10 Best Famous Powerfully Poems

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

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My Country 'Tis of Thee

by W. E. B. Du Bois
Of course you have faced the dilemma: it is announced, they all smirk and rise. If they are ultra, they remove their hats and look ecstatic; then they look at you. What shall you do? Noblesse oblige; you cannot be boorish, or ungracious; and too, after all it is your country and you do love its ideals if not all of its realities. Now, then, I have thought of a way out: Arise, gracefully remove your hat, and tilt your head. Then sing as follows, powerfully and with deep unction. They’ll hardly note the little changes and their feelings and your conscience will thus be saved: 

My country tis of thee, 
Late land of slavery, 
         Of thee I sing. 
Land where my father’s pride 
Slept where my mother died, 
From every mountain side 
         Let freedom ring! 

My native country thee 
Land of the slave set free, 
         Thy fame I love. 
I love thy rocks and rills 
And o’er thy hate which chills, 
My heart with purpose thrills, 
         To rise above. 

Let laments swell the breeze 
And wring from all the trees 
          Sweet freedom’s song. 
Let laggard tongues awake, 
Let all who hear partake, 
Let Southern silence quake, 
         The sound prolong. 

Our fathers’ God to thee 
Author of Liberty, 
         To thee we sing 
Soon may our land be bright, 
With Freedom’s happy light 
Protect us by Thy might, 
         Great God our King.

The Room

by Conrad Aiken
 Through that window—all else being extinct
Except itself and me—I saw the struggle
Of darkness against darkness. Within the room
It turned and turned, dived downward. Then I saw
How order might—if chaos wished—become:
And saw the darkness crush upon itself,
Contracting powerfully; it was as if
It killed itself, slowly: and with much pain.
Pain. The scene was pain, and nothing but pain.
What else, when chaos draws all forces inward
To shape a single leaf? . . .
 For the leaf came
Alone and shining in the empty room;
After a while the twig shot downward from it;
And from the twig a bough; and then the trunk,
Massive and coarse; and last the one black root.
The black root cracked the walls. Boughs burst
 the window:
The great tree took possession.
 Tree of trees!
Remember (when time comes) how chaos died
To shape the shining leaf. Then turn, have courage,
Wrap arms and roots together, be convulsed
With grief, and bring back chaos out of shape.
I will be watching then as I watch now.
I will praise darkness now, but then the leaf.

Nine from Eight

by Sidney Lanier
I was drivin' my two-mule waggin,
With a lot o' truck for sale,
Towards Macon, to git some baggin'
(Which my cotton was ready to bale),
And I come to a place on the side o' the pike
Whar a peert little winter branch jest had throw'd
The sand in a kind of a sand-bar like,
And I seed, a leetle ways up the road,
A man squattin' down, like a big bull-toad,
On the ground, a-figgerin' thar in the sand
With his finger, and motionin' with his hand,
   And he looked like Ellick Garry.
And as I driv up, I heerd him bleat
To hisself, like a lamb:  'Hauh? nine from eight
   Leaves nuthin' -- and none to carry?'

And Ellick's bull-cart was standin'
A cross-wise of the way,
And the little bull was a-expandin',
Hisself on a wisp of hay.
But Ellick he sat with his head bent down,
A-studyin' and musin' powerfully,
And his forrud was creased with a turrible frown,
And he was a-wurken' appearently
A 'rethmetic sum that wouldn't gee,
Fur he kep' on figgerin' away in the sand
With his finger, and motionin' with his hand,
   And I seed it WAS Ellick Garry.
And agin I heard him softly bleat
To hisself, like a lamb:  'Hauh? nine from eight
   Leaves nuthin' -- and none to carry!'

I woa'd my mules mighty easy
(Ellick's back was towards the road
And the wind hit was sorter breezy)
And I got down off'n my load,
And I crep' up close to Ellick's back,
And I heerd him a-talkin' softly, thus:
'Them figgers is got me under the hack.
I caint see how to git out'n the muss,
Except to jest nat'ally fail and bus'!
My crap-leen calls for nine hundred and more.
My counts o' sales is eight hundred and four,
   Of cotton for Ellick Garry.
Thar's eight, ought, four, jest like on a slate:
Here's nine and two oughts --  Hauh? nine from eight
   Leaves nuthin' -- and none to carry.

'Them crap-leens, oh, them crap-leens!
I giv one to Pardman and Sharks.
Hit gobbled me up like snap-beans
In a patch full o' old fiel'-larks.
But I thought I could fool the crap-leen nice,
And I hauled my cotton to Jammel and Cones.
But shuh! 'fore I even had settled my price
They tuck affidavy without no bones
And levelled upon me fur all ther loans
To the 'mount of sum nine hundred dollars or more,
And sold me out clean for eight hundred and four,
   As sure as I'm Ellick Garry!
And thar it is down all squar and straight,
But I can't make it gee, fur nine from eight
   Leaves nuthin' -- and none to carry.'

Then I says 'Hello, here, Garry!
However you star' and frown
Thare's somethin' fur YOU to carry,
Fur you've worked it upside down!'
Then he riz and walked to his little bull-cart,
And made like he neither had seen nor heerd
Nor knowed that I knowed of his raskilly part,
And he tried to look as if HE wa'nt feared,
And gathered his lines like he never keered,
And he driv down the road 'bout a quarter or so,
And then looked around, and I hollered 'Hello,
   Look here, Mister Ellick Garry!
You may git up soon and lie down late,
But you'll always find that nine from eight
   Leaves nuthin' -- and none to carry.'

Walt Whitman

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 The master-songs are ended, and the man
That sang them is a name. And so is God
A name; and so is love, and life, and death,
And everything. But we, who are too blind
To read what we have written, or what faith
Has written for us, do not understand:
We only blink, and wonder.

Last night it was the song that was the man,
But now it is the man that is the song.
We do not hear him very much to-day:
His piercing and eternal cadence rings
Too pure for us --- too powerfully pure,
Too lovingly triumphant, and too large;
But there are some that hear him, and they know
That he shall sing to-morrow for all men,
And that all time shall listen.

The master-songs are ended? Rather say
No songs are ended that are ever sung,
And that no names are dead names. When we write
Men's letters on proud marble or on sand,
We write them there forever.
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