Famous Cairn Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Cairn poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous cairn poems. These examples illustrate what a famous cairn poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...a year I’ve stood the flood an’ tide;
And tho’ wi’ crazy eild I’m sair forfairn,
I’ll be a brig when ye’re a shapeless cairn!
As yet ye little ken about the matter,
But twa-three winters will inform ye better.
When heavy, dark, continued, a’-day rains,
Wi’ deepening deluges o’erflow the plains;
When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil,
Or stately Lugar’s mossy fountains boil;
Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course.
Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble sourc...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...The son of great Loda was conqueror still,
And blew on the Whistle their requiem shrill.
Till Robert, the lord of the Cairn and the Scaur,
Unmatch’d at the bottle, unconquer’d in war,
He drank his poor god-ship as deep as the sea;
No tide of the Baltic e’er drunker than he.
Thus Robert, victorious, the trophy has gain’d;
Which now in his house has for ages remain’d;
Till three noble chieftains, and all of his blood,
The jovial contest again have renew’d.
Three joyous go...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...PEG NICHOLSON was a good bay mare,
As ever trod on airn;
But now she’s floating down the Nith,
And past the mouth o’ Cairn.
Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare,
An’ rode thro’ thick and thin;
But now she’s floating down the Nith,
And wanting even the skin.
Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare,
And ance she bore a priest;
But now she’s floating down the Nith,
For Solway fish a feast.
Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare,
An’ the priest he rode her sair;
And much oppress’...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...n smoor’d;
And past the birks and meikle stane,
Where drunken Charlie brak’s neck-bane;
And thro’ the whins, and by the cairn,
Where hunters fand the murder’d bairn;
And near the thorn, aboon the well,
Where Mungo’s mither hang’d hersel’.
Before him Doon pours all his floods,
The doubling storm roars thro’ the woods,
The lightnings flash from pole to pole,
Near and more near the thunders roll,
When, glimmering thro’ the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze,
Thro’ i...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...cantie as a kittlen;
But och! that night, amang the shaws,
She gat a fearfu’ settlin!
She thro’ the whins, an’ by the cairn,
An’ owre the hill gaed scrievin;
Whare three lairds’ lan’s met at a burn, 14
To dip her left sark-sleeve in,
Was bent that night.
Whiles owre a linn the burnie plays,
As thro’ the glen it wimpl’t;
Whiles round a rocky scar it strays,
Whiles in a wiel it dimpl’t;
Whiles glitter’d to the nightly rays,
Wi’ bickerin’, dancin’ dazzle;
Whiles cookit...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...away
He always wept them on that day,
For on that day they had been betrayed;
And now that Honey-Mouth is laid
Under a cairn of sleepy stone
Before his eyes, he has tears for none,
Although he is carrying stone, but two
For whom the cairn's but heaped anew.
We hold, because our memory is
Sofull of that thing and of this,
That out of sight is out of mind.
But the grey rush under the wind
And the grey bird with crooked bill
rave such long memories that they still
Remember Dei...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...terror of troops, shame and captivity.
Heaven swallowed the smoke. (ll. 3148b-55)
Then the Weather-Geats wrought
a cairn on the cliff-head—it was high and broad,
seen widely by sailors of the wave,
and built up in ten days’ time
the beacon of the battle-brave.
The flame-remnant they surrounded with a wall,
so fore-wise men would find it most honorable.
They buried in the barrow rings and brooches,
all sorts of adornments, like those earlier
violating men had seiz...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...no more survey
Thy ships at anchor on the quiet shore,
Thy pelloch's rolling from the mountain bay,
Thy lone sepulchral cairn upon the moor,
And distant isles that hear the loud Corbrechtan roar!
Alas! poor Caledonia's mountaineer,
That wants stern edict e'er, and feudal grief,
Had forced him from a home he loved so dear!
Yet found he here a home and glad relief,
And plied the beverage from his own fair sheaf,
That fired his Highland blood with mickle glee:
And England sent ...Read more of this...
by
Campbell, Thomas
...n smoored;
And past the birks and meikle stane,
Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane;
And thro' the whins, and by the cairn,
Whare hunters fand the murdered bairn;
And near the thorn, aboon the well,
Whare Mungo's mither hanged hersel'.
Before him Doon pours all his floods;
The doubling storm roars thro' the woods;
The lightnings flash from pole to pole;
Near and more near the thunders roll;
When, glimmering thro' the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seemed in a bleeze;
Thro' i...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...CLINKUM-CLANK in the rain they ride,
Down by the braes and the grey sea-side;
Clinkum-clank by stane and cairn,
Weary fa' their horse-shoe-airn!
Loud on the causey, saft on the sand,
Round they rade by the tail of the land;
Round and up by the Bour-Tree Den,
Weary fa' the red-coat men!
Aft hae I gane where they hae rade
And straigled in the gowden brooms -
Aft hae I gane, a saikless maid,
And O! sae bonny as the bour-tree blooms!
Wi' swords and guns they wan...Read more of this...
by
Stevenson, Robert Louis
...oes knew.
Far from the tumult fled the roe,
Close in her covert cowered the doe,
The falcon, from her cairn on high,
Cast on the rout a wondering eye,
Till far beyond her piercing ken
The hurricane had swept the glen.
Faint, and more faint, its failing din
Returned from cavern, cliff, and linn,
And silence settled, wide and still,
On the lone wood and mighty hill.
IV.
Less loud the sounds of sylvan war
...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...wed a deer with our baying hounds.
With Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair,
And passing the Firbolgs' burial-motmds,
Came to the cairn-heaped grassy hill
Where passionate Maeve is stony-still;
And found On the dove-grey edge of the sea
A pearl-pale, high-born lady, who rode
On a horse with bridle of findrinny;
And like a sunset were her lips,
A stormy sunset on doomed ships;
A citron colour gloomed in her hair,
But down to her feet white vesture flowed,
And with the glimmering crimso...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...uch wondering to see upon all hands, of wattles and woodwork made,
Your bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the mth,
And a small and a feeble populace stooping with mattock and spade,
Or weeding or ploughing with faces a-shining with much-toil wet;
While in this place and that place, with bodies unglorious, their chieftains stood,
Awaiting in patience the straw-death, croziered one, caught in your net:
Went the laughter of scorn from my mouth like the r...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...Rather than that gray king, whose name, a ghost,
Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak,
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him
Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's, one
Touched by the adulterous finger of a time
That hovered between war and wantonness,
And crownings and dethronements: take withal
Thy poet's blessing, and his trust that Heaven
Will blow the tempest in the distance back
From thine and ours: for some are sacred, who mark,
Or ...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
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