloomin' frills!
 O the oont, O the oont, O the hairy scary oont!
 A-trippin' over tent-ropes when we've got the night alarm!
 We socks 'im with a stretcher-pole an' 'eads 'im off in front,
 An' when we've saved 'is bloomin' life 'e chaws our bloomin' arm.

The 'orse 'e knows above a bit, the bullock's but a fool,
The elephant's a gentleman, the battery-mule's a mule;
But the commissariat cam-u-el, when all is said an' done,
'E's a devil an' a ostrich an' a orphan-child in one.
 O the oont, O the oont, O the Gawd-forsaken oont!
 The lumpy-'umpy 'ummin'-bird a-singin' where 'e lies,
 'E's blocked the whole division from the rear-guard to the front,
 An' when we get him up again -- the beggar goes an' dies!

'E'll gall an' chafe an' lame an' fight -- 'e smells most awful vile;
'E'll lose 'isself for ever if you let 'im stray a mile;
'E's game to graze the 'ole day long an' 'owl the 'ole night through,
An' when 'e comes to greasy ground 'e splits 'isself in two.
 O the oont, O the oont, O the floppin', droppin' oont!
 When 'is long legs give from under an' 'is meltin' eye is dim,
 The tribes is up be'ind us, and the tribes is out in front --
 It ain't no jam for Tommy, but it's kites an' crows for 'im.

So when the cruel march is done, an' when the roads is blind,
An' when we sees the camp in front an' 'ears the shots be'ind,
Ho! then we strips 'is saddle off, and all 'is woes is past:
'E thinks on us that used 'im so, and gets revenge at last.
 O the oont, O the oont, O the floatin', bloatin' oont!
 The late lamented camel in the water-cut 'e lies;
 We keeps a mile be'ind 'im an' we keeps a mile in front,
 But 'e gets into the drinkin'-casks, and then o' course we dies.