Famous Bivouac Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Bivouac poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous bivouac poems. These examples illustrate what a famous bivouac poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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A Psalm of Life

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist


TELL me not in mournful numbers  
Life is but an empty dream!¡ª 
For the soul is dead that slumbers  
And things are not what they seem. 

Life is real! Life is earnest! 5 
And the grave is not its goal; 
Dust thou art to dust returnest  
Was...Read more of this...

Cassandra

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I heard one who said: "Verily, 
What word have I for children here? 
Your Dollar is your only Word, 
The wrath of it your only fear. 

"You build it altars tall enough 
To make you see but you are blind; 
You cannot leave it long enough 
To look before you or behind. 

"When Reason beckons you to pause, 
You...Read more of this...

Thinking Of A Friend At Night

by Hermann Hesse
 In this evil year, autumn comes early...
I walk by night in the field, alone, the rain clatters,
The wind on my hat...And you? And you, my friend?

You are standing--maybe--and seeing the sickle moon
Move in a small arc over the forests
And bivouac fire, red in the black valley.
You are lying--maybe--in a straw field and sleeping
And dew falls cold on your forehead...Read more of this...

Camps of Green

by Walt Whitman
 NOT alone those camps of white, O soldiers, 
When, as order’d forward, after a long march, 
Footsore and weary, soon as the light lessen’d, we halted for the night; 
Some of us so fatigued, carrying the gun and knapsack, dropping asleep in our tracks; 
Others pitching the little tents, and the fires lit up began to sparkle;
Outposts of pickets...Read more of this...

Bivouac on a Mountain Side

by Walt Whitman
 I SEE before me now, a traveling army halting; 
Below, a fertile valley spread, with barns, and the orchards of summer; 
Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places, rising high; 
Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes, dingily seen; 
The numerous camp-fires scatter’d near and far, some away up on the mountain;
The shadowy forms...Read more of this...

Leipzig

by Thomas Hardy
 "OLD Norbert with the flat blue cap--
A German said to be--
Why let your pipe die on your lap,
Your eyes blink absently?"--

--"Ah!... Well, I had thought till my cheek was wet
Of my mother--her voice and mien
When she used to sing and pirouette,
And touse the tambourine

"To the march that yon street-fiddler plies;
She told me 'twas the same
She'd heard from the trumpets,...Read more of this...

Daffy Duck In Hollywood

by John Ashbery
 Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue...Read more of this...

The Revelation

by Robert William Service
 The same old sprint in the morning, boys, to the same old din and smut;
Chained all day to the same old desk, down in the same old rut;
Posting the same old greasy books, catching the same old train:
Oh, how will I manage to stick it all, if I ever get back again?

We've bidden good-bye to life in a cage,...Read more of this...

The Eaglet Mourned

by Victor Hugo
 ("Encore si ce banni n'eût rien aimé sur terre.") 
 
 {V, iv., August, 1832.} 


 Too hard Napoleon's fate! if, lone, 
 No being he had loved, no single one, 
 Less dark that doom had been. 
 But with the heart of might doth ever dwell 
 The heart of love! and in his island cell 
...Read more of this...

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