Famous Brothers Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

from the Ansty Experience

by Rg Gregory
 (a)
they seek to celebrate the word
not to bring their knives out on a poem
dissecting it to find a heart
whose beat lies naked on a table
not to score in triumph on a line
no sensitive would put a nostril to
but simply to receive it as an
offering glimpsing the sacred there

poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving...Read more of this...

Reading The Brothers Grimm To Jenny

by Lisel Mueller
 Jenny, your mind commands
kingdoms of black and white:
you shoulder the crow on your left,
the snowbird on your right;
for you the cinders part
and let the lentils through,
and noise falls into place
as screech or sweet roo-coo,
while in my own, real, world
gray foxes and gray wolves
bargain eye to eye,
and the amazing dove
takes shelter under the wing
of the raven to keep dry.

Knowing that...Read more of this...

The Italian In England

by Robert Browning
 That second time they hunted me
From hill to plain, from shore to sea,
And Austria, hounding far and wide
Her blood-hounds through the countryside,
Breathed hot and instant on my trace,— 
I made six days a hiding-place
Of that dry green old aqueduct
Where I and Charles, when boys, have plucked
The fire-flies from the roof above,
Bright creeping throuoh the moss they love.
—How long it...Read more of this...

Lancelot

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Gawaine, aware again of Lancelot 
In the King’s garden, coughed and followed him; 
Whereat he turned and stood with folded arms 
And weary-waiting eyes, cold and half-closed— 
Hard eyes, where doubts at war with memories
Fanned a sad wrath. “Why frown upon a friend? 
Few live that have too many,” Gawaine said, 
And wished unsaid, so thinly came the light...Read more of this...

Ave Imperatrix

by Oscar Wilde
 Set in this stormy Northern sea,
Queen of these restless fields of tide,
England! what shall men say of thee,
Before whose feet the worlds divide?

The earth, a brittle globe of glass,
Lies in the hollow of thy hand,
And through its heart of crystal pass,
Like shadows through a twilight land,

The spears of crimson-suited war,
The long white-crested waves of fight,
And all the deadly fires...Read more of this...

The Prodigal Son

by Rudyard Kipling
 Here come I to my own again, 
Fed, forgiven and known again, 
Claimed by bone of my bone again 
And cheered by flesh of my flesh. 
The fatted calf is dressed for me, 
But the husks have greater rest for me, 
I think my pigs will be best for me, 
So I'm off to the Yards afresh.

I never was...Read more of this...

A Tree Telling of Orpheus

by Denise Levertov
 White dawn. Stillness.When the rippling began
I took it for sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors of salt, of treeless horizons. But the white fog
didn't stir; the leaves of my brothers remained outstretched, unmoving.
Yet the rippling drew nearer – and then my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if
fire had been lit below them, too close, and...Read more of this...

To My Brothers

by John Keats
 Small, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals,
And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep
Like whispers of the household gods that keep
A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls.
And while for rhymes I search around the poles,
Your eyes are fixed, as in poetic sleep,
Upon the lore so voluble and deep,
That aye at fall of night our care condoles.
This is your birthday,...Read more of this...

The Four Brothers

by Carl Sandburg
 MAKE war songs out of these;
Make chants that repeat and weave.
Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns;
Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns.
Make a marching song of swinging arms and swinging legs,
 Going along,
 Going along,
On the roads from San Antonio to Athens, from Seattle to Bagdad—
The boys and men in...Read more of this...

The Wise Brothers

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 FIRST VOICE

So long adrift, so fast aground, 
What foam and ruin have we found— 
We, the Wise Brothers? 
Could heaven and earth be framed amiss, 
That we should land in fine like this—
We, and no others? 


SECOND VOICE

Convoyed by what accursèd thing 
Made we this evil reckoning— 
We, the Wise Brothers? 
And if the failure be complete, 
Why look...Read more of this...

John Ericsson Day Memorial 1918

by Carl Sandburg
 INTO the gulf and the pit of the dark night, the cold night, there is a man goes into the dark and the cold and when he comes back to his people he brings fire in his hands and they remember him in the years afterward as the fire bringer—they remember or forget—the man whose head kept singing to...Read more of this...

The Man Who Raised Charlestown

by Henry Lawson
 They were hanging men in Buckland who would not cheer King George – 
The parson from his pulpit and the blacksmith from his forge; 
They were hanging men and brothers, and the stoutest heart was down, 
When a quiet man from Buckland rode at dusk to raise Charlestown. 

Not a young man in his glory filled with patriotic fire,...Read more of this...

Harvest Song

by Jean Toomer
 I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown. All my oats are cradled. 
But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. 
And I hunger. 

I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it. 
I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry. 
I hunger. 

My eyes are caked with...Read more of this...

Thinking of My Brothers in Shantung on the Ninth Day of the Ninth Month

by Wang Wei
 Alone now in a strange country,
feeling myself a stranger,
On this bright festival day
I doubly pine for my kinsfolk.
Far away, I know my brothers
will be climbing the heights
With dogwood sprays in their jackets,
and one man missing!...Read more of this...

Song of the Redwood-Tree

by Walt Whitman
 1
A CALIFORNIA song! 
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air; 
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing; 
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, 
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.

Farewell, my brethren, 
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters; 
My time has ended, my term...Read more of this...

Brothers

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 How lovely the elder brother's
Life all laced in the other's,
Lóve-laced!—what once I well
Witnessed; so fortune fell.
When Shrovetide, two years gone,
Our boys' plays brought on
Part was picked for John,
Young Jóhn: then fear, then joy
Ran revel in the elder boy.
Their night was come now; all
Our company thronged the hall;
Henry, by the wall,
Beckoned me beside him:
I came where called, and eyed him
By...Read more of this...

Soldier an Sailor Too

by Rudyard Kipling
 As I was spittin' into the Ditch aboard o' the Crocodile,
I seed a man on a man-o'-war got up in the Reg'lars' style.
'E was scrapin' the paint from off of 'er plates, an' I sez to 'im, "'Oo are you?"
Sez 'e, "I'm a Jolly -- 'Er Majesty's Jolly -- soldier an' sailor too!"
Now 'is work begins by Gawd knows...Read more of this...

Thinking of My Brothers on a Moonlit Night

by Du Fu
Garrison drum cut person movement
Autumn border one goose sound
Dew from today night white
Moon is homeland bright
Have brother all disperse
No home ask die life
Send letter all not reach
Particularly as not stop fighting

The army drums cut off human travel,
A lone goose sounds on the borderland in autumn.
Tonight we start the season of White Dew,
The moon is just as bright as in my...Read more of this...

The Prayers of God

by W. E. B. Du Bois
Name of God's Name!
Red murder reigns;
All hell is loose;
On gold autumnal air
Walk grinning devils, barbed and hoofed;
While high on hills of hate,
Black-blossomed, crimson-sky'd,
Thou sittest, dumb.
Father Almighty!
This earth is mad!
Palsied, our cunning hands;
Rotten, our gold;
Our argosies reel and stagger
Over empty seas;
All the long aisles
Of Thy Great Temples, God,
Stink with the entrails
Of our souls.
And Thou art dumb.
Above the thunder of Thy Thunders,...Read more of this...

A Bushmans Song

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 I’M travellin’ down the Castlereagh, and I’m a station hand, 
I’m handy with the ropin’ pole, I’m handy with the brand, 
And I can ride a rowdy colt, or swing the axe all day, 
But there’s no demand for a station-hand along the Castlereagh. + 

So it’s shift, boys, shift, for there isn’t the slightest doubt 
That we’ve got...Read more of this...

An Ode to Master Endymion Porter Upon His Brothers Death

by Robert Herrick
 Not all thy flushing suns are set,
Herrick, as yet ;
Nor doth this far-drawn hemisphere
Frown and look sullen ev'rywhere.
Days may conclude in nights, and suns may rest
As dead within the west ;
Yet, the next morn, regild the fragrant east.

Alas ! for me, that I have lost
E'en all almost ;
Sunk is my sight, set is my sun,
And all the loom of...Read more of this...

Colossians 3:16-17

by The Bible
May the word of Jesus Christ
Make its home in your hearts
And dwell in all its richness,
Permeating every part
So you may have His wisdom
In teaching one another
What you have learned from Him
Shared with sisters and brothers
And we will sing a new song
When His Holy Spirit comes in,
Making melody in our hearts
With spiritual songs and hymns
And whatever you may do
In word, thought...Read more of this...

My Brothers

by Robert William Service
 While I make rhymes my brother John
Makes shiny shoes which dames try on,
And finding to their fit and stance
They buy and wear with elegance;
But mine is quite another tale,--
 For song there is no sale.

My brother Tom a tailor shop
Is owner of, and ladies stop
To try the models he has planned,
And richly pay, I understand:
Yet not even a dingy...Read more of this...

Born Brothers

by Mark Van Doren
 Equality is absolute or no. 
Nothing between can stand. We are the sons 
Of the same sire, or madness breaks and runs 
Through the rude world. Ridiculous our woe 
If single pity does not love it. So 
Our separate fathers love us. No man shuns 
His poorest child's embrace. We are the sons 
Of such, or ground and sky...Read more of this...

Brothers let us glorify freedom's twilight

by Osip Mandelstam
 Brothers, let us glorify freedom’s twilight –
the great, darkening year.
Into the seething waters of the night
heavy forests of nets disappear.
O Sun, judge, people, your light 
is rising over sombre years 

Let us glorify the deadly weight
the people’s leader lifts with tears.
Let us glorify the dark burden of fate,
power’s unbearable yoke of fears.
How your ship is sinking, straight,
he who has...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Brothers poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace