Famous Campaign Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Campaign poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous campaign poems. These examples illustrate what a famous campaign poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert Southey
(Time, Noon.)
HUMPHREY:
See'st thou not William that the scorching Sun
By this time half his daily race has run?
The savage thrusts his light canoe to shore
And hurries homeward with his fishy store.
Suppose we leave awhile this stubborn soil
To eat our dinner and to rest from toil!
WILLIAM:
Agreed. Yon tree whose purple gum bestows
A ready medicine for the sick-man's woes,
Forms with its shadowy...Read more of this...
by
Coventry Patmore
Heroic Good, target for which the young
Dream in their dreams that every bow is strung,
And, missing, sigh
Unfruitful, or as disbelievers die,
Thee having miss'd, I will not so revolt,
But lowlier shoot my bolt,
And lowlier still, if still I may not reach,
And my proud stomach teach
That less than highest is good, and may be high.
And even walk in life's uneven way,
Though...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
A SONG of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms—a song of the soil of fields.
A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork;
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk’d maize.
2
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
What was the blackest sight to me
Of all that campaign?
A naked woman tied to a tree
With jagged holes where her breasts should be,
Rotting there in the rain.
On we pressed to the battle fray,
Dogged and dour and spent.
Sudden I heard my Captain say:
"Voilà! Kultur has passed this way,
And left us a monument."
So I looked and I saw our Colonel there,
And...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
[During an anti-saloon campaign, in central Illinois.]
In the midst of the battle I turned,
(For the thunders could flourish without me)
And hid by a rose-hung wall,
Forgetting the murder about me;
And wrote, from my wound, on the stone,
In mirth, half prayer, half play: —
"Send me a picture book,
Send me a song, to-day."
I saw...Read more of this...
by
Marriott Edgar
The reign of King William the Second
Were an uninteresting affair
There's only two things that's remembered of him
That's his sudden death and his red hair.
He got his red hair from his Mother,
The crown that he wore were his Dad's,
And the arrow that came at the end of his reign
Were a well-deserved gift from the lads.
For William...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
'Twas fighting for his Life he was --
That sort accomplish well --
The Ordnance of Vitality
Is frugal of its Ball.
It aims once -- kills once -- conquers once --
There is no second War
In that Campaign inscrutable
Of the Interior....Read more of this...
by
Hilaire Belloc
To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend,
To welcome home mankind's mysterious friend
Wine, true begetter of all arts that be;
Wine, privilege of the completely free;
Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong;
Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong,
Awake, Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song!
Sing how the Charioteer from Asia came,
And on his front the little dancing flame
Which marked the God-head. Sing the...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
For Brenda Williams
La lune diminue; divin septembre.
Divine September the moon wanes.
Pierre Jean Jouve
Themes for poems and the detritus of dreams coalesce:
This is one September I shall not forget.
The grammar-school caretaker always had the boards re-blacked
And the floors waxed, but I never shone.
The stripes of the red and black blazer
Were prison-grey. You could never see things that way:
Your home...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A wild Blue sky abreast of Winds
That threatened it -- did run
And crouched behind his Yellow Door
Was the defiant sun --
Some conflict with those upper friends
So genial in the main
That we deplore peculiarly
Their arrogant campaign --...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Ho! Darkies, don't you hear dose voters cryin'
Pack dat carpet bag!
You must get to de Poll, you must get there flyin';
Pack dat carpet bag!
You must travel by de road, you must travel by de train,
And the things what you've done you will have to explain,
And the things what you've promised, you must promise...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Troopin', troopin', troopin' to the sea:
'Ere's September come again -- the six-year men are free.
O leave the dead be'ind us, for they cannot come away
To where the ship's a-coalin' up that takes us 'ome to-day.
We're goin' 'ome, we're goin' 'ome,
Our ship is at the shore,
An' you must pack your 'aversack,
For we won't come back no...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A little bread -- a crust -- a crumb --
A little trust -- a demijohn --
Can keep the soul alive --
Not portly, mind! but breathing -- warm --
Conscious -- as old Napoleon,
The night before the Crown!
A modest lot -- A fame petite --
A brief Campaign of sting and sweet
Is plenty! Is enough!
A Sailor's business is the shore!
A Soldier's --...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
When the Waters were dried an' the Earth did appear,
("It's all one," says the Sapper),
The Lord He created the Engineer,
Her Majesty's Royal Engineer,
With the rank and pay of a Sapper!
When the Flood come along for an extra monsoon,
'Twas Noah constructed the first pontoon
To the plans of Her Majesty's, etc.
But after fatigue in the wet an'...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Battle fought between the Soul
And No Man -- is the One
Of all the Battles prevalent --
By far the Greater One --
No News of it is had abroad --
Its Bodiless Campaign
Establishes, and terminates --
Invisible -- Unknown --
Nor History -- record it --
As Legions of a Night
The Sunrise scatters -- These endure --
Enact -- and terminate --...Read more of this...
by
Li Bai
Chang-an -- one slip of moon;
in ten thousand houses, the sound of fulling mallets.
Autumn winds keep on blowing,
all things make me think of Jade Pass!
When will they put down the barbarians
and my good man come home from his far campaign?
- English Translation -...Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
“Is that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine,
Marching below, and we still gulping wine?”
From the sad magic of his fragrant cup
The red-faced old centurion started up,
Cursed, battered on the table. “No,” he said,
“Not that! The Three-and-Twentieth Legion’s dead,
Dead in the first year of this damned campaign—
The Legion’s dead, dead, and won’t rise again.
Pity? Rome...Read more of this...
by
Li Po
Chang-an -- one slip of moon;
in ten thousand houses, the sound of fulling mallets.
Autumn winds keep on blowing,
all things make me think of Jade Pass!
When will they put down the barbarians
and my good man come home from his far campaign?...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
After waking at dawn one morning when the wind sang
low among dry leaves in an elm
AMONG the red guns,
In the hearts of soldiers
Running free blood
In the long, long campaign:
Dreams go on.
Among the leather saddles,
In the heads of soldiers
Heavy in the wracks and kills
Of all straight fighting:
Dreams go on.
Among the hot muzzles,
In the hands of soldiers
Brought from flesh-folds of women--
Soft...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
If Might made Right, life were a wild-beasts' cage;
If Right made Might, this were the golden age;
But now, until we win the long campaign,
Right must gain Might to conquer and to reign....Read more of this...
by
Constantine P Cavafy
"Alexander son of Philip, and the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians--"
We can very well imagine
that they were utterly indifferent in Sparta
to this inscription. "Except the Lacedaemonians",
but naturally. The Spartans were not
to be led and ordered about
as precious servants. Besides
a panhellenic campaign without
a Spartan king as a leader
would not have appeared very important.
O, of course "except the Lacedaemonians."
This too is a...Read more of this...
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