Famous Enemies Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Enemies poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous enemies poems. These examples illustrate what a famous enemies poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Vasko Popa
Don't box down to the little box
Which supposedly contains everything
Your star and all other stars
Empty yourself
In her emptiness
Take two nails out of her
And give them to the owners
To eat
Make a hold in her middle
And stick on your clapper
Fill her with blueprints
And the skin of her craftsmen
And trample on her with both feet
Tie her to a cat's tail
And chase the...Read more of this...
by
Bertolt Brecht
So there you sit. And how much blood was shed
That you might sit there. Do such stories bore you?
Well, don't forget that others sat before you
who later sat on people. Keep your head!
Your science will be valueless, you'll find
And learning will be sterile, if inviting
Unless you pledge your intellect to fighting
Against all enemies of all mankind.
Never forget that men...Read more of this...
by
Lewis Carroll
The Landing
"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: the seed,
The little seed they laugh'd at in the dark,
Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk
Of spanless girth, that lays on every side
A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun.
Our enemies have fall'n, have fall'n: they came;
The leaves were wet with women's tears: they heard
A noise of songs they would...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
The day was here when it was his to know
How fared the barriers he had built between
His triumph and his enemies unseen,
For them to undermine and overthrow;
And it was his no longer to forego
The sight of them, insidious and serene,
Where they were delving always and had been
Left always to be vicious and...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
I was but a half-grown boy,
You were a girl-child slight.
Ah, how weary you were!
You had led in the bullock-fight...
We slew the bullock at length
With knives and maces of stone.
And so your feet were torn,
Your lean arms bruised to the bone.
Perhaps 'twas the slain beast's blood
We drank, or a root we...Read more of this...
by
Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
He that is filthy let him be filthy still.
Rev. 22.11
Like John on Patmos, brooding on the Four
Last Things, I meditate the ruin of friends
Whose loss, Lord, brings this grand new curse to mind
Now send me foes worth cursing, or send more
- Since means should be proportionate to ends -
For mine are few...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
"Like clouds o'er the South are the nations who reign
On fair islands that we would command;
But clouds that are darker and denser than these
Have sailed from an Isle in the Northern Seas
And rest on our Southern Land.
Low in dust is our Goddess of Liberty hurled
At our feet, and the time is at hand,...Read more of this...
by
Oscar Wilde
This mighty empire hath but feet of clay:
Of all its ancient chivalry and might
Our little island is forsaken quite:
Some enemy hath stolen its crown of bay,
And from its hills that voice hath passed away
Which spake of Freedom: O come out of it,
Come out of it, my Soul, thou art not fit
For this vile traffic-house, where day by day
Wisdom and...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The blessings of the liberal man.
That man is blest who stands in awe
Of God, and loves his sacred law:
His seed on earth shall be renowned;
His house the seat of wealth shall be,
An inexhausted treasury,
And with successive honors crowned.
His lib'ral favors he extends,
To some he gives, to others lends;
A gen'rous pity fills his mind:
Yet what his charity impairs,
He saves by...Read more of this...
by
Robert Hayden
I
Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy:
Sails flashing to the wind like weapons,
sharks following the moans the fever and the dying;
horror the corposant and compass rose.
Middle Passage:
voyage through death
to life upon these shores.
"10 April 1800--
Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says
their moaning is a prayer for death,
our and their own. Some...Read more of this...
by
Christina Rossetti
THE FLESH
"Sweet, thou art pale."
"More pale to see,
Christ hung upon the cruel tree
And bore His Father's wrath for me."
"Sweet, thou art sad."
"Beneath a rod
More heavy, Christ for my sake trod
The winepress of the wrath of God."
"Sweet, thou art weary."
"Not so Christ:
Whose mighty love of me suffic'd
For Strength, Salvation, Eucharist."
"Sweet, thou art footsore."
"If I bleed,
His feet have bled; yea in...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Er-Heb beyond the Hills of Ao-Safai
Bears witness to the truth, and Ao-Safai
Hath told the men of Gorukh. Thence the tale
Comes westward o'er the peaks to India.
The story of Bisesa, Armod's child, --
A maiden plighted to the Chief in War,
The Man of Sixty Spears, who held the Pass
That leads to Thibet, but to-day is gone
To seek his comfort of the...Read more of this...
by
William Cullen Bryant
THE GROVES were God's first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft and lay the architrave
And spread the roof above them¡ªere he framed
The lofty vault to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood 5
Amidst the cool and silence he knelt down
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
Did I follow Truth wherever she led,
And stand against the whole world for a cause,
And uphold the weak against the strong?
If I did I would be remembered among men
As I was known in life among the people,
And as I was hated and loved on earth,
Therefore, build no monument to me,
And carve no bust for me,
Lest, though I become not...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
v.7-13,18-21
C. M.
Deliverance from slander and reproach.
My heart rejoices in thy name,
My God, my help, my trust;
Thou hast preserved my face from shame,
Mine honor from the dust.
"My life is spent with grief," I cried,
"My years consumed in groans,
My strength decays, mine eyes are dried,
And sorrow wastes my bones."
Among mine enemies my name
Was a mere proverb grown,
While to my neighbors...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
NOT my enemies ever invade me—no harm to my pride from them I fear;
But the lovers I recklessly love—lo! how they master me!
Lo! me, ever open and helpless, bereft of my strength!
Utterly abject, grovelling on the ground before them....Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
He stood alone in some ***** sunless place
Where Armageddon ends. Perhaps he longed
For days he might have lived; but his young face
Gazed forth untroubled: and suddenly there thronged
Round him the hulking Germans that I shot
When for his death my brooding rage was hot.
He stared at them, half-wondering; and then
They told him how I’d...Read more of this...
by
Czeslaw Milosz
Human reason is beautiful and invincible.
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,
No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.
It establishes the universal ideas in language,
And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice
With capital letters, lie and oppression with small.
It puts what should be above things as they are,
Is an enemy of despair and a friend...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
There were three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
An' they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.
They took a plough and ploughed him down,
Put clods upon his head;
An' they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead.
But the cheerfu' spring came kindly on,
And show'rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surprised them all.
The...Read more of this...
by
Aleksandr Blok
In your hidden memories
There are fatal tidings of doom...
A curse on sacred traditions,
A desecration of happiness;
And a power so alluring
That I am ready to repeat the rumour
That you have brought angels down from heaven,
Enticing them with your beauty...
And when you mock at faith,
That pale, greyish-purple halo
Which I once saw before
Suddenly begins...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Keep from the trouble and vexation of aiming to acquire
white silver or yellow gold. Eat with thy friend,
ere thy warm breath be cooled, for after thee come enemies
who will eat thee....Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
In the glad revels, in the happy fetes,
When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled
With the sweet wine of France that concentrates
The sunshine and the beauty of the world,
Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread
The undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth,
To those whose blood, in pious duty shed,
Hallows the soil where...Read more of this...
by
A S J Tessimond
We being so hidden from those who
Have quietly borne and fed us,
How can we answer civilly
Their innocent invitations?
How can we say "we see you
As but-for-God's-grace-ourselves, as
Our caricatures (we yours), with
Time's telescope between us"?
How can we say "you presumed on
The accident of kinship,
Assumed our friendship coatlike,
Not as a badge one fights for"?
How say "and you remembered
The sins of our outlived...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
How many times, during the twenty years
I was your leader, friends of Spoon River,
Did you neglect the convention and caucus,
And leave the burden on my hands
Of guarding and saving the people's cause? --
Sometimes because you were ill;
Or your grandmother was ill;
Or you drank too much and fell asleep;
Or else you said: "He is our leader,
All will be well; he...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Enemies poems.