Famous Bravery Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Bravery poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous bravery poems. These examples illustrate what a famous bravery poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Melville, Herman
...here the wings of a sunny Dome expand
I saw a Banner in gladsome air-
Starry, like Berenice's Hair-
Afloat in broadened bravery there;
With undulating long-drawn flow,
As rolled Brazilian billows go
Voluminously o'er the Line.
The Land reposed in peace below;
The children in their glee
Were folded to the exulting heart
Of young Maternity.
II
Later, and it streamed in fight
When tempest mingled with the fray,
And over the spear-point of the shaft
I saw the ambiguous ...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...d apace,
The weight of years had left its hoary trace,
But still of knights the most renowned was he,
Model of bravery and purity.
His blood he spared not; ready day or night
To punish crime, his dauntless sword shone bright
In his unblemished hand; holy and white
And loyal all his noble life had been,
A Christian Samson coming on the scene.
With fist alone the gate he battered down
Of Sickingen in flames, and saved the town.
'Twas he, indigna...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...esort.
So thus ends the story of Hanchen, a heroine brave,
That tried hard her master's gold to save,
And for her bravery she got married to the miller's eldest son,
And Hanchen on her marriage night cried Heaven's will be done....Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...I will engage you, as prodigious a creature as you are.
For the Mouse is of an hospitable disposition.
For bravery and hospitality were said and done by the Romans rather than others.
For two creatures the Bull and the Dog prevail in the English.
For all the words ending in ble are in the creature. Invisi-ble, Incomprehensi-ble, ineffa-ble, A-ble.
For the Greek and Latin are not dead languages, but taken up and accepted for the sake of him t...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...ven the happy land shall bless
With safety, liberty and peace.
"And ye, whose souls of dastard mould
Start at the bravery of the bold;
To love your country who pretend,
Yet want all spirit to defend;
Who feel your fancies so prolific,
Engend'ring visions whims terrific,
O'errun with horrors of coercion,
Fire, blood and thunder in reversion;
King's standards, pill'ries, confiscations,
And Gage's scare-crow proclamations;
Who scarce could rouse, if caught in fray,
Presenc...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...lilt, stopped on a quiver. The Lady Eunice
listens and believes.
Gervase has many tales of her dear Lord, His bravery, his knowledge,
his charmed life.
She quite forgets who's speaking in the gladness Of
being this man's wife.
Gervase is wounded, grave indeed, the word
Is kindly said, but to a softer chord
She strings her voice to ask with wistful sadness,
XVIII
"And is Sir Everard still unscathed? I
fain Would know the truth." "Quite well, dear Lady...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ate, and gay,
Comes this way sailing
Like a stately Ship
Of Tarsus, bound for th' Isles
Of Javan or Gadier
With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,
Sails fill'd, and streamers waving,
Courted by all the winds that hold them play,
An Amber sent of odorous perfume
Her harbinger, a damsel train behind;
Some rich Philistian Matron she may seem,
And now at nearer view, no other certain
Than Dalila thy wife.
Sam: My Wife, my Traytress, let her not come near me.
Cho: Yet...Read more of this...
by
Hacker, Marilyn
...where now I'm "being brave"
if I take off my shirt in a hot crowd
sunbathing, or demonstrating for Dyke Pride.
Her bravery counters the kitchen knives'
insinuation that the scars be made.
With, or despite our scars, we stay alive.
"With, or despite our scars, we stayed alive
until the Contras or the Government
or rebel troops came, until we were sent
to 'relocation camps' until the archives
burned, until we dug the ditch, the grave
beside the aspen grove where a...Read more of this...
by
Muir, Edwin
...e ancestral hill.
Never had Dee or Don or Yarrow or Till
Huddled such thriftless honour in a grave.
Such wasted bravery idle as a song,
Such hard-won ill might prove Time's verdict wrong,
And melt to pity the annalist's iron tongue....Read more of this...
by
Stojanovic, Dejan
...cleanliness.
To write good poems
Is the secret of brevity.
To go against the grain
Is the secret of bravery.
To risk life to save a smile on a face of a woman or a child
Is the secret of chivalry.
To go where no one else has ever gone before
Is the secret of heroism.
To expect to be kissed having bad breath
Is the secret of a fool.
Words rich in meaning
Can be cheap in sound effects.
...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...ne rings, the cats sleep.
Linda vacuums.
I am waiting to live,
waiting to die.
I wish I could ring in some bravery.
it's a lousy fix
but the tree outside doesn't know:
I watch it moving with the wind
in the late afternoon sun.
there's nothing to declare here,
just a waiting.
each faces it alone.
Oh, I was once young,
Oh, I was once unbelievably
young!
from Transit magazine, 1994...Read more of this...
by
Shakespeare, William
...e such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that ...Read more of this...
by
Gilbert, Jack
...sabers,
A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace.
And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question
The bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion.
Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best.
It was impossib1e, and with form. They rode in sunlight,
Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal.
Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.
The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment...Read more of this...
by
Donne, John
...to other hands these reliques came. 20
As 'twas humility
T' afford to it all that a soul can do
So 'tis some bravery
That since you would have none of me I bury some of you....Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...To the sill
Of his low hovel he rush'd forth, (for fear
Will sometimes take the shape of fortitude,
And force men into bravery) and soon
The wicker bolt unfasten'd. The swift blast,
Now unrestrain'd, flew by; and in its course
The quiv'ring lamp extinguish'd, and again
His soul was thrill'd with terror. On he went,
E'en to the snow-fring'd margin of the cragg,
Which to his citadel a platform made
Slipp'ry and perilous! 'Twas darkness, all!
All, solitary gloom!--The c...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
.... Smith - you know her Fred -
They took his legs off at the thighs.
How can these women happy be,
For all their bravery of talk,
One with a son who cannot see,
One with a boy who'll never walk.
I should be happier than they;
My lad came back without a scar,
And all the folks are proud they say,
To greet their hero of the war.
So in the gentle eventide
I'll give God thanks my Bert's come home. . . .
As peacefully I sit beside
His tiny mound of ...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...flout them in the face, and so waved hand
Backward, and stayed the on-pressing sycophants
Eager to buy rich praise with bravery cheap.
"I would know why," -- he said -- "thou wishedst me
Less legs and bigger brows; and when?"
"Wouldst know?
Learn then," cried Gris Grillon and stirred himself,
In a great spasm of passion mixed with pain;
"An thou hadst had more courage and less speed,
Then, ah my God! then could not I have been
That piteous gibe of a man thou see'st I am.<...Read more of this...
by
Moore, Thomas
...oved ne'er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder;
And said, "No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and bravery!
Thy songs were made for the pure and free,
They shall never sound in slavery."...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...o it, while the ahip was sinking fast.
Charles Tait, the coxswain of the lifeboat, was a skilful boatman,
And the bravery he and his crew displayed was really grand;
For his men were hardy and a very heroic set,
And for bravery their equals it would be hard to get.
But, thank God, out of twenty-nine eleven were saved,
Owing to the way the lifeboat men behaved;
And when they landed with the eleven wreckers at Ramsgate,
The people's joy was very great....Read more of this...
by
Housman, A E
...n the ditch without you,
March unled and fight short-handed,
Charge to fall and swim to drown.
Duty, friendship, bravery o'er,
Sleep away, lad; wake no more....Read more of this...
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