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Famous Councils Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...teousness did toil aye;
Ye dainty Deacons, and ye douce Conveners,
To whom our moderns are but causey-cleaners
Ye godly Councils, wha hae blest this town;
ye godly Brethren o’ the sacred gown,
Wha meekly gie your hurdies to the smiters;
And (what would now be strange), ye godly Writers;
A’ ye douce folk I’ve borne aboon the broo,
Were ye but here, what would ye say or do?
How would your spirits groan in deep vexation,
To see each melancholy alteration;
And, agonising, curse t...Read more of this...



by Petrarch, Francesco
...ow I bear;Though death be seated nigh,For future life still seeking councils new,I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worse pursue. Macgregor....Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...o kill.



XLI.
And one by one the hostile Indians send
Their chiefs to seek a peaceful treaty's end.
Great councils follow; skill with cunning copes
And conquers it; and Custer sees his hopes
So long delayed, like stars storm hidden, rise
To radiate with splendor all his skies.
The stubborn Cheyennes, cowed at last by fear, 
Leading the captive pair, o'er spring-touched hills appear.



XLII.
With breath suspended, now the whole command
Waits the appr...Read more of this...

by Cavafy, Constantine P
...erience to compose it with astuteness,
which of the two, which of such two will be displeased.
And they hold secret councils at night
and discuss the family affairs of the Lagidae.

But see, the envoys have returned. They are bidding farewell.
They are returning to Alexandria, they say. And they do not ask
for any oracle. And the priests hear this with joy
(of course they will keep the marvellous gifts),
but they also are utterly perplexed,
not underst...Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...h grow. 

20

When past all offerings to Feretrian Jove, 
He Mars depos'd and arms to gowns made yield; 
Successful councils did him soon approve 
As fit for close intrigues as open field. 

21

To suppliant Holland he vouchsaf'd a peace, 
Our once bold rival in the British main, 
Now tamely glad her unjust claim to cease 
And buy our friendship with her idol, gain. 

22

Fame of th' asserted sea through Europe blown 
Made France and Spain ambitious of his love; 
...Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...a city great and gay,
 (So they say)
Of our country's very capital, its prince
 Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
 Peace or war.

II

Now—the country does not even boast a tree,
 As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
 From the hills
Intersect and give a name to, (else they run
 Into one)
Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
 Up like fires
O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
 Bounding all,
Made of marble,...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...ur list of placemen all over;
Did heaven appoint our chief Judge Oliver,
Fill that high bench with ignoramus,
Or has it councils by mandamus?
Who made that wit of water-gruel
A judge of admiralty, Sewall?
And were they not mere earthly struggles,
That raised up Murray, say, and Ruggles?
Did heaven send down, our pains to medicine,
That old simplicity of Edson,
Or by election pick out from us
That Marshfield blunderer, Nat. Ray Thomas;
Or had it any hand in serving
A Lorin...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...Mandamus-men resign,
Call'd forth each dufill-drest curmudgeon,
With dirty trowsers and white bludgeon,
Forced all our Councils through the land,
To yield their necks at your command;
While paleness marks their late disgraces,
Through all their rueful length of faces?


"Have you not caused as woeful work
In our good city of New-York,
When all the rabble, well cockaded,
In triumph through the streets paraded,
And mobb'd the Tories, scared their spouses,
And ransack'd all the...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...
 The house-beams shall fall;
 And the Karela,. the bitter Karela,
 Shall cover it all!

In the gates of these your councils my people shall sing.
In the doors of these your garners the Bat-folk shall cling;
 And the snake shall be your watchman,
 By a hearthstone unswept;
 For the Karela, the bitter Karela,
 Shall fruit where ye slept!

Ye shall not see my strikers; ye shall hear them and guess.
By night, before the moon-rise, I will send for my cess,
 And the wo...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...t splendor, and before my dreamy eye 45 
Wave these mingled shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry. 

Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard; 
But thy painter, Albrecht D¨¹rer, and Hans Sachs, thy cobbler bard. 

Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away, 
As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay: 50 

Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil, 
The nobility of ...Read more of this...

by Watts, Isaac
...The man is ever bless'd
Who shuns the sinners' ways,
Among their councils never stands,
Nor takes the scorner's place;

But makes the law of God
His study and delight,
Amidst the labours of the day,
And watches of the night.

He like a tree shall thrive,
With waters near the root;
Fresh as the leaf his name shall live;
His works are heav'nly fruit.

Not so the ungoodly race,
They no such blessings find;
Their hope...Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...t meaning guess'd,
Have found our author not too much a priest:
For fashion-sake he seems to have recourse
To Pope, and Councils, and tradition's force:
But he that old traditions could subdue,
Could not but find the weakness of the new:
If Scripture, though deriv'd from Heavenly birth,
Has been but carelessly preserv'd on earth;
If God's own people, who of God before
Knew what we know, and had been promis'd more,
In fuller terms, of Heaven's assisting care,
And who did neith...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...undering foreshores that answered his heralded landing;
The huge lighted cities adoring, the assemblies upstanding;
The Councils of Kings called in haste to learn how he was minded --
The kingdoms, the Powers, and the Glories he dealt with unblinded.

To him came all captains of men, all achievers of glory
Hot from the press of their battles they told him their story.
They revealed him their lives in an hour and, saluting departed,
Joyful to labour afresh -- he had ma...Read more of this...

by Cavafy, Constantine P
...ght
a member of the city of ideas.
And it's a hard, unusual thing
to be enrolled as a citizen of that city.
Its councils are full of Legislators
no charlatan can fool.
To have reached this point is no small achievement:
what you've done already is a wonderful thing."...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...es;
He has seen all that ever has taken place here,
And all that the future still hides.
He sat in the god's secret councils of old
And heard the command for each thing to unfold.

He opens in splendor, with gladness and mirth,
That life which was hid from our eyes;
Adorns as a temple the dwelling of earth,
That the Muse has bestowed as his prize,
No roof is so humble, no hut is so low,
But he with divinities bids it o'erflow.

And as the inventive descendant of Z...Read more of this...

by Russell, George William
...ght “What deity is there”?
We choose the chieftains of our race
From hucksters in the market place.


When in their councils over all
Men set the power that sells and buys,
Be sure the price of life will fall,
Death be more precious in our eyes.
Have all the gods their cycles run?
Has devil worship now begun?


O whether devil planned or no,
Life here is ambushed, this our fate,
That road to anarchy doth go,
This to the grim mechanic state.
The gates of hell are o...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...
Today I'd be the Governor
Of all Madrid, and rule with pride,
Instead of just a lousy guide.

"For I could talk in Councils high
To draw down angels from the sky.
They put me seven years in gaol, -
You see how I am prison-pale . . .
Death sentence! Each dawn I thought
They'd drag me out and have me shot.

"Maybe far better if they had:
Suspense like that can make one mad.
Yet here I am serene and sane,
And at your service to explain
That gory batt...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs