Famous Council Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Council poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous council poems. These examples illustrate what a famous council poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Stephen Vincent Benet
(A Virginia Legend.)
The Planting of the Hemp.
Captain Hawk scourged clean the seas
(Black is the gap below the plank)
From the Great North Bank to the Caribbees
(Down by the marsh the hemp grows rank).
His fear was on the seaport towns,
The weight of his hand held hard the downs.
And the merchants cursed him, bitter and...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
England, with all thy faults, I love thee still--
My country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year most part deform'd
With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flow'r, for warmer...Read more of this...
by
Marriott Edgar
It were after the Battle of Crecy-
The foe all lay dead on the ground-
And King Edward went out with his soldiers
To clean up the places around.
The first place they came to were Calais,
Where t' burghers all stood in a row,
And when Edward told them to surrender
They told Edward where he could go.
Said he, " I'll...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
BY many a dream of God and man my thoughts in shining flocks were led:
But as I went through Patrick Street the hopes and prophecies were dead.
The hopes and prophecies were dead: they could not blossom where the feet
Walked amid rottenness, or where the brawling shouters stamped the street.
Where was the beauty that the Lord gave men when first...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
On the Gilfillan burial day,
In the Hill o' Balgay,
It was a most solemn sight to see,
Not fewer than thirty thousand people assembled in Dundee,
All watching the funeral procession of Gilfillan that day,
That death had suddenly taken away,
And was going to be buried in the Hill o' Balgay.
There were about three thousand people in the procession alone,
And many were...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Where the sober-colored cultivator smiles
On his byles;
Where the cholera, the cyclone, and the crow
Come and go;
Where the merchant deals in indigo and tea,
Hides and ghi;
Where the Babu drops inflammatory hints
In his prints;
Stands a City -- Charnock chose it -- packed away
Near a Bay --
By the Sewage rendered fetid, by the sewer
Made impure,
By the...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Qui leur eût dit l'austère destineé?")
{II. v., November, 1836.}
Who then, to them{1} had told the Future's story?
Or said that France, low bowed before their glory,
One day would mindful be
Of them and of their mournful fate no more,
Than of the wrecks its waters have swept o'er
...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Give me life at its most garish
Friday night in the Square, pink sequins dazzle
And dance on clubbers bare to the midriff
Young men in crisp shirts and pressed pants
‘Dress code smart’ gyrate to ‘Sex Bomb, Sex Bomb’
And sing along its lyrics to the throng of which I’m one
My shorts, shoulder bag and white beard
Making me stand out in the teeming...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
They were hanging men in Buckland who would not cheer King George –
The parson from his pulpit and the blacksmith from his forge;
They were hanging men and brothers, and the stoutest heart was down,
When a quiet man from Buckland rode at dusk to raise Charlestown.
Not a young man in his glory filled with patriotic fire,...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
Thou fair hair'd angel of the evening,
Now, while the sun rests on the mountains light,
Thy bright torch of love; Thy radiant crown
Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!
Smile on our loves; and when thou drawest the
Blue curtains, scatter thy silver dew
On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes
In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on
The lake;...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
CUPID, ere depriv'd of Sight,
Young and apt for all Delight,
Met with Folly on the way,
As Idle and as fond of Play.
In gay Sports the time they pass;
Now run, now wrestle on the Grass;
Their painted Wings then nimbly ply,
And ev'ry way for Mast'ry try:
'Till a Contest do's arise,
Who has won th'...Read more of this...
by
John Wilmot
Nothing, thou elder brother even to shade,
That hadst a being ere the world was made,
And (well fixed) art alone of ending not afraid.
Ere time and place were, time and place were not,
When primitive Nothing Something straight begot,
Then all proceeded from the great united--What?
Something, the general attribute of all,
Severed from thee, its sole original,
Into thy boundless self must undistinguished fall.
Yet...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
WRITTEN FOR LORADO TAFT'S STATUE OF BLACK HAWK AT OREGON, ILLINOIS
To be given in the manner of the Indian Oration and the Indian War-Cry.
Hawk of the Rocks,
Yours is our cause to-day.
Watching your foes
Here in our war array,
Young men we stand,
Wolves of the West at bay.
Power, power for war
Comes from these trees divine;
Power from the boughs,
Boughs...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
To the Almighty on his radiant Throne,
Let endless Hallelujas rise!
Praise Him, ye wondrous Heights to us unknown,
Praise Him, ye Heavens unreach'd by mortal Eyes,
Praise Him, in your degree, ye sublunary Skies!
Praise Him, you Angels that before him bow,
You Creatures of Celestial frame,
Our Guests of old, our wakeful Guardians now,
Praise Him, and...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing;
Islands of opal float on silver seas;
Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing;
Pale ports of amber, golden argosies.
Ringed all around us the proud peaks are glowing;
Fierce chiefs in council, their wigwam the sky;
Far, far below us the big Yukon flowing,
Like threaded quicksilver, gleams to the eye.
Men of the...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
RED barns and red heifers spot the green
grass circles around Omaha—the farmers
haul tanks of cream and wagon loads of cheese.
Shale hogbacks across the river at Council
Bluffs—and shanties hang by an eyelash to
the hill slants back around Omaha.
A span of steel ties up the kin of Iowa and
Nebraska across the yellow, big-hoofed Missouri River.
Omaha, the roughneck, feeds armies,
Eats and swears...Read more of this...
by
John Milton
Daughter to that good Earl, one President
Of England’s Council and her Treasury,
Who lived in both unstained with gold or fee,
And left them both, more in himself content,
Till the sad breaking of that Parliament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Ch?ronea, fatal to liberty,
Killed with report that old man eloquent,
Though later born than...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Arriving for a reading an hour too early:
Ruefully, the general manager stopped putting out the chairs.
“You don’t get any help these days. I have
To sort out everything from furniture to faxes.
Why not wander round the park? There are ducks
And benches where you can sit and watch.”
I realized it was going to be a hungry evening
With not even a packet...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Oh, light was the world that he weighed in his hands!
Oh, heavy the tale of his fiefs and his lands!
He has gone from the guddee and put on the shroud,
And departed in guise of bairagi avowed!
Now the white road to Delhi is mat for his feet.
The sal and the kikar must guard him from heat.
His home is the camp,...Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
Hark, I hear the bells of Westgate,
I will tell you what they sigh,
Where those minarets and steeples
Prick the open Thanet sky.
Happy bells of eighteen-ninety,
Bursting from your freestone tower!
Recalling laurel, shrubs and privet,
Red geraniums in flower.
Feet that scamper on the asphalt
Through the Borough Council grass,
Till they hide inside the shelter
Bright with ironwork and glass,
Striving chains of ordered children
Purple by the...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Why, oh why was Kater lifted
From the darkness, where he drifted
All unknown, and raised to honour,
Side by side with Dick O'connor,
In the Council, free from row?
Who is Kater, anyhow?
Did he lend our armies rally,
Like the recent Billy Dalley?
Did he lend a Premier money,
Like -- (No libels here, my sonny. --...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
for Ken Kesey and his merry pranksters in a bus called ‘Further...’
Dear _______ and here’s where the problem begins
For who shall I address this letter to?
Friends are few and very special, muses in the main
I must confess, the first I lost just fifty years ago.
Perhaps the best.
I searched for years and wrote en route
‘Bridge Over the Aire’ after that...Read more of this...
by
Willa Cather
THROUGH halls of vanished pleasure,
And hold of vanished power,
And crypt of faith forgotten,
A came to Ludlow tower.
A-top of arch and stairway,
Of crypt and donjan cell,
Of council hall, and chamber,
Of wall, and ditch, and well,
High over grated turrets
Where clinging ivies run,
A thousand scarlet poppies
Enticed the rising sun,
Upon the...Read more of this...
by
Mihai Eminescu
Mighty emperor is the forest,
High dominion does he wield,
And a thousand races prosper
'Neath the shelter of his shield.
The moon, the sun and Lucifer
Do round his kingdom ever sphere;
While lords and ladies of his court
Are of the noble race of deer.
Hares, his heralds and his postmen,
Carry rapidly his mails;
Birds his...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
1918
SEVEN Watchmen sitting in a tower,
Watching what had come upon mankind,
Showed the Man the Glory and the Power,
And bade him shape the Kingdom to his mind.
"All things on Earth your will shall win you."
('Twas so their council ran)
" But the Kingdom--the Kingdom is within you,"
Said the Man's own mind to the Man.
For time--and some...Read more of this...
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