Famous Emperors Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Camma

by Oscar Wilde
 (To Ellen Terry)

As one who poring on a Grecian urn
Scans the fair shapes some Attic hand hath made,
God with slim goddess, goodly man with maid,
And for their beauty's sake is loth to turn
And face the obvious day, must I not yearn
For many a secret moon of indolent bliss,
When in midmost shrine of Artemis
I see thee standing, antique-limbed, and stern?

And...Read more of this...

Promise This -- When You be Dying --

by Emily Dickinson
 Promise This -- When You be Dying --
Some shall summon Me --
Mine belong Your latest Sighing --
Mine -- to Belt Your Eye --

Not with Coins -- though they be Minted
From an Emperor's Hand --
Be my lips -- the only Buckle
Your low Eyes -- demand --

Mine to stay -- when all have wandered --
To devise once more
If the Life be...Read more of this...

The Burial

by Rudyard Kipling
 1904(C. F. Rhodes, buried in the Matoppos, April 10, 1902)
When that great Kings return to clay,
 Or Emperors in their pride,
Grief of a day shall fill a day,
 Because its creature died.
But we -- we reck on not with those
 Whom the mere Fates ordain,
This Power that wrought on us and goes
 Back to the Power again.

Dreamer devout, by...Read more of this...

The Jingo and the Minstrel

by Vachel Lindsay
 AN ARGUMENT FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF PEACE AND GOODWILL WITH THE JAPANESE PEOPLE

Glossary for the uninstructed and the hasty: Jimmu Tenno, ancestor of all the Japanese Emperors; Nikko, Japan's loveliest shrine; Iyeyasu, her greatest statesman; Bushido, her code of knighthood; The Forty-seven Ronins, her classic heroes; Nogi, her latest hero; Fuji, her most beautiful mountain.


"Now do you know of...Read more of this...

The Shudder of the Sphinx

by Jean Delville
In the land of Huros, Rameses and Sesostris,
But in the time of the Latins and when ruddy Rome
Upraised in bronze and gold her wasted emperors,
This is the hour when the infinite penetrates the heart of man.

Like the elected orb of the great sacred haloes
With which the head of future saints should be encircled,
The moon in blossom smiles her ethereal dreams
In...Read more of this...

A Broadway Pageant

by Walt Whitman
 1
OVER the western sea, hither from Niphon come, 
Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys, 
Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, 
Ride to-day through Manhattan. 

Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I behold, 
In the procession, along with the nobles of Asia, the errand-bearers, 
Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching; 
But...Read more of this...

The Peasants Confession

by Thomas Hardy
 Good Father!… ’Twas an eve in middle June,
And war was waged anew 
By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn 
Men’s bones all Europe through. 

Three nights ere this, with columned corps he’d crossed
The Sambre at Charleroi, 
To move on Brussels, where the English host 
Dallied in Parc and Bois. 

The yestertide we’d heard the gloomy gun 
Growl through...Read more of this...

The Widow at Windsor

by Rudyard Kipling
 'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor
 With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead?
She 'as ships on the foam -- she 'as millions at 'ome,
 An' she pays us poor beggars in red.
 (Ow, poor beggars in red!)
There's 'er nick on the cavalry 'orses,
 There's 'er mark on the medical stores --
An' 'er troopers you'll find with...Read more of this...

A Song of Travel

by Rudyard Kipling
 Where's the lamp that Hero lit
 Once to call Leander home?
Equal Time hath shovelled it
 'Neath the wrack of Greece and Rome.
Neither wait we any more
That worn sail which Argo bore.

Dust and dust of ashes close
 All the Vestal Virgin's care;
And the oldest altar shows
 But an older darkness there.
Age-encamped Oblivion
Tenteth every light that shone.

Yet shall we, for Suns...Read more of this...

Song of the Wagons

by Du Fu
 Wagons rumble rumble Hhorses whinny whinny Foot person bow arrow each at waist Father mother wife children go mutual see off Dust dust not see Xianyang bridge Pull clothes stamp foot bar way weep Weep sound directly up strike clouds clouds Road side passerby ask foot person Foot person only say mark down often Some from ten...Read more of this...

Dream Song 108: Sixteen below. Our care like stranded hulls

by John Berryman
 Sixteen below. Our care like stranded hulls
litter all day our little Avenues.
It was 28 below.
No one goes anywhere. Fabulous calls
to duty clank. Icy dungeons, though, 
have much to mention to you.

At Harvard & Yale must Pussy-cat be heard
in the dead of winter when we must be sad
and feel by the weather had.
Chrysanthemums crest, far way, in the Emperor's garden
and,...Read more of this...

Delhi – A Re-visitation

by John Matthew
 It’s akin to visiting my foster mother, today, 
That I am returning to you, mother city, after twenty years,
I look at your broad, bereft blood-stained streets, mater,
Through which emperors, prime ministers cavalcaded,
In victory and defeat, through gates and triumphal arches,
That murmur of the pains of your rape and impregnation.

The sudden shock of your poverty upsets me,
It is evident in...Read more of this...

At The Other End Of The Telescope

by George Bradley
 the people are very small and shrink,
dwarves on the way to netsuke hell
bound for a flea circus in full
retreat toward sub-atomic particles--
 difficult to keep in focus, the figures
at that end are nearly indistinguishable,
generals at the heads of minute armies
differing little from fishwives,
emperors the same as eskimos
huddled under improvisations of snow--
 eskimos, though, now have the advantage,
for it seems...Read more of this...

I rose -- because He sank --

by Emily Dickinson
 I rose -- because He sank --
I thought it would be opposite --
But when his power dropped --
My Soul grew straight.

I cheered my fainting Prince --
I sang firm -- even -- Chants --
I helped his Film -- with Hymn --

And when the Dews drew off
That held his Forehead stiff --
I met him --
Balm to Balm --

I told him Best...Read more of this...

Some Foreign Letters

by Anne Sexton
 I knew you forever and you were always old,
soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold
me for sitting up late, reading your letters,
as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me.
You posted them first in London, wearing furs
and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety.
I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day,
where you guided...Read more of this...

Paris

by Alan Seeger
 First, London, for its myriads; for its height, 
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite; 
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths 
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . . 


Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days 
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays 
Than, having beauty and your twenty years, 
You have the means...Read more of this...

Nuremberg

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
IN the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadowlands 
Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands. 

Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, 
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng: 

Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, 5 
Had their dwelling...Read more of this...

The Emperor's Return

by Victor Hugo
 ("Un bouffon manquait à cette fête.") 
 
 {LES BURGRAVES, Part II.} 


 The EMPEROR FREDERICK BARBAROSSA, believed to be dead, appearing 
 as a beggar among the Rhenish nobility at a castle, suddenly reveals 
 himself. 
 
 HATTO. This goodly masque but lacked a fool! 
 First gypsy; next a beggar;—good! Thy name? 
 
 BARBAROSSA. Frederick...Read more of this...

Le Manteau De Pascal

by Jorie Graham
 I have put on my great coat it is cold.

It is an outer garment.

Coarse, woolen.

Of unknown origin.

 *

It has a fine inner lining but it is 
as an exterior that you see it — a grace.

 *

I have a coat I am wearing. It is a fine admixture.
The woman who threw the threads in the two directions
has made, skillfully,...Read more of this...

To Some Birds Flown Away

by Victor Hugo
 ("Enfants! Oh! revenez!") 
 
 {XXII, April, 1837} 


 Children, come back—come back, I say— 
 You whom my folly chased away 
 A moment since, from this my room, 
 With bristling wrath and words of doom! 
 What had you done, you bandits small, 
 With lips as red as roses all? 
 What crime?—what wild and...Read more of this...

Autumn Meditations (6)

by Du Fu
 Qutang gorge mouth bend river bank 10,000 li wind mist join pale autumn Calyx secret wall through imperial energy Lotus little park enter border sorrow Pearl curtain embroider pillar surround yellow crane Brocade hawser ivory mast rise white gull Turn head can regret sing dance place Qin middle from old emperor place The mouth of the...Read more of this...

Concerning Emperors

by Vachel Lindsay
 I. GOD SEND THE REGICIDE

Would that the lying rulers of the world
Were brought to block for tyrannies abhorred.
Would that the sword of Cromwell and the Lord,
The sword of Joshua and Gideon,
Hewed hip and thigh the hosts of Midian.
God send that ironside ere tomorrow's sun;
Let Gabriel and Michael with him ride.
God send the Regicide.


II. A COLLOQUIAL REPLY: TO ANY NEWSBOY

If...Read more of this...

The Count Of Hapsburg

by Friedrich von Schiller
 At Aix-la-Chapelle, in imperial array,
In its halls renowned in old story,
At the coronation banquet so gay
King Rudolf was sitting in glory.
The meats were served up by the Palsgrave of Rhine,
The Bohemian poured out the bright sparkling wine,
And all the Electors, the seven,
Stood waiting around the world-governing one,
As the chorus of stars encircle the sun,
That honor might duly be given.

And...Read more of this...

The Funeral of the German Emperor

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ye sons of Germany, your noble Emperor William now is dead.
Who oft great armies to battle hath led;
He was a man beloved by his subjects all,
Because he never tried them to enthral. 

The people of Germany have cause now to mourn,
The loss of their hero, who to them will ne'er return;
But his soul I hope to Heaven has fled...Read more of this...

Byzantium

by William Butler Yeats
 The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the...Read more of this...

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