Famous Civil War Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Civil War poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous civil war poems. These examples illustrate what a famous civil war poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...fix a throne, and in imperial sway,
Build up a kingdom shadowing the earth,
Unmov'd by thunder or impetuous storm
Of civil war, dark treason, or the shock
Of hostile nations, in dire league combin'd.
They build a kingdom of a nobler date,
Who build the kingdom of the Saviour God.
This, not descending rain, nor mighty storm,
Nor sea indignant, nor the raging fire,
Nor time shall waste, or from firm basis move.
Rounded on earth its head doth reach the skies,
Secure f...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...e pangs or hunger makes them mad, and drives them to desperation.
An old American soldier that had passed through the Civil War,
Declared the scene surpassed anything he's seen by far,
And at the sight, the crowd in horror turned away,
which no doubt they will remember for many a day.
Colin Chisholm, one of the survivors was looking very pale,
Stretched on a sofa at the boarding-house, making his wail:
Poor fellow! his feet was greatly swollen, and with a melancholy air,
...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...e,
shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked ***** infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.
Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze ******* breathe.
Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.
He has an angry wrenlike vi...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Robert
...hat Frederick Douglass said was true.
With John Brown at Harper's Ferry, ******* died.
John Brown was hung.
Before the Civil War, days were dark,
And nobody knew for sure
When freedom would triumph
"Or if it would," thought some.
But others new it had to triumph.
In those dark days of slavery,
Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
The slaves made up a song:
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
That song meant just what it said: Hold On!
Freedom will come!
Keep Your...Read more of this...
by
Hughes, Langston
...urned Jackson
for Adams), took a pistol ball in the thigh
in a duel, delayed, by forty years,
with his compromises, the Civil War,
gambler ("I have always
paid peculiar homage to the fickle goddess"),
boozehound, ladies' man -- which leads us
to his mouth, which was huge,
a long slash across his face,
with which he ate and prodigiously drank,
with which he modulated his melodic voice,
with which he liked to kiss and kiss and kiss.
He said: "Kissing is like the presidency,
it ...Read more of this...
by
Lux, Thomas
...ayfoot verse remain'd, and will remain.
Late, very late, correctness grew our care,
When the tir'd nation breath'd from civil war.
Exact Racine, and Corneille's noble fire
Show'd us that France had something to admire.
Not but the tragic spirit was our own,
And full in Shakespeare, fair in Otway shone:
But Otway fail'd to polish or refine,
And fluent Shakespeare scarce effac'd a line.
Ev'n copious Dryden wanted, or forgot,
The last and greatest art, the art to blot.
Some do...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...ent and mine.
V. The Road at My Door
An affable Irregular,
A heavily-built Falstaffian man,
Comes cracking jokes of civil war
As though to die by gunshot were
The finest play under the sun.
A brown Lieutenant and his men,
Half dressed in national uniform,
Stand at my door, and I complain
Of the foul weather, hail and rain,
A pear-tree broken by the storm.
I count those feathered balls of soot
The moor-hen guides upon the stream.
To silence the envy in my thought;
And tu...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...roops to that ill-omen'd place,
On errands mere of special grace;
And all the work, he chose them for,
Was to prevent a civil war;
For which kind purpose he projected
The only certain way t' effect it,
To seize your powder, shot and arms,
And all your means of doing harms;
As prudent folks take knives away,
Lest children cut themselves at play.
And yet, when this was all his scheme,
The war you still will charge on him;
And tho' he oft has swore and said it,
Stick close to fa...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...hree-legged-crow voice, in an anti-dandelion
side of the mountain voice.
"What?"I said.
"You fought in the Spanish Civil War. You were a young
Communist from Cleveland, Ohio. She was a painter. A New
York Jew who was sightseeing in the Spanish Civil War as if
it were the Mardi Gras in New Orleans being acted out by
Greek statues.
"She was drawing a picture of a dead anarchist when you
met her. She asked you to stand beside the anarchist and act
as if you had kill...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...carpet. Those kids were
pretty drunk and the old granny wasn't too sober either, shout-
ing something like, "Let the Civil War come again, I'm ready
to ****!"
We went down to Little Redfish Lake. The campgrounds
there were just about abandoned. There were so many people
up at Big Redfish Lake and practically nobody camping at
Little Redfish Lake, and it was free, too.
We wondered what was wrong with the camp. If perhaps
a camping plague, a sure destroyer that leav...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...thy sensual fault I bring in sense—
Thy adverse party is thy advocate—
And 'gainst my self a lawful plea commence.
Such civil war is in my love and hate
That I an accessary needs must be
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me....Read more of this...
by
Shakespeare, William
...hy sensual fault I bring in sense--
Thy adverse party is thy advocate--
And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence:
Such civil war is in my love and hate
That I an accessary needs must be
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me....Read more of this...
by
Shakespeare, William
...een Garrison
And Whittier, and had her story of them.
One wasn't long in learning that she thought
Whatever else the Civil War was for
It wasn't just to keep the States together,
Nor just to free the slaves, though it did both.
She wouldn't have believed those ends enough
To have given outright for them all she gave.
Her giving somehow touched the principle
That all men are created free and equal.
And to hear her quaint phrases--so removed
From the world's view to-...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...I am torn in two
but I will conquer myself.
I will dig up the pride.
I will take scissors
and cut out the beggar.
I will take a crowbar
and pry out the broken
pieces of God in me.
Just like a jigsaw puzzle,
I will put Him together again
with the patience of a chess player.
How many pieces?
It feels like thousands,
God dressed up like a whore
in a slime o...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
....
A tempting doctrine, plausible and new;
What fools our fathers were, if this be true!
Who, to destroy the seeds of civil war,
Inherent right in monarchs did declare;
And, that a lawful power might never cease,
Secured succession to secure our peace.
Thus property and sovereign sway at last
In equal balances were justly cast;
But this new Jehu spurs the hot-mounted horse,
Instructs the beast to know his native force,
To take the bit between his teeth and fly
To t...Read more of this...
by
Dryden, John
...again no more!
I'll kiss you until your body and soul
the mind in the body being fulfilled--
Suspend their dread and civil war!"
II Song
Under the yellow sea
Who comes and looks with me
For the daughters of music, the fountains of poetry?
Both have soared forth from the unending waters
Where all things still are seeds and far from flowers
And since they remain chained to the sea's powers
May wilt to nonentity or loll and arise to comedy
Or thrown into mere accident throu...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
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