Famous Brotherhood Poems by Famous Poets

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

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I Do Not Fear To Own Me Kin

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 I DO not fear to own me kin
To the glad clods in which spring flowers begin;
Or to my brothers, the great trees,
That speak with pleasant voices in the breeze,
Loud talkers with the winds that pass;
Or to my sister, the deep grass.

Of such I am, of such my body is,
That thrills to reach its lips to kiss.
That gives and takes...Read more of this...

Freedoms Plow

by Langston Hughes
 When a man starts out with nothing,
 When a man starts out with his hands
 Empty, but clean,
 When a man starts to build a world,
He starts first with himself
And the faith that is in his heart-
The strength there,
The will there to build.

First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on...Read more of this...

Oversoul

by George William Russell
 THE EAST was crowned with snow-cold bloom
And hung with veils of pearly fleece:
They died away into the gloom,
Vistas of peace—and deeper peace.


And earth and air and wave and fire
In awe and breathless silence stood;
For One who passed into their choir
Linked them in mystic brotherhood.


Twilight of amethyst, amid
Thy few strange stars that lit the heights,
Where was the secret spirit hid?
Where...Read more of this...

Jobson Of The Star

by Robert William Service
 Within a pub that's off the Strand and handy to the bar,
With pipe in mouth and mug in hand sat Jobson of the Star.
"Come, sit ye down, ye wond'ring wight, and have a yarn," says he.
"I can't," says I, "because to-night I'm off to Tripoli;
To Tripoli and Trebizond and Timbuctoo mayhap,
Or any magic name beyond I find upon the...Read more of this...

My Comforter

by Emily Brontë
 Well hast thou spoken, and yet, not taught
A feeling strange or new;
Thou hast but roused a latent thought,
A cloud-closed beam of sunshine, brought 
To gleam in open view. 

Deep down, concealed within my soul,
That light lies hid from men;
Yet, glows unquenched - though shadows roll,
Its gentle ray cannot control,
About the sullen den. 

Was I not vexed, in these gloomy...Read more of this...

Gods Grief

by Robert William Service
 "Lord God of Hosts," the people pray,
"Make strong our arms that we may slay
Our cursed foe and win the day."
"Lord God of Battles," cries the foe,
"Guide us to strike a bloody blow,
And lay the adversary low."

But brooding o'er the battle smother
Bewails the Lord: "Brother to brother,
Why must ye slaughter one another?
When will ye come to understand
My peace, and hand...Read more of this...

Into The Twilight

by William Butler Yeats
 Out-Worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is aways young,
Dew ever shining and twilight grey;
Though hope fall from you and love decay,
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there...Read more of this...

The Clerks

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I did not think that I should find them there
When I came back again; but there they stood,
As in the days they dreamed of when young blood
Was in their cheeks and women called them fair.
Be sure, they met me with an ancient air,—
And yes, there was a shop-worn brotherhood
About them; but the men were just as good,
And just as...Read more of this...

LEnvoi

by Robert William Service
 We talked of yesteryears, of trails and treasure,
 Of men who played the game and lost or won;
Of mad stampedes, of toil beyond all measure,
 Of camp-fire comfort when the day was done.
We talked of sullen nights by moon-dogs haunted,
 Of bird and beast and tree, of rod and gun;
Of boat and tent, of hunting-trip enchanted
 Beneath the wonder...Read more of this...

The Parsons Son

by Robert William Service
 This is the song of the parson's son, as he squats in his shack alone,
On the wild, weird nights, when the Northern Lights shoot up from the frozen zone,
And it's sixty below, and couched in the snow the hungry huskies moan:

"I'm one of the Arctic brotherhood, I'm an old-time pioneer.
I came with the first -- O God! how I've...Read more of this...

Blood Money

by Syl Cheney-Coker
Along the route of this river,
with a little luck, we shall chance upon
our brothers' fortune, hidden with that cold smile
reserved for discreet bankers unmindful of the hydra
growing fiery mornings from our discontent
Wealth was always fashionable, telluric,
not honor pristine and profound.
In blasphemous glee, they raise to God's lips
those cups filled with ethnic offerings
that saps the blood of all human good.
Having no...Read more of this...

The Lost Pyx: A Mediaeval Legend

by Thomas Hardy
 Some say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand 
 Attests to a deed of hell; 
But of else than of bale is the mystic tale 
 That ancient Vale-folk tell. 

Ere Cernel's Abbey ceased hereabout there dwelt a priest, 
 (In later life sub-prior 
Of the brotherhood there, whose bones are now bare 
 In the field...Read more of this...

Sonnet 11

by Alan Seeger
 Apart sweet women (for whom Heaven be blessed), 
Comrades, you cannot think how thin and blue 
Look the leftovers of mankind that rest, 
Now that the cream has been skimmed off in you. 
War has its horrors, but has this of good -- 
That its sure processes sort out and bind 
Brave hearts in one intrepid brotherhood 
And leave...Read more of this...

The Name of France

by Henry Van Dyke
 Give us a name to fill the mind 
With the shining thoughts that lead mankind, 
The glory of learning, the joy of art, -- 
A name that tells of a splendid part 
In the long, long toil and the strenuous fight 
Of the human race to win its way 
From the feudal darkness into the day 
Of Freedom, Brotherhood,...Read more of this...

Michael

by Robert William Service
 "There's something in your face, Michael, I've seen it all the day;
There's something quare that wasn't there when first ye wint away. . . ."

"It's just the Army life, mother, the drill, the left and right,
That puts the stiffinin' in yer spine and locks yer jaw up tight. . . ."

"There's something in your eyes, Michael, an' how they...Read more of this...

Christmas Antiphones

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 I -- In Church

Thou whose birth on earth
Angels sang to men,
While thy stars made mirth,
Saviour, at thy birth,
This day born again;

As this night was bright
With thy cradle-ray,
Very light of light,
Turn the wild world's night
To thy perfect day.

God whose feet made sweet
Those wild ways they trod,
From thy fragrant feet
Staining field and street
With the blood of God;

God whose breast is rest
In...Read more of this...

The Sightless Man

by Robert William Service
 Out of the night a crash,
A roar, a rampart of light;
A flame that leaped like a lash,
Searing forever my sight;
Out of the night a flash,
Then, oh, forever the Night!

Here in the dark I sit,
I who so loved the sun;
Supple and strong and fit,
In the dark till my days be done;
Aye, that's the hell of it,
Stalwart and twenty-one.

Marie is stanch...Read more of this...

Paris

by Alan Seeger
 First, London, for its myriads; for its height, 
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite; 
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths 
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . . 


Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days 
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays 
Than, having beauty and your twenty years, 
You have the means...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Ice-Worm Cocktail

by Robert William Service
 To Dawson Town came Percy Brown from London on the Thames.
A pane of glass was in his eye, and stockings on his stems.
Upon the shoulder of his coat a leather pad he wore,
To rest his deadly rifle when it wasn't seeking gore;
The which it must have often been, for Major Percy Brown,
According to his story was a hunter of...Read more of this...

Caboose Thoughts

by Carl Sandburg
 IT’S going to come out all right—do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass—they know.
They get along—and we’ll get along.

Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting
And the letter you wait for won’t come,
And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray
And the letter I wait for won’t come.

There will be ac-ci-dents.
I know ac-ci-dents...Read more of this...

Waxwings

by Robert Francis
 Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings
chat on a February berry bush
in sun, and I am one.

Such merriment and such sobriety--
the small wild fruit on the tall stalk--
was this not always my true style?

Above an elegance of snow, beneath
a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four
birds. Can you mistake us?

To sun, to feast, and to converse
and all together--for this I have...Read more of this...

O Star of France

by Walt Whitman
 1
O STAR of France! 
The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame, 
Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long, 
Beseems to-day a wreck, driven by the gale—a mastless hulk; 
And ’mid its teeming, madden’d, half-drown’d crowds,
Nor helm nor helmsman. 

2
Dim, smitten star! 
Orb not of France alone—pale symbol of my soul, its dearest hopes, 
The...Read more of this...

Ode to H.H. The Nizam Of Hyderabad

by Sarojini Naidu
 DEIGN, Prince, my tribute to receive, 
This lyric offering to your name, 
Who round your jewelled scepter bind 
The lilies of a poet's fame; 
Beneath whose sway concordant dwell 
The peoples whom your laws embrace, 
In brotherhood of diverse creeds, 
And harmony of diverse race:

The votaries of the Prophet's faith, 
Of whom you are the crown and chief 
And...Read more of this...

All Roads That Lead To God Are Good

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 All roads that lead to God are good.
What matters it, your faith, or mine?
Both centre at the goal divine
Of love’s eternal Brotherhood.

The kindly life in house or street –
The life of prayer and mystic rite –
The student’s search for truth and light –
These paths at one great Junction meet.

Before the oldest book was writ,
Full many a prehistoric soul
Arrived at...Read more of this...

Brotherhood

by George William Russell
 TWILIGHT, a blossom grey in shadowy valleys dwells:
Under the radiant dark the deep blue-tinted bells
In quietness reïmage heaven within their blooms,
Sapphire and gold and mystery. What strange perfumes,
Out of what deeps arising, all the flower-bells fling,
Unknowing the enchanted odorous song they sing!
Oh, never was an eve so living yet: the wood
Stirs not but breathes enraptured quietude.
Here in these shades...Read more of this...

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