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Famous Englishman Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Newbolt, Sir Henry
...ed years 
And yet ye know not why? 
We brook no doubt of our mastery, 
We rule until we die. 

"Were I the one last Englishman 
Drawing the breath of life, 
And you the master-rebel of all 
That stir this land to strife -- 

"Were I," he said, "but a Corporal, 
And you a Rajput King, 
So long as the soul was in my body 
You should not do this thing. 

"Take off, take off, those shoes of pride, 
Carry them whence they came; 
Your Captains saw your insolence, 
And they ...Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...proves, for instance, he was born in Rome, 
"This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him 


"I see he figures as an Englishman." 
Well, the two things are reconcileable. 
But would I rather you discovered that, 
Subjoining--"Still, what matter though they be? 
"Blougram concerns me nought, born here or there." 

Pure faith indeed--you know not what you ask! 
Naked belief in God the Omnipotent, 
Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much 
The sense of conscious cr...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...his frightened wife
who let them steal their best possessions
whose ear for poetry's so poor
they think fum rhymes with englishman
and so of course they get no prizes
thief and trickster now come rich

poetry's purpose is to hit the jackpot
so great the lust for poetic fame
thousands without a ghost of winning
find poems like mothballs in their drawers
sprinkle them with twinkling stardust
post them off with copperplate cheques
the judges wipe their arses on them
the money's ...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...illage shroff
(Who never asked for payment), always drunk,
Unclean, abominable, out-at-heels;
Forgetting that he was an Englishman.

You know they dammed the Gauri with a dam,
And all the good contractors scamped their work
And all the bad material at hand
Was used to dam the Gauri -- which was cheap,
And, therefore, proper. Then the Gauri burst,
And several hundred thousand cubic tons
Of water dropped into the valley, flop,
And drowned some five-and-twenty villagers,...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...e you a present of him?

Isn't he handsome? Isn't he healthy? Isn't he a fine specimen?
Doesn't he look the fresh clean Englishman, outside?
Isn't it God's own image? tramping his thirty miles a day
after partridges, or a little rubber ball?
wouldn't you like to be like that, well off, and quite the
 thing

Oh, but wait!
Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another
 man's need,
let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life
 face him with a new demand o...Read more of this...



by Lear, Edward
...s in waterproof white, 
The children run after him so! 
Calling out, "He's gone out in his night- 
Gown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!" 

He weeps by the side of the ocean, 
He weeps on the top of the hill; 
He purchases pancakes and lotion, 
And chocolate shrimps from the mill. 

He reads, but he does not speak, Spanish, 
He cannot abide ginger beer; 
Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish, 
How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...r Church and state;
Now for prerogative, and now for laws;
Effects unhappy! from a noble cause.


Time was, a sober Englishman would knock
His servants up, and rise by five o'clock,
Instruct his family in ev'ry rule,
And send his wife to church, his son to school.
To worship like his fathers was his care;
To teach their frugal virtues to his heir;
To prove that luxury could never hold,
And place, on good security, his gold.
Now times are chang'd, and one poetic it...Read more of this...

by Southey, Robert
...t thou boast
Of loyal ardor? HAMBDEN perish'd here,
The rebel HAMBDEN, at whose glorious name
The heart of every honest Englishman
Beats high with conscious pride. Both uncorrupt,
Friends to their common country both, they fought,
They died in adverse armies. Traveller!
If with thy neighbour thou should'st not accord,
In charity remember these good men,
And quell each angry and injurious thought....Read more of this...

by Smart, Christopher
...

For the Planet Mercury is the WORD DISCERNMENT. 

For the Scotchman seeks for truth at the bottom of a well, the Englishman in the Heavn of Heavens. 

For the Planet Venus is the WORD PRUDENCE or providence. 

For GOD nevertheless is an extravagant BEING and generous unto loss. 

For there is no profit in the generation of man and the loss of millions is not worth God's tear. 

For this is the twelfth day of the MILLENNIUM of the MILLENNIUM foretold by ...Read more of this...

by Smart, Christopher
...prophecy that the Reformation will make great way by means of the Venetians. 

For the Venetian will know that the Englishman is his brother. 

For the Liturgy will obtain in all languages. 

For England is the head and not the tail. 

For England is the head of Europe in the spirit. 

For Spain, Portugal and France are the heart. 

For Holland and Germany are the middle. 

For Italy is one of the legs. 

For I prophecy that there will not be ...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...His face was like a lobster red,
His legs were white as mayonnaise:
"I've had a jolly lunch," he said,
That Englishman of pleasant ways.
"Thy do us well at our hotel:
In England food is dull these days."

"We had a big langouste for lunch.
I almost ate the whole of it.
And now I'll smoke and read my Punch,
And maybe siesta a bit;
And then I'll plunge into the sea
And get an appetite for tea."

We saw him plunge into the sea,
With jolly laugh, h...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...at moving throng,
That current cosmopolitan meandering along:
Dark diplomats from Martinique, pale Rastas from Peru,
An Englishman from Bloomsbury, a Yank from Kalamazoo;
A poet from Montmartre's heights, a dapper little Jap,
Exotic citizens of all the countries on the map;
A tourist horde from every land that's underneath the sun --
That little wizened Spanish man, he misses never one.
Oh, foul or fair he's always there, and many a drink he buys,
And there's a fire of re...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...St George he was for England, 
And before he killed the dragon 
He drank a pint of English ale 
Out of an English flagon. 
For though he fast right readily 
In hair-shirt or in mail, 
It isn't safe to give him cakes 
Unless you give him ale. 

St George he was for England, 
And right gallantly set free 
The lady left for dragon's meat 
And tied up ...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...(PIANO DI SORRENTO.)

Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
On my knees put up both little feet!
I was sure, if I tried,
I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco;
Now, open your eyes— 
Let me keep you amused till he vanish
In black from the skies,
With telling my memories over
As you tell your beads;
All the memories plucked at Sorrento
—T...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...assion 
I made my voice heard all over the nation. 
What are those… 

I am sure this Jesus will not do, 
Either for Englishman or Jew....Read more of this...

by García Lorca, Federico
...nguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof tiles....Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...hoaks, 
Among six boys, head under head, and looked 
No little lily-handed Baronet he, 
A great broad-shouldered genial Englishman, 
A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep, 
A raiser of huge melons and of pine, 
A patron of some thirty charities, 
A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, 
A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none; 
Fair-haired and redder than a windy morn; 
Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those 
That stood the nearest--now addressed to speech-- 
Who spoke fe...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...to look down

no no
you mustn't look down
(said the teacher)
apart from winston churchill
shakespeare was the greatest
englishman who ever lived

the children's eyes
drained to their feet
and their minds
played around with
their private parts

shakespeare was once
a schoolteacher who
had a second best bed
and he happened to write
thirty six plays

and sonnets and things
he has a noble brow
as you can see

the children stared

from a dusty old head
and a mothridden beard
two ...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...d, 
Only on those who live by code. 

Oh, that inflexible code of living,
That seems so easy and unconstrained,
The Englishman's code of taking and giving
Rights and privileges pre-ordained,
Based since English life began
On the prime importance of being a man.

IX 
And what a voice he had-gentle, profound, 
Clear masculine!—I melted at the sound. 
Oh, English voices, are there any words 
Those tones to tell, those cadences to teach! 
As song of thrushes is to oth...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...An Englishman was Thomas Paine
 Who bled for liberty;
But while his fight was far from vain
 He died in poverty:
Though some are of the sober thinking
 'Twas due to drinking.

Yet this is what appeals to me:
 Cobbet, a friend, loved him so well
He sailed across the surly sea
 To raw and rigid New Rochelle:
With none to say: 'Take him not from us!'
 He raped...Read more of this...

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