Famous Cartridge Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Cartridge poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous cartridge poems. These examples illustrate what a famous cartridge poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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For Australia

by Henry Lawson
 Now, with the wars of the world begun, they'll listen to you and me, 
Now while the frightened nations run to the arms of democracy, 
Now, when our blathering fools are scared, and the years have proved us right – 
All unprovided and unprepared, the Outpost of the White! 

"Get the people – no matter how," that is the...Read more of this...

Wolf Knife

by Donald Hall
 In the mid August, in the second year
of my First Polar Expedition, the snow and ice of winter
almost upon us, Kantiuk and I
attempted to dash the sledge
along Crispin Bay, searching again for relics
of the Frankline Expedition. Now a storm blew,
and we turned back, and we struggled slowly
in snow, lest we depart land and venture onto ice
from which a sudden...Read more of this...

The Heart of Australia

by Henry Lawson
 When the wars of the world seemed ended, and silent the distant drum, 
Ten years ago in Australia, I wrote of a war to come: 
And I pictured Australians fighting as their fathers fought of old 
For the old things, pride or country, for God or the Devil or gold. 

And they lounged on the rim of Australia in...Read more of this...

8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain

by Jim Carroll
 1/
Genius is not a generous thing
In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover
And it resents fame
With bitter vengeance 

Pills and powdres only placate it awhile
Then it puts you in a place where the planet's poles reverse
Where the currents of electricity shift 

Your Body becomes a magnet and pulls to it despair and rotten teeth,
Cheese...Read more of this...

Malvern Hill

by Herman Melville
 Ye elms that wave on Malvern Hill
In prime of morn and May,
Recall ye how McClellan's men
Here stood at bay?
While deep within yon forest dim
Our rigid comrades lay - 
Some with the cartridge in their mouth,
Others with fixed arms lifted South - 
Invoking so
The cypress glades? Ah wilds of woe!

The spires of Richmond, late beheld
Through rifts in musket-haze,
Were closed from...Read more of this...

The Last Berkshire Eleven

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas at the disastrous battle of Maiwand, in Afghanistan,
Where the Berkshires were massacred to the last man;
On the morning of July the 27th, in the year eighteen eighty,
Which I'm sorry to relate was a pitiful sight to see. 

Ayoub Khan's army amounted to twelve thousand in all,
And honestly speaking it wasn't very small,
And by such a great force the...Read more of this...

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