Famous Breastplate Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Breastplate poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous breastplate poems. These examples illustrate what a famous breastplate poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Aiken, Conrad
...egin-all-end-all poem, time.
XII
Northwest by north. The grasshopper weathervane
bares to the moon his golden breastplate, swings
in his predicted circle, gilded legs and wings
bright with frost, predicting frost. The tide
scales with moon-silver, floods the marsh, fulfils
Payne Creek and Quivett Creek, rises to lift
the fishing-boats against a jetty wall;
and past them floods the plankton and the weed
and limp sea-lettuce for the horseshoe crab
who sleeps till ...Read more of this...
by
Betjeman, John
...a death
For those who have to live with me.
Knowing the virtues that I lack,
I pat myself upon the back.
With breastplate of self-righteousness
And shoes of smugness on my feet,
Before the urge in me grows less
I hurry off to make retreat.
For somewhere, somewhere, burns a light
To lead me out into the night.
It glitters icy, thin and plain,
And leads me down to Waterloo-
Into a warm electric train
Which travels sorry Surrey through
And crystal-hung, the cl...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...,
That bent at every step he trod;
Gilt titles graced their sides so slender,
One, "Regulation," t'other, "Tender;"
His breastplate graved, with various dates,
"The Faith of all th' United States;"
Before him went his funeral pall,
His grave stood, dug to wait his fall.
"I started, and aghast I cried,
"What means this spectre at their side?
What danger from a pow'r so vain,
Or union with that splendid train?"
"Alas, great Malcolm cried, experience
Might teach you not ...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...held (he alone,
While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a broad bust of stone
A year's snow bound about for a breastplate,---leaves grasp of the sheet?
Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet,
And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountain of old,
With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold---
Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and scar
Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest---all...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...takes you by the throat;
So stay at home' and drink your beer
And let the neighbours' vote,
Said the man in the golden breastplate
Under the old stone Cross.
Because this age and the next age
Engender in the ditch,
No man can know a happy man
From any passing wretch;
If Folly link with Elegance
No man knows which is which,
Said the man in the golden breastplate
Under the old stone Cross.
But actors lacking music
Do most excite my spleen,
They say it is more huma...Read more of this...
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