Famous Breach Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Breach poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous breach poems. These examples illustrate what a famous breach poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Bradstreet, Anne
...shew the grievance of my troubled Land.
89 Before I tell the effect I'll shew the cause,
90 Which are my sins--the breach of sacred Laws:
91 Idolatry, supplanter of a N ation,
92 With foolish superstitious adoration,
93 Are lik'd and countenanc'd by men of might,
94 The Gospel is trod down and hath no right.
95 Church Offices are sold and bought for gain
96 That Pope had hope to find Rome here again.
97 For Oaths and Blasphemies did ever ear
98 From Beelzebub him...Read more of this...
by
Donne, John
...re less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt...Read more of this...
by
Dryden, John
...les,
And safe enjoys the sabbath of his toils.
These were the chief; a small but faithful band
Of worthies, in the breach who dar'd to stand,
And tempt th'united fury of the land.
With grief they view'd such powerful engines bent,
To batter down the lawful government.
A numerous faction with pretended frights,
In Sanhedrins to plume the regal rights.
The true successor from the court remov'd:
The plot, by hireling witnesses, improv'd.
These ills they saw,...Read more of this...
by
Kilmer, Joyce
...(For Eleanor Rogers Cox)
For blows on the fort of evil
That never shows a breach,
For terrible life-long races
To a goal no foot can reach,
For reckless leaps into darkness
With hands outstretched to a star,
There is jubilation in Heaven
Where the great dead poets are.
There is joy over disappointment
And delight in hopes that were vain.
Each poet is glad there was no cure
To stop his lonely pain.
For nothing keeps a p...Read more of this...
by
Sidney, Sir Philip
...That her clere voice lifts thy fame to the skies,
Thou countest Stella thine, like those whose pow'rs
Hauing got vp a breach by fighting well,
Crie Victorie, this faire day all is ours!
O no; her heart is such a cittadell,
So fortified with wit, stor'd with disdaine,
That to win it is all the skill and paine.
XIII
Phoebus was iudge betweene Ioue, Mars, and Loue,
Of those three gods, whose armes the fairest were.
Ioues golden shield did sable eagles beare...Read more of this...
by
Graves, Robert
...cretly
For April’s glorious misery.
Wisdom made him old and wary
Banishing the Lords of Faery.
Wisdom made a breach and battered
Babylon to bits: she scattered
To the hedges and ditches
All our nursery gnomes and witches.
Lob and Puck, poor frantic elves,
Drag their treasures from the shelves.
Jack the Giant-killer’s gone,
Mother Goose and Oberon,
Bluebeard and King Solomon.
Robin, and Red Riding Hood
Take together to the wood,
And Sir Galahad ...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...rop goes through or round
Till she's done her duty by the Corn.
"I will not sell, an' I will not draw,
An' if you breach, I'll have the Law,
As sure as you are borne! "
Then Abel took his best bull-goad,
An' holed a dyke on the Eden road.
He opened her up with foot an' hand,
An' let Euphrates loose on the land.
He spilled Euphrates out on the plain,
So's all his cattle could drink again.
Then Cain he saw what Abel done--
But, in those days, there was no...Read more of this...
by
Spenser, Edmund
...ir merry Musick that resounds from far, 130
The pipe, the tabor, and the trembling Croud,
That well agree withouten breach or jar.
But, most of all, the Damzels doe delite
When they their tymbrels smyte,
And thereunto doe daunce and carrol sweet, 135
That all the sences they doe ravish quite;
The whyles the boyes run up and downe the street,
Crying aloud with strong confus¨¨d noyce,
As if it were one voyce,
Hymen, i? Hymen, Hymen, they do shout; 140
...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...endly contention the old men
Laughed at each lucky hit, or unsuccessful manoeuver,
Laughed when a man was crowned, or a breach was made in the king-row
Meanwhile apart, in the twilight gloom of a window's embrasure,
Sat the lovers, and whispered together, beholding the moon rise
Over the pallid sea and the silvery mist of the meadows.
Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
Thus was the eve...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...ed, although without were none
But deep that stream beyond their wading spread,
And closed those gates beyond their breach had been,
Had they sought entry with us.
Of
coolest green
Stretched the wide lawns we midmost found, for there,
Intolerant of itself, was Hell made fair
To accord with its containing.
Grave,
austere,
Quiet-voiced and slow, of seldom words were they
That walked that verdure.
To a
place aside
Open, and light, and high,...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ught with fire
Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain.
Disburdened Heaven rejoiced, and soon repaired
Her mural breach, returning whence it rolled.
Sole victor, from the expulsion of his foes,
Messiah his triumphal chariot turned:
To meet him all his Saints, who silent stood
Eye-witnesses of his almighty acts,
With jubilee advanced; and, as they went,
Shaded with branching palm, each Order bright,
Sung triumph, and him sung victorious King,
Son, Heir, and ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblam'd. I now must change
Those notes to tragick; foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt,
And disobedience: on the part of Heaven
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgement given,
That brought into this world a world of woe,
Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery
Death's harbinger: Sad talk!yet argument
Not less but more heroick than the wrath
Of stern Achilles on ...Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
...Affection is a noble quality;
It leads to generosity and jollity.
But it also leads to breach of promise
If you go around lavishing it on red-hot momise....Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...ys,
Writers of books, and poems, and plays.
My swords are tempered for every speech,
For fencing wit, or to carve a breach
Through old abuses the world condones.
In another room are my grindstones and hones,
For whetting razors and putting a point
On daggers, sometimes I even anoint
The blades with a subtle poison, so
A twofold result may follow the blow.
These are purchased by men who feel
The need of stabbing society's heel,
Which egotism has brought them to thi...Read more of this...
by
Edgar, Marriott
...ng the summer with him,
And promised him two Christmas puddings
If over the Channel he'd swim.
Joe jumped into t' breach like an 'ero,
He said, "All their fears I'll relieve,
And it isn't their puddings I'm after,
As I told them last Christmas Eve.
"Though many have tackled the Channel
From Grisnez to Dover that is,
For the honour and glory of England
I'll swim from Dover to Gris-niz."
As soon as his words were made public
The newspapers gathered around
And ...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...t girth so great,
To bind the giant form of fate?--
Swift are the steps of woe.
Now the casting may begin;
See the breach indented there:
Ere we run the fusion in,
Halt--and speed the pious prayer!
Pull the bung out--
See around and about
What vapor, what vapor--God help us!--has risen?--
Ha! the flame like a torrent leaps forth from its prison!
What friend is like the might of fire
When man can watch and wield the ire?
Whate'er we shape or work, we owe
Still to that hea...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ance, long delay'd,
Alone, did Alp, the renegade,
The Moslem warriors sternly teach
His skill to pierce the promised breach:
Within those walls a maid was pent
His hope would win, without consent
Of that inexorable sire,
Whose heart refused him in its ire,
When Alp, beneath his Christian name,
Her virgin hand aspired to claim.
In happier mood, and earlier time,
While unimpeach'd for traitorous crime,
Gayest in gondola or hall,
He glitter'd through the Carniva...Read more of this...
by
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...e voice of its heart's exultation
Be as theirs an invariable voice;
By no discord of evil estranged,
By no pause, by no breach in it changed,
By no clash in the chord of its choice.
It is one with the world's generations,
With the spirit, the star, and the sod;
With the kingless and king-stricken nations,
With the cross, and the chain, and the rod;
The most high, the most secret, most lonely,
The earth-soul Freedom, that only
Lives, and that only is God....Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...h conquer'd Britain ride?
Yet, against Fate, his Spouse they kept;
And the great Race would intercept.
Some to the Breach against their Foes
Their Wooden Saints in vain oppose
Another bolder stands at push
With their old Holy-Water Brush.
While the disjointed Abbess threads
The gingling Chain-shot of her Beads.
But their lowd'st Cannon were their Lungs;
And sharpest Weapons were their Tongues.
But, waving these aside like Flyes,
Young Fairfax through the Wal...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...hat could only be read
as pleasure, coming close
then diving, trailing on the surface
big spreading circles
until he'd breach, thrilling us
with the release of pressured breath,
and the bulk of his sleek young head
—a wet black leather sofa
already barnacled with ghostly lice—
and his elegant and unlikely mouth,
and the marvelous afterthought of the flukes,
and the way his broad flippers
resembled a pair of clownish gloves
or puppet hands, looming greenish white
beneath ...Read more of this...
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