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Best Famous Mewing Poems

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

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Written by William Vaughn Moody | Create an image from this poem

An Ode in Time of Hesitation

 After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted ***** regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.


I 

Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made 
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, 
And set here in the city's talk and trade 
To the good memory of Robert Shaw, 
This bright March morn I stand, 
And hear the distant spring come up the land; 
Knowing that what I hear is not unheard 
Of this boy soldier and his ***** band, 
For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead, 
For all the fatal rhythm of their tread. 
The land they died to save from death and shame 
Trembles and waits, hearing the spring's great name, 
And by her pangs these resolute ghosts are stirred. 


II 

Through street and mall the tides of people go 
Heedless; the trees upon the Common show 
No hint of green; but to my listening heart 
The still earth doth impart 
Assurance of her jubilant emprise, 
And it is clear to my long-searching eyes 
That love at last has might upon the skies. 
The ice is runneled on the little pond; 
A telltale patter drips from off the trees; 
The air is touched with southland spiceries, 
As if but yesterday it tossed the frond 
Of pendant mosses where the live-oaks grow 
Beyond Virginia and the Carolines, 
Or had its will among the fruits and vines 
Of aromatic isles asleep beyond 
Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. 


III 

Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee, 
Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse; 
Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose 
Go honking northward over Tennessee; 
West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie, 
And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung, 
And yonder where, gigantic, wilful, young, 
Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates, 
With restless violent hands and casual tongue 
Moulding her mighty fates, 
The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen; 
And like a larger sea, the vital green 
Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung 
Over Dakota and the prairie states. 
By desert people immemorial 
On Arizonan mesas shall be done 
Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun; 
Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice 
More splendid, when the white Sierras call 
Unto the Rockies straightway to arise 
And dance before the unveiled ark of the year, 
Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms, 
Unrolling rivers clear 
For flutter of broad phylacteries; 
While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas 
That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep 
To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep, 
And Mariposa through the purple calms 
Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms 
Where East and West are met, -- 
A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set 
To say that East and West are twain, 
With different loss and gain: 
The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet. 


IV 

Alas! what sounds are these that come 
Sullenly over the Pacific seas, -- 
Sounds of ignoble battle, striking dumb 
The season's half-awakened ecstasies? 
Must I be humble, then, 
Now when my heart hath need of pride? 
Wild love falls on me from these sculptured men; 
By loving much the land for which they died 
I would be justified. 
My spirit was away on pinions wide 
To soothe in praise of her its passionate mood 
And ease it of its ache of gratitude. 
Too sorely heavy is the debt they lay 
On me and the companions of my day. 
I would remember now 
My country's goodliness, make sweet her name. 
Alas! what shade art thou 
Of sorrow or of blame 
Liftest the lyric leafage from her brow, 
And pointest a slow finger at her shame? 


V 

Lies! lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage 
Are noble, and our battles still are won 
By justice for us, ere we lift the gage. 
We have not sold our loftiest heritage. 
The proud republic hath not stooped to cheat 
And scramble in the market-place of war; 
Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star. 
Here is her witness: this, her perfect son, 
This delicate and proud New England soul 
Who leads despisèd men, with just-unshackled feet, 
Up the large ways where death and glory meet, 
To show all peoples that our shame is done, 
That once more we are clean and spirit-whole. 


VI 

Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning sand 
All night he lay, speaking some simple word 
From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard, 
Holding each poor life gently in his hand 
And breathing on the base rejected clay 
Till each dark face shone mystical and grand 
Against the breaking day; 
And lo, the shard the potter cast away 
Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine 
Fulfilled of the divine 
Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred. 
Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed 
Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light, 
Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed, 
Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed, -- 
They swept, and died like freemen on the height, 
Like freemen, and like men of noble breed; 
And when the battle fell away at night 
By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust 
Obscurely in a common grave with him 
The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust. 
Now limb doth mingle with dissolvèd limb 
In nature's busy old democracy 
To flush the mountain laurel when she blows 
Sweet by the southern sea, 
And heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose: -- 
The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew 
This mountain fortress for no earthly hold 
Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old 
Of spiritual wrong, 
Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong, 
Expugnable but by a nation's rue 
And bowing down before that equal shrine 
By all men held divine, 
Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign. 


VII 

O bitter, bitter shade! 
Wilt thou not put the scorn 
And instant tragic question from thine eye? 
Do thy dark brows yet crave 
That swift and angry stave -- 
Unmeet for this desirous morn -- 
That I have striven, striven to evade? 
Gazing on him, must I not deem they err 
Whose careless lips in street and shop aver 
As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek 
Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak? 
Surely some elder singer would arise, 
Whose harp hath leave to threaten and to mourn 
Above this people when they go astray. 
Is Whitman, the strong spirit, overworn? 
Has Whittier put his yearning wrath away? 
I will not and I dare not yet believe! 
Though furtively the sunlight seems to grieve, 
And the spring-laden breeze 
Out of the gladdening west is sinister 
With sounds of nameless battle overseas; 
Though when we turn and question in suspense 
If these things be indeed after these ways, 
And what things are to follow after these, 
Our fluent men of place and consequence 
Fumble and fill their mouths with hollow phrase, 
Or for the end-all of deep arguments 
Intone their dull commercial liturgies -- 
I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut! 
I will not hear the thin satiric praise 
And muffled laughter of our enemies, 
Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword 
Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd 
Of wild pulse stolen from a barbarian's hut; 
Showing how wise it is to cast away 
The symbols of our spiritual sway, 
That so our hands with better ease 
May wield the driver's whip and grasp the jailer's keys. 


VIII 

Was it for this our fathers kept the law? 
This crown shall crown their struggle and their ruth? 
Are we the eagle nation Milton saw 
Mewing its mighty youth, 
Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth, 
And be a swift familiar of the sun 
Where aye before God's face his trumpets run? 
Or have we but the talons and the maw, 
And for the abject likeness of our heart 
Shall some less lordly bird be set apart? -- 
Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat? 
Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat? 


IX 

Ah no! 
We have not fallen so. 
We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know! 
'T was only yesterday sick Cuba's cry 
Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us, for we die!" 
Then Alabama heard, 
And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho 
Shouted a burning word. 
Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred, 
And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth, 
East, west, and south, and north, 
Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young 
Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan, 
By the unforgotten names of eager boys 
Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung 
With the old mystic joys 
And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on, 
But that the heart of youth is generous, -- 
We charge you, ye who lead us, 
Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain! 
Turn not their new-world victories to gain! 
One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays 
Of their dear praise, 
One jot of their pure conquest put to hire, 
The implacable republic will require; 
With clamor, in the glare and gaze of noon, 
Or subtly, coming as a thief at night, 
But surely, very surely, slow or soon 
That insult deep we deeply will requite. 
Tempt not our weakness, our cupidity! 
For save we let the island men go free, 
Those baffled and dislaureled ghosts 
Will curse us from the lamentable coasts 
Where walk the frustrate dead. 
The cup of trembling shall be drainèd quite, 
Eaten the sour bread of astonishment, 
With ashes of the hearth shall be made white 
Our hair, and wailing shall be in the tent; 
Then on your guiltier head 
Shall our intolerable self-disdain 
Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain; 
For manifest in that disastrous light 
We shall discern the right 
And do it, tardily. -- O ye who lead, 
Take heed! 
Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite.


Written by John Masefield | Create an image from this poem

A Wanderers Song

 A WIND'S in the heart of me, a fire's in my heels, 
I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon-wheels; 
I hunger for the sea's edge, the limit of the land, 
Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand. 

Oh I'll be going, leaving the noises of the street, 
To where a lifting foresail-foot is yanking at the sheet; 
To a windy, tossing anchorage where yawls and ketches ride, 
Oh I'l be going, going, until I meet the tide. 

And first I'll hear the sea-wind, the mewing of the gulls, 
The clucking, sucking of the sea about the rusty hulls, 
The songs at the capstan at the hooker warping out, 
And then the heart of me'll know I'm there or thereabout. 

Oh I am sick of brick and stone, the heart of me is sick, 
For windy green, unquiet sea, the realm of Moby Dick; 
And I'll be going, going, from the roaring of the wheels, 
For a wind's in the heart of me, a fire's in my heels.
Written by Marianne Moore | Create an image from this poem

The Steeple-Jack

 Dürer would have seen a reason for living
 in a town like this, with eight stranded whales
to look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house
on a fine day, from water etched
 with waves as formal as the scales
on a fish.

One by one in two's and three's, the seagulls keep
 flying back and forth over the town clock,
or sailing around the lighthouse without moving their wings --
rising steadily with a slight
 quiver of the body -- or flock
mewing where

a sea the purple of the peacock's neck is
 paled to greenish azure as Dürer changed
the pine green of the Tyrol to peacock blue and guinea
gray. You can see a twenty-five-
 pound lobster; and fish nets arranged
to dry. The

whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt
 marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the
star on the steeple; it is a privilege to see so
much confusion. Disguised by what
 might seem the opposite, the sea-
side flowers and

trees are favored by the fog so that you have
 the tropics first hand: the trumpet-vine,
fox-glove, giant snap-dragon, a salpiglossis that has
spots and stripes; morning-glories, gourds,
 or moon-vines trained on fishing-twine
at the back door;

cat-tails, flags, blueberries and spiderwort,
 striped grass, lichens, sunflowers, asters, daisies --
yellow and crab-claw ragged sailors with green bracts -- toad-plant, 
petunias, ferns; pink lilies, blue
 ones, tigers; poppies; black sweet-peas.
The climate

is not right for the banyan, frangipani, or
 jack-fruit trees; or for exotic serpent
life. Ring lizard and snake-skin for the foot, if you see fit;
but here they've cats, not cobras, to
 keep down the rats. The diffident
little newt

with white pin-dots on black horizontal spaced-
 out bands lives here; yet there is nothing that
ambition can buy or take away. The college student
named Ambrose sits on the hillside
 with his not-native books and hat
and sees boats

at sea progress white and rigid as if in
 a groove. Liking an elegance of which
the sourch is not bravado, he knows by heart the antique
sugar-bowl shaped summer-house of
 interlacing slats, and the pitch
of the church

spire, not true, from which a man in scarlet lets
 down a rope as a spider spins a thread;
he might be part of a novel, but on the sidewalk a
sign says C. J. Poole, Steeple Jack,
 in black and white; and one in red
and white says

Danger. The church portico has four fluted
 columns, each a single piece of stone, made
modester by white-wash. Theis would be a fit haven for
waifs, children, animals, prisoners,
 and presidents who have repaid
sin-driven

senators by not thinking about them. The
 place has a school-house, a post-office in a
store, fish-houses, hen-houses, a three-masted schooner on
the stocks. The hero, the student, 
 the steeple-jack, each in his way,
is at home.

It could not be dangerous to be living
 in a town like this, of simple people,
who have a steeple-jack placing danger signs by the church
while he is gilding the solid-
 pointed star, which on a steeple
stands for hope.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things