Famous Democratic Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Democratic poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous democratic poems. These examples illustrate what a famous democratic poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...
You're a musical abortion, you're the voice of grit and grime,
You're the spokesman of the lowly and the low.
You're a democratic devil, you're the darling of the mob;
You're a wheezy, breezy blasted bit of glee.
You're the headache of the high-bow, you're the horror of the snob,
but you're worth your weight in ruddy gold to me.
For you've chided me in weakness and you've cheered me in defeat;
You've been an anodyne in hours of pain;
And when the slugging jolts of life have...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...l
to any, divine as any;
Thee in an education grown of thee—in teachers, studies, students, born of thee;
Thee in thy democratic fetes, en masse—thy high original festivals, operas,
lecturers,
preachers;
Thee in thy ultimata, (the preparations only now completed—the edifice on sure
foundations
tied,)
Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought—thy topmost rational joys—thy love,
and
godlike aspiration,
In thy resplendent coming literati—thy full-lung’d orators—thy sa...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ner Classifying
Does not know they are --
As in sleep -- All Hue forgotten --
Tenets -- put behind --
Death's large -- Democratic fingers
Rub away the Brand --
If Circassian -- He is careless --
If He put away
Chrysalis of Blonde -- or Umber --
Equal Butterfly --
They emerge from His Obscuring --
What Death -- knows so well --
Our minuter intuitions --
Deem unplausible --...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...merciful censure? To make thy faults appear
smaller?
May be to veil them? No, no! O'er them to raise
thee on high!
DEMOCRATIC food soon cloys on the multitude's stomach;
But I'll wager, ere long, other thou'lt give them instead.
WHAT in France has pass'd by, the Germans continue
to practise,
For the proudest of men flatters the people and
fawns.
WHO is the happiest of men? He who values the merits
of others,
And in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere hi...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...
With his Coolangatta Croesus, who was posing for the day
As a Friend of Labour, just brought up from town:
When the Democratic Keystone told the workers, "Vote for Hay",
Then another blessed horse fell down!
When the polling day was over, and the promising was done --
The promises that never would be kept --
Then O'Sullivan came homeward at the sinking of the sun,
To the Ministerial Bench he slowly crept.
When his colleagues said, "Who won it? Is our banner waving ...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...to you.
2
’Tis not for nothing, Death,
I sound out you, and words of you, with daring tone—embodying you,
In my new Democratic chants—keeping you for a close,
For last impregnable retreat—a citadel and tower,
For my last stand—my pealing, final cry....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...you listen, O you people, to this old
and world-worn music?
This is not for you, in the splendour of a new
age, in the democratic triumph!
Listen to the clashing cymbals, the big drums, the
brazen trumpets of your poets."
But the people made no answer, following in
their hearts the simpler music:
For it seemed to them, noise-weary, nothing
could be better worth the hearing
Than the melodies which brought sweet order
into life's confusion.
So the shepherd sang his way alo...Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
...t seems that Dana wuz the biggest man you ever saw,--
He lived on human bein's, 'nd preferred to eat 'em raw!
If he hed Democratic drugs ter take, before he took 'em,
As good old allopathic laws prescribe, he allus shook 'em.
The man that could set down 'nd write like Dany never grew,
And the sum of human knowledge wuzn't half what Dana knew;
The consequence appeared to be that nearly every one
Concurred with Mr. Dana of the Noo York Sun.
This feller, Cantell Whoppers, never...Read more of this...
by
Field, Eugene
...on night once in Franconia,
When everything had gone Republican
And Democrats were sore in need of comfort:
Easton goes Democratic, Wilson 4
Hughes 2. And everybody to the saddest
Laughed the loud laugh the big laugh at the little.
New York (five million) laughs at Manchester,
Manchester (sixty or seventy thousand) laughs
At Littleton (four thousand), Littleton
Laughs at Franconia (seven hundred), and
Franconia laughs, I fear—-did laugh that night--
At Easton. What has Easto...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...ONE’S-SELF I sing—a simple, separate Person;
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse.
Of Physiology from top to toe I sing;
Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the muse—I say the
Form complete is worthier far;
The Female equally with the male I sing.
Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful—for freest action form’d, under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...sh to be earned,
It is pleasant to sit on the beach
With nothing at all to be done!
How pleasant to look at the ocean,
Democratic and damp; indiscriminate;
It fills me with noble emotion
To think I am able to swim in it.
To lave in the wave,
Majestic and chilly,
Tomorrow I crave;
But today it is silly.
It is pleasant to look at the ocean;
Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall swim in it.
How pleasant to gaze at the sailors
As their sailboats they manfully sail
With the vigor of vi...Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
...t on earth—hath vanquished, or subdued,
Or bent this ancient Titan of the Rhine,
The excommunicated Job?
Democratic Review.
...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...ght —
A statesman in the fields, who bent to none.
His plowmen-neighbors were as lords to him.
His was an ironside, democratic pride.
He served a rigid Christ, but served him well —
And, for a lifetime, saved the countryside.
Here lie the dead, who gave the church their best
Under his fiery preaching of the word.
They sleep with him beneath the ragged grass...
The village withers, by his voice unstirred.
And tho' his tribe be scattered to the wind
From the Atlan...Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...s what he told
Pro Bono Publico.
"For many years I led
The people's onward march;
I was the 'Fountain Head',
The 'Democratic Arch'.
"In more than regal state
I used to sit and smile,
And bridges I'd donate,
And railways by the mile.
"I pawned the country off
For many million quid,
And spent it like a toff --
So hel me, Bob, I did.
"But now those times are gone,
The wind blows cold and keen;
I sit and think upon
The thing that I have been.
"And if a coun...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...lts of the war glorious and
inevitable—and
they again leading to other results;)
How the great cities appear—How the Democratic masses, turbulent, wilful, as I love
them;
How the whirl, the contest, the wrestle of evil with good, the sounding and resounding,
keep on
and on;
How society waits unform’d, and is for awhile between things ended and things begun;
How America is the continent of glories, and of the triumph of freedom, and of the
Democracies,
and of the fr...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ke the word
and I like the function: "Whichever is appropriate
may be chosen to complete the sense."
There is something democratic
about that, grown-up; a long
and slender walking stick set against the house.
Virgule: it feels good in your mouth.
Virgule: its foot on backwards, trochaic, that's OK, American.
Virgule: you could name your son that,
or your daughter Virgula. I'm sorry now
I didn't think to give my daughter such a name
though I doubt that she and/or
her mother wo...Read more of this...
by
Lux, Thomas
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