Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Columbia Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Burns, Robert
...NO Spartan tube, no Attic shell,
 No lyre Æolian I awake;
’Tis liberty’s bold note I swell,
 Thy harp, Columbia, let me take!
See gathering thousands, while I sing,
A broken chain exulting bring,
 And dash it in a tyrant’s face,
And dare him to his very beard,
And tell him he no more is feared—
 No more the despot of Columbia’s race!
A tyrant’s proudest insults brav’d,
They shout—a People freed! They hail an Empire saved.


Where is man’s god-like form?
 ...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...vocal in him, 
Making its rivers, lakes, bays, embouchure in him, 
Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes—Columbia, Niagara, Hudson,
 spending
 themselves lovingly in him,
If the Atlantic coast stretch, or the Pacific coast stretch, he stretching with them north
 or
 south, 
Spanning between them, east and west, and touching whatever is between them, 
Growths growing from him to offset the growth of pine, cedar, hemlock, live-oak, locust,
 chestnut, hickory, cot...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...n with whom men side 
As with their hearts' high needs personified? 
There are will say, One such our lips could name; 
Columbia gave him birth. Him Genius most 
Gifted to rule. Against the world's great man 
Lift their low calumny and sneering cries 
The Pharisaic multitude, the host 
Of piddling slanderers whose little eyes 
Know not what greatness is and never can....Read more of this...

by Carver, Raymond
...On the Columbia River near Vantage, 
Washington, we fished for whitefish 
in the winter months; my dad, Swede- 
Mr. Lindgren-and me. They used belly-reels, 
pencil-length sinkers, red, yellow, or brown 
flies baited with maggots. 
They wanted distance and went clear out there 
to the edge of the riffle. 
I fished near shore with a quill bobber and a...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...Columbia, fair queen in your glory! 
Columbia, the pride of the earth! 
We crown you with song- wreath and story; 
We honour the day of your birth! 

The wrath of a king and his minions
You braved, to be free, on that day; 
And the eagle sailed up on strong pinions, 
And frightened the lion at bay.

Since the chains and the shackles are broken, 
And citi...Read more of this...



by Riley, James Whitcomb
...e, July 4, 1878

or a hundred years the pulse of time
Has throbbed for Liberty;
For a hundred years the grand old clime
Columbia has been free;
For a hundred years our country's love,
The Stars and Stripes, has waved above.

Away far out on the gulf of years--
Misty and faint and white
Through the fogs of wrong--a sail appears,
And the Mayflower heaves in sight,
And drifts again, with its little flock
Of a hundred souls, on Plymouth Rock.

Do you see them there--as lo...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...
When lo! reborn, high o’er the European world,
(In gladness, answering thence, as face afar to face, reflecting ours, Columbia,) 
Again thy star, O France—fair, lustrous star, 
In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than ever, 
Shall beam immortal....Read more of this...

by Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...ssachusetts, Michigan,Miami or L.A., An airborne instrument I sit,Predestined nightly to fulfillColumbia-Giesen-Management'sUnfathomable will, By whose election justified,I bring my gospel of the MuseTo fundamentalists, to nuns,to Gentiles and to Jews, And daily, seven days a week,Before a local sense has jelled,From talking-site to talking-siteAm jet-or-prop-propelled. Though warm my welcome everywhere,I shi...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...corners of our sight
and will not let go. The young man
was my cousin, Arthur Lieberman,
then a language student at Columbia,
who told me all this before he died
quietly in his sleep in 1983
in a hotel in Perugia. A good man,
Arthur, he survived graduate school,
later came home to Detroit and sold
pianos right through the Depression.
He loaned my brother a used one
to compose his hideous songs on,
which Arthur thought were genius.
What an imagination Arthur ha...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...deep
Her troubled question flings --

Thrice to the floating casement
The Patriarch's bird returned,
Courage! My brave Columbia!
There may yet be land...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...fection 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 lovers; 
If need be, a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one. 

One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian’s comrade; 
From Maine and from hot ...Read more of this...

by Carman, Bliss
...de."

O all the headlong rivers that hurry to the West,
They call me and lure me with the joy of their unrest.

Columbia and Fraser and Bear and Kootenay,
I love their fearless reaches where winds untarnished play--

The rush of glacial water across the pebbly bar
To polished pools of azure where the hidden boulders are.

Just there, with heaven smiling, any morning I would be,
Where all the silver rivers go racing to the sea.

O well remembered rivers that si...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...assions, of my race.


I see the long river-stripes of the earth;
I see where the Mississippi flows—I see where the Columbia flows; 
I see the Great River and the Falls of Niagara; 
I see the Amazon and the Paraguay; 
I see the four great rivers of China, the Amour, the Yellow River, the Yiang-tse, and the
 Pearl; 
I see where the Seine flows, and where the Danube, the Loire, the Rhone, and the
 Guadalquiver
 flow;
I see the windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder; 
...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...it to the Penobscot or Kennebec, 
Dwellers in cabins among the California mountains, or by the little lakes, or on the
 Columbia,

Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande—friendly gatherings, the characters
 and
 fun,

Dwellers up north in Minnesota and by the Yellowstone river—dwellers on coasts and off
 coasts,
Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice. 

The shapes arise! 
Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets; 
Sh...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...n ware! 

4
But hold—don’t I forget my manners? 
To introduce the Stranger (what else indeed have I come for?) to thee, Columbia:
In Liberty’s name, welcome, Immortal! clasp hands, 
And ever henceforth Sisters dear be both. 

Fear not, O Muse! truly new ways and days receive, surround you, 
(I candidly confess, a *****, ***** race, of novel fashion,) 
And yet the same old human race—the same within, without,
Faces and hearts the same—feelings the same—yearnings the same, ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...eedom’s features, fresh, undimm’d, look forth—the same immortal face
 looks
 forth;
(A glimpse as of thy mother’s face, Columbia, 
A flash significant as of a sword, 
Beaming towards thee.) 

Nor think we forget thee, Maternal; 
Lag’d’st thou so long? Shall the clouds close again upon thee?
Ah, but thou hast Thyself now appear’d to us—we know thee; 
Thou hast given us a sure proof, the glimpse of Thyself; 
Thou waitest there, as everywhere, thy time....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...weet-air’d interminable plateaus! 
Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie!
Lands where the northwest Columbia winds, and where the southwest Colorado
 winds! 
Land of the eastern Chesapeake! Land of the Delaware! 
Land of Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan! 
Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! Land of Vermont and Connecticut! 
Land of the ocean shores! Land of sierras and peaks!
Land of boatmen and sailors! Fishermen’s land! 
Inextricable lands! the c...Read more of this...

by Lear, Edward
...
There was an Old Man of Columbia,Who was thirsty, and called out for some beer;But they brought it quite hot, in a small copper pot,Which disgusted that man of Columbia. ...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Columbia poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs