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).

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Dream Song 172: Your face broods

by John Berryman
 Your face broods from my table, Suicide.
Your force came on like a torrent toward the end
of agony and wrath.
You were christened in the beginning Sylvia Plath
and changed that name for Mrs Hughes and bred
and went on round the bend

till the oven seemed the proper place for you.
I brood upon your face, the geography of grief,
hooded, till I allow
again your...Read more of this...

The Fishermen

by Emile Verhaeren
The spot is flaked with mist, that fills,
Thickening into rolls more dank,
The thresholds and the window-sills,
And smokes on every bank.


The river stagnates, pestilent
With carrion by the current sent
This way and that—and yonder lies
The moon, just like a woman dead,
That they have smothered overhead,
Deep in the skies.


In a few boats alone there gleam
Lamps that light up and magnify
The backs, bent over...Read more of this...

The Two-Sided Man

by Rudyard Kipling
 Much I owe to the Lands that grew--
More to the Lives that fed--
But most to Allah Who gave me two
Separate sides to my head.

Much I reflect on the Good and the True
In the Faiths beneath the sun,
But most to Allah Who gave me two
Sides to my head, not one.

Wesley's following, Calvin's flock,
White or yellow or bronze,
Shaman, Ju-ju or Angekok,
Minister,...Read more of this...

The Tollund Man

by Seamus Heaney
 I

Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,

Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,

She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark...Read more of this...

Lydia Humphrey

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church,
With my Bible under my arm
Till I was gray and old;
Unwedded, alone in the world,
Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation,
And children in the church.
I know they laughed and thought me *****.
I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight,
Above the spire of the church, and...Read more of this...

In the Street

by Henry Lawson
 Where the needle-woman toils 
Through the night with hand and brain, 
Till the sickly daylight shudders like a spectre at the pain – 
Till her eyes seem to crawl, 
And her brain seems to creep – 

And her limbs are all a-tremble for the want of rest and sleep! 
It is there the fire-brand blazes in my blood; and...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...

Gipsy

by Robert William Service
 The poppies that in Spring I sow,
In rings of radiance gleam and glow,
Like lords and ladies gay.
A joy are they to dream beside,
As in the air of eventide
They flutter, dip and sway.

For some are scarlet, some are gold,
While some in fairy flame unfold,
And some are rose and white.
There's pride of breeding in their glance,
And pride of beauty as they...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 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 Mother-Lodge

by Rudyard Kipling
 There was Rundle, Station Master,
 An' Beazeley of the Rail,
An' 'Ackman, Commissariat,
 An' Donkin' o' the Jail;
An' Blake, Conductor-Sargent,
 Our Master twice was 'e,
With 'im that kept the Europe-shop,
 Old Framjee Eduljee.

Outside -- "Sergeant! Sir! Salute! Salaam!"
Inside -- "Brother", an' it doesn't do no 'arm.
We met upon the Level an' we parted on the Square,
An' I was Junior Deacon...Read more of this...

Dora

by Thomas Edward Brown
 SHE knelt upon her brother's grave, 
 My little girl of six years old-- 
He used to be so good and brave, 
 The sweetest lamb of all our fold; 
He used to shout, he used to sing, 
Of all our tribe the little king-- 
And so unto the turf her ear she laid, 
To hark if still in...Read more of this...

The Return

by Philip Levine
 All afternoon my father drove the country roads
between Detroit and Lansing. What he was looking for
I never learned, no doubt because he never knew himself,
though he would grab any unfamiliar side road
and follow where it led past fields of tall sweet corn
in August or in winter those of frozen sheaves.
Often he'd leave the Terraplane beside the highway
to enter the...Read more of this...

The Echoing Green

by William Blake
 The Sun does arise,
And make happy the skies.
The merry bells ring,
To welcome the Spring.
The sky-lark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing louder around,
To the bells cheerful sound.
While our sports shall be seen
On the Echoing Green.

Old John, with white hair
Does laugh away care,
Sitting under the oak,
Among the old folk.
They laugh at our play,
And soon they all say,
Such such were the...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...

1 Peter 5:8-9

by The Bible
Be on your guard every day
Don't let your armour down
The enemy, the devil, is on the prowl
Like a fierce lion, he roams around
Always stand firm in the faith
Against Satan's fiery darts,
Don't let him have a foothold in
Or leave open the door of your heart
For we need to continually stand
Upon God's holy word
And not to give up on our faith
But remembering...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...

Incense

by Vachel Lindsay
 Think not that incense-smoke has had its day. 
My friends, the incense-time has but begun. 
Creed upon creed, cult upon cult shall bloom, 
Shrine after shrine grow gray beneath the sun. 

And mountain-boulders in our aged West 
Shall guard the graves of hermits truth-endowed: 
And there the scholar from the Chinese hills 
Shall do deep honor, with his wise...Read more of this...

The Iliad: Book VI (excerpt)

by Alexander Pope
 He said, and pass'd with sad presaging heart
To seek his spouse, his soul's far dearer part;
At home he sought her, but he sought in vain:
She, with one maid of all her menial train,
Had thence retir'd; and, with her second joy,
The young Astyanax, the hope of Troy,
Pensive she stood on Ilion's tow'ry height,
Beheld the war, and sicken'd at the sight;
There...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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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