Famous Carnage Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Carnage poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous carnage poems. These examples illustrate what a famous carnage poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Walt Whitman
WORD over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever
again,
this
soil’d world:
... For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced...Read more of this...
by
Roger McGough
Chaos ruled OK in the classroom
as bravely the teacher walked in
the nooligans ignored him
hid voice was lost in the din
"The theme for today is violence
and homework will be set
I'm going to teach you a lesson
one that you'll never forget"
He picked on a boy who was shouting
and throttled him then and there
then garrotted the girl behind him
(the one with grotty...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Said President MacConnachie to Treasurer MacCall:
"We ought to have a piper for our next Saint Andrew's Ball.
Yon squakin' saxophone gives me the syncopated gripes.
I'm sick of jazz, I want to hear the skirling of the pipes."
"Alas! it's true," said Tam MacCall. "The young folk of to-day
Are fox-trot mad and dinna ken a reel from Strathspey.
Now, what we want's a...Read more of this...
by
Derek Walcott
There is a shattered palm
on this fierce shore,
its plumes the rusting helm-
et of a dead warrior.
Numb Antony, in the torpor
stretching her inert
sex near him like a sleeping cat,
knows his heart is the real desert.
Over the dunes
of her heaving,
to his heart's drumming
fades the mirage of the legions,
across love-tousled sheets,
the triremes fading.
Ar the carved door of her temple
a fly wrings its...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
He was our leader and our guide;
He was our saviour and our star.
We walked in friendship by his side,
Yet set him where our heroes are.
He taught disdain of fame and wealth;
With courage he inspired our youth;
He preached the purity of health,
And held aloft the torch of truth.
He bade us battle for the Right,
And led us in the carnage grim;
He...Read more of this...
by
Duncan Campbell Scott
Sun on the mountain,
Shade in the valley,
Ripple and lightness
Leaping along the world,
Sun, like a gold sword
Plucked from the scabbard,
Striking the wheat-fields,
Splendid and lusty,
Close-standing, full-headed,
Toppling with plenty;
Shade, like a buckler
Kindly and ample,
Sweeping the wheat-fields
Darkening and tossing;
There on the world-rim
Winds break and gather
Heaping the mist
For the pyre of the sunset;
And still as a shadow,
In the dim westward,
A cloud sloop of amethyst
Moored...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I
Let others sing of Empire and of pomp beyond the sea,
A song of Little Puddleton is good enough for me,
A song of kindly living, and of coming home to tea.
I seldom read the papers, so I don't know what goes on.
I go to bed at sunset, and I leap alert at dawn,
To gossip with my garden, which I'll have...Read more of this...
by
Obi Nwakanma
for Christopher Okigbo
Emrnanuel Ifeajuna &
Chukwuma Nzeogwu
I
It was a room above the alcove
in a city renewed by junipers
And by desires...
Stripped of words,
the moments recalled;
where the tower,
lo, was in sight:
memories undaunted by sound
or flames of the amethyst,
spoke to me;
spoke to me like the preacher from…
I recall this moment staggering through the wind,...Read more of this...
by
Wilfred Owen
Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, -- but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but...Read more of this...
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
Rose-colour
Rose Pink am I, the colour gleams and glows
In many a flower; her lips, those tender doors
By which, in time of love, love's essence flows
From him to her, are dyed in delicate Rose.
Mine is the earliest Ruby light...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
THERE was once a day, but old Time wasythen young,
That brave Caledonia, the chief of her line,
From some of your northern deities sprung,
(Who knows not that brave Caledonia’s divine?)
From Tweed to the Orcades was her domain,
To hunt, or to pasture, or do what she would:
Her heav’nly relations there fixed her reign,
And pledg’d her their godheads...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Ho, guerriers! je suis né dans le pays des Gaules.")
{V., March 11, 1825.}
Ho, warriors! I was reared in the land of the Gauls;
O'er the Rhine my ancestors came bounding like balls
Of the snow at the Pole, where, a babe, I was bathed
Ere in bear and in walrus-skin I...Read more of this...
by
Julia Ward Howe
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Gray
Now the storm begins to lower,
(Haste, the loom of Hell prepares!)
Iron-sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darkened air.
Glittering lances are the loom,
Where the dusky warp we strain,
Weaving many a soldier's doom,
Orkney's woe and Randver's bane.
See the grisly texture grow,
('Tis of human entrails made!)
And the weights that play below,
Each a gasping warrior's head.
Shafts for shuttles, dipped in...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
SOME have won a wild delight,
By daring wilder sorrow;
Could I gain thy love to-night,
I'd hazard death to-morrow.
Could the battle-struggle earn
One kind glance from thine eye,
How this withering heart would burn,
The heady fight to try !
Welcome nights of broken sleep,
And days of carnage cold,
Could I deem that thou wouldst weep
To hear my perils told.
Tell me, if with...Read more of this...
by
Jorie Graham
Shall I move the flowers again?
Shall I put them further to the left
into the light?
Win that fix it, will that arrange the
thing?
Yellow sky.
Faint cricket in the dried-out bush.
As I approach, my footfall in the leaves
drowns out the cricket-chirping I was
coming close to hear
Yellow sky with black leaves rearranging it.
Wind rearranging the black leaves in it.
But anyway I am...Read more of this...
by
Emanuel Xavier
“Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars;
see that ye not be troubles;
all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet”
-Matthew 24:6
1.
I escape the horrors of war
with a towel and a room
Offering myself
to Palestinian and Jewish boys
as a ‘piece’ to the Middle East
when I should be concerned with the untimely deaths
of dark-skinned...Read more of this...
by
Amy Clampitt
Nothing's certain. Crossing, on this longest day,
the low-tide-uncovered isthmus, scrambling up
the scree-slope of what at high tide
will be again an island,
to where, a decade since well-being staked
the slender, unpremeditated claim that brings us
back, year after year, lugging the
makings of another picnic—
the cucumber sandwiches, the sea-air-sanctified
fig newtons—there's no knowing what the slamming
seas, the gales...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
I
We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel --
We dare not feel it yet -- the splendid shame
Of uncreated failure; we forget,
The while we groan, that God's accomplishment
Is always and unfailingly at hand.
II
Tumultuously void of a clean...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Athelstan King,
Lord among Earls,
Bracelet-bestower and
Baron of Barons,
He with his brother,
Edmund Atheling,
Gaining a lifelong
Glory in battle,
Slew with the sword-edge
There by Brunanburh,
Brake the shield-wall,
Hew'd the lindenwood,
Hack'd the battleshield,
Sons of Edward with hammer'd brands.
Theirs was a greatness
Got from their Grandsires--
Theirs that so often in
Strife with their enemies
Struck for their hoards and their hearths and their homes.
Bow'd the spoiler,
Bent the Scotsman,
Fell...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
Low and brown barns, thatched and repatched and tattered,
Where I had seven sons until to-day,
A little hill of hay your spur has scattered. . . .
This is not Paris. You have lost your way.
You, staring at your sword to find it brittle,
Surprised at the surprise that was your plan,
Who, shaking and breaking barriers...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
[To the memory of Lieut. Wm. W. Wardell, of the First Massachusetts
Cavalry, killed May 28, 1864.]
Above his head the cypress waves
Its dark green drooping leaves;
The sunlight through its branches wide
Where bright birds linger side by side
A golden net-work weaves.
Within the church-yard's silent gloom
He lies in quiet rest;
And never more to cold, pale brow,
Or proud...Read more of this...
by
Robert Southey
O thou who from the mountain's height
Roll'st down thy clouds with all their weight
Of waters to old Niles majestic tide;
Or o'er the dark sepulchral plain
Recallest thy Palmyra's ancient pride,
Amid whose desolated domes
Secure the savage chacal roams,
Where from the fragments of the hallow'd fane
The Arabs rear their miserable homes!
Hear Genius hear thy children's cry!
Not always should'st thou love to brood
Stern...Read more of this...
by
Edith Wharton
I
Leaguered in fire
The wild black promontories of the coast extend
Their savage silhouettes;
The sun in universal carnage sets,
And, halting higher,
The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats,
Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned,
That, balked, yet stands at bay.
Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day
In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline,
A wan Valkyrie whose wide pinions shine
Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray,
And in her hand swings...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
OVER the carnage rose prophetic a voice,
Be not dishearten’d—Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet;
Those who love each other shall become invincible—they shall yet make Columbia
victorious.
Sons of the Mother of All! you shall yet be victorious!
You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the earth.
No danger shall balk Columbia’s...Read more of this...
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