Famous Capitol Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Capitol poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous capitol poems. These examples illustrate what a famous capitol poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...es
is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing
--pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars
--descending through the city
fast as the law would allow
through the lights, then rising to the stack
out of the city
to the stack where lanes are stacked six deep
and you on top; the air
now clean, for a moment weightless
without...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
...at delicate fair house—that ruin!
That immortal house, more than all the rows of dwellings ever built!
Or white-domed Capitol itself, with majestic figure surmounted—or all the old
high-spired
cathedrals;
That little house alone, more than them all—poor, desperate house!
Fair, fearful wreck! tenement of a Soul! itself a Soul!
Unclaim’d, avoided house! take one breath from my tremulous lips;
Take one tear, dropt aside as I go, for thought of you,
Dead house of love! ho...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ama in natural eyeball--
Sacramento valley rivercourse's Chinese
dragonflames licking green flats north-hazed
State Capitol metallic rubble, dry checkered fields
to Sierras- past Reno, Pyramid Lake's
blue Altar, pure water in Nevada sands'
brown wasteland scratched by tires
Jerry Rubin arrested! Beaten, jailed,
coccyx broken--
Leary out of action--"a public menace...
persons of tender years...immature
judgement...pyschiatric examination..."
i.e. Shut up or Else ...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...est vex his slumber, or
The Arno with its tawny troubled gold
O'er-leap its marge, no mightier conqueror
Clomb the high Capitol in the days of old
When Rome was indeed Rome, for Liberty
Walked like a bride beside him, at which sight pale Mystery
Fled shrieking to her farthest sombrest cell
With an old man who grabbled rusty keys,
Fled shuddering, for that immemorial knell
With which oblivion buries dynasties
Swept like a wounded eagle on the blast,
As to the holy heart of Ro...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...ith Subis a bird called the Spight which breaks the Eagle's eggs.
Let Mason, house of Mason rejoice with Suberies the Capitol Cork Tree. Lord be merciful to William Mason.
Let Fountain, house of Fountain rejoice with Syriacus Rephanus a sweet kind of Radish.
Let Scroop, house of Scroop rejoice with Fig-Wine -- Palmi primarium vinum. Not so -- Palmi-primum is the word.
Let Hollingstead, house of Hollingstead rejoice with Sissitietaeris herb of good fellowship. Praise t...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...strength of virgin forests braced his mind,
The hush of spacious prairies stilled his soul.
Up from log cabin to the Capitol,
One fire was on his spirit, one resolve:--
To send the keen axe to the root of wrong,
Clearing a free way for the feet of God.
And evermore he burned to do his deed
With the fine stroke and gesture of a king:
He built the rail-pile as he built the State,
Pouring his splendid strength through every blow;
The conscience of him testing every st...Read more of this...
by
Markham, Edwin
...new mould.
Her spirits' fervor would have melted in
The hundred cities with her; made a twin
Vesuvius and the Capitol; and blended
Strong Juvenal's with the soul, tender and splendid,
Of Dante—smelted old with new alloy—
Stormed at the Titans' road full of bold joy
Whereby men storm Olympus. Italy,
Weep!—This man could have made one Rome of thee!
VI.
But the crime's wrought! Who wrought it?
Honest Man—
Priest Pius? No! Each does but ...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...oud!
Hither! take me, use me, fill me,
Vein and artery, though ye kill me;
God! I will not be an owl,
But sun me in the Capitol....Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...oes in the sugar-field,
And both understand him, and know that his speech is right.
He walks with perfect ease in the Capitol,
He walks among the Congress, and one Representative says to another, Here is our equal,
appearing
and new.
Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic,
And the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors that he has follow’d
the
sea,
And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,
And the laborers perceive he...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...em
Than great and glorious Rome, Queen of the Earth
So far renowned, and with the spoils enriched
Of nations. There the Capitol thou seest,
Above the rest lifting his stately head
On the Tarpeian rock, her citadel
Impregnable; and there Mount Palatine,
The imperial palace, compass huge, and high
The structure, skill of noblest architects,
With gilded battlements, conspicuous far,
Turrets, and terraces, and glittering spires.
Many a fair edifice besides, more like
Houses of g...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...THE DOME of the capitol looks to the Potomac river.
Out of haze over the sunset,
Out of a smoke rose gold:
One star shines over the sunset.
Night takes the dome and the river, the sun and the smoke rose gold,
The haze changes from sunset to star.
The pour of a thin silver struggles against the dark.
A star might call: It’s a long way across....Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...
Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
Work-box, chest, string’d instrument, boat, frame, and what not,
Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States,
Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans, or for the poor or sick,
Manhattan steamboats and clippers, taking the measure of all seas.
The shapes arise!
Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users, and all that neighbors them,
Cutters down of wood, and haulers of it to the Penobsco...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...there is no room for Rome,
the Aventine is its own mound and tomb,
only a corpse recieves the worshipper.
And where the Capitol once crowned the forum,
are medals ruined by the hands of time;
they show how more was lost by chance and time
the Hannibal or Ceasar could consume.
The Tiber flows still, but its waste laments
a city that has fallen in its grave—
each wave's a woman beating at her breast.
O Rome! Form all you palms, dominion, bronze
and beauty, what was firm has fle...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Robert
...n enough
to think each sin taints every one of us,
a harsh philosophy that doesn't seem
to get me very far--just to the Capitol
each day at noon, my wet shirt clinging to my back.
Atop its pole, the stars-and-bars,
too heavy for the breeze, hangs listlessly.
Once, standing where Jeff Davis took his oath,
I saw the Capitol. He shrank into his chair,
so flaccid with paralysis he looked
like melting flesh, white as a maggot. He's fatter now.
He courts black votes, and life is c...Read more of this...
by
Hudgins, Andrew
...wsing?
What deepening twilight! scum floating atop of the waters!
Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol?
What a filthy Presidentiad! (O south, your torrid suns! O north, your arctic freezings!)
Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that the President?
Then I will sleep awhile yet—for I see that These States sleep, for reasons;
(With gathering murk—with muttering thunder and lambent shoots, we all duly awake,
South, north, eas...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...Twenty-first. Night. Monday.
Silhouette of the capitol in darkness.
Some good-for-nothing -- who knows why --
made up the tale that love exists on earth.
People believe it, maybe from laziness
or boredom, and live accordingly:
they wait eagerly for meetings, fear parting,
and when they sing, they sing about love.
But the secret reveals itself to some,
and on them silence settles down...
I found this ou...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...Moving from left to left, the light
is heavy on the Dome, and coarse.
One small lunette turns it aside
and blankly stares off to the side
like a big white old wall-eyed horse.
On the east steps the Air Force Band
in uniforms of Air Force blue
is playing hard and loud, but--*****--
the music doesn't quite come through.
It comes in snatches, dim then keen,...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...ndage quight:
So when all shrouded were in silent night,
The Galles were, by corrupting of a mayde,
Possest nigh of the Capitol through slight,
Had not a Goose the treachery bewrayde.
If then a Goose great Rome from ruine stayde,
And Ioue himselfe, the patron of the place,
Preserud from being to his foes betrayde,
Why do vaine men mean things so much deface,
And in their might repose their most assurance,
Sith nought on earth can chalenge long endurance?
12
When these sad s...Read more of this...
by
Spenser, Edmund
...WHEN I heard at the close of the day how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the
capitol,
still it was not a happy night for me that follow’d;
And else, when I carous’d, or when my plans were accomplish’d, still I was not happy;
But the day when I rose at dawn from the bed of perfect health, refresh’d, singing,
inhaling
the
ripe breath of autumn,
When I saw the full moon in the west grow pale and disappear in the morning light,
W...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
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