Famous Europe Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Europe the 72d and 73d years of These States

by Walt Whitman
 1
SUDDENLY, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves, 
Like lightning it le’pt forth, half startled at itself, 
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags—its hands tight to the throats of kings. 

O hope and faith! 
O aching close of exiled patriots’ lives!
O many a sicken’d heart! 
Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves...Read more of this...

The Greatest Thing In North America

by Delmore Schwartz
 This is the greatest thing in North America:
Europe is the greatest thing in North America!
High in the sky, dark in the heart, and always there
Among the natural powers of sunlight and of air,
Changing, second by second, shifting and changing the
 light,
Bring fresh rain to the stone of the library steps.

Under the famous names upon the pediment:
 Thales, Aristotle,
Cicero, Augustine,...Read more of this...

The Burial Of The Dead

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
April is the cruellest month, breeding
  Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
  Memory and desire, stirring
  Dull roots with spring rain.
  Winter kept us warm, covering
  Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
  A little life with dried tubers.
  Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
  With a shower of rain; we stopped...Read more of this...

Child of Europe

by Czeslaw Milosz
 1
We, whose lungs fill with the sweetness of day.
Who in May admire trees flowering
Are better than those who perished.

We, who taste of exotic dishes,
And enjoy fully the delights of love,
Are better than those who were buried.

We, from the fiery furnaces, from behind barbed wires
On which the winds of endless autumns howled,
We, who remember battles where the wounded air roared...Read more of this...

Intramuros

by Roddy Lumsden
 She lies in her well-kept apartment
above the spick and span cathedral
in the heart of the walled city
above Manila Bay and she dreams 
of the great, ruined cities of Europe:
Vienna crumbling into the ocean,
Warsaw in a plague of frogs and flies
and London, where all the black men
have learned to talk like white men,
where all the white men have begun
to talk...Read more of this...

Proud Music of The Storm

by Walt Whitman
 1
PROUD music of the storm! 
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies! 
Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains! 
Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras! 
You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert,
Blending, with Nature’s rhythmus, all the tongues of nations; 
You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses! 
You formless, free, religious dances! you...Read more of this...

To My Lord Fairfax

by John Milton
 Fairfax, whose Name in Arms through Europe rings,
 And fills all Mouths with Envy or with Praise,
 And all her Jealous Monarchs with Amaze.
 And Rumours loud which daunt remotest Kings,
Thy firm unshaken Valour ever brings
 Victory home, while new Rebellions raise
 Their Hydra-heads, and the false North displays
 Her broken League to Imp her Serpent Wings:
O yet! a...Read more of this...

Henry James in the Heart of the City

by Erica Jong
 We have a small sculpture of Henry James on our terrace in New York City.

Nothing would surprise him.
The beast in the jungle was what he saw--
Edith Wharton's obfuscating older brother. . .

He fled the demons
of Manhattan
for fear they would devour
his inner ones
(the ones who wrote the books)
& silence the stifled screams
of his protagonists.

To Europe
like a wandering Jew--
WASP that he...Read more of this...

The French Revolution (excerpt)

by William Blake
 Thee the ancientest peer, Duke of Burgundy, rose from the monarch's right hand, red as wines
From his mountains; an odor of war, like a ripe vineyard, rose from his garments,
And the chamber became as a clouded sky; o'er the council he stretch'd his red limbs,
Cloth'd in flames of crimson; as a ripe vineyard stretches over sheaves of corn,
The fierce...Read more of this...

The Parable Of The Old Men And The Young

by Wilfred Owen
 So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife...Read more of this...

The Mother-Lodge

by Rudyard Kipling
 There was Rundle, Station Master,
 An' Beazeley of the Rail,
An' 'Ackman, Commissariat,
 An' Donkin' o' the Jail;
An' Blake, Conductor-Sargent,
 Our Master twice was 'e,
With 'im that kept the Europe-shop,
 Old Framjee Eduljee.

Outside -- "Sergeant! Sir! Salute! Salaam!"
Inside -- "Brother", an' it doesn't do no 'arm.
We met upon the Level an' we parted on the Square,
An' I was Junior Deacon...Read more of this...

An American in Europe

by Henry Van Dyke
 'Tis fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown, 
To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings, --
But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things. 

So it's home again, and home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again, and there I long...Read more of this...

Preludium to Europe

by William Blake
 The nameless shadowy female rose from out the breast of Orc, 
Her snaky hair brandishing in the winds of Enitharmon;
And thus her voice arose:

'O mother Enitharmon, wilt thou bring forth other sons?
To cause my name to vanish, that my place may not be found,
For I am faint with travail,
Like the dark cloud disburden'd in the day of dismal thunder.

My...Read more of this...

Ego Tripping

by Nikki Giovanni
I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad

I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the...Read more of this...

Little Pierres Song

by William Topaz McGonagall
 In a humble room in London sat a pretty little boy,
By the bedside of his sick mother her only joy,
Who was called Little Pierre, and who's father was dead;
There he sat poor boy, hungry and crying for bread. 

There he sat humming a little song, which was his own,
But to the world it was entirely unknown,
And as he sang...Read more of this...

Forest Of Europe

by Derek Walcott
 The last leaves fell like notes from a piano
and left their ovals echoing in the ear;
with gawky music stands, the winter forest
looks like an empty orchestra, its lines
ruled on these scattered manuscripts of snow.

The inlaid copper laurel of an oak
shines though the brown-bricked glass above your head
as bright as whisky, while the wintry breath
of lines from Mandelstam, which you...Read more of this...

The Republican Genius of Europe

by Philip Freneau
 Emporers and kings! in vain you strive
Your torments to conceal--
The age is come that shakes your thrones,
Tramples in dust despotic crowns,
And bids the sceptre fail.

In western worlds the flame began:
From thence to France it flew--
Through Europe, now, it takes its way,
Beams an insufferable day,
And lays all tyrants low.

Genius fo France! pursue the chace
Till Reason's laws restore
Man to be Man,...Read more of this...

Patriotism 02 Nelson Pitt Fox

by Sir Walter Scott
 TO mute and to material things
New life revolving summer brings;
The genial call dead Nature hears,
And in her glory reappears.
But oh, my Country's wintry state
What second spring shall renovate?
What powerful call shall bid arise
The buried warlike and the wise;

The mind that thought for Britain's weal,
The hand that grasp'd the victor steel?
The vernal sun new life bestows
Even on the meanest flower...Read more of this...

Sonnet 22

by John Milton
 XXII

Cyriac, this three years' day these eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up...Read more of this...

Something For The Touts The Nuns The Grocery Clerks And You . .

by Charles Bukowski
 we have everything and we have nothing
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butterflies
in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
laying it into butterblondes
with Cadillac souls
Cadillacs and butterflies
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there's something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you...Read more of this...

Mohammed Bek Hadjetlache

by Carl Sandburg
 THIS Mohammedan colonel from the Caucasus yells with his voice and wigwags with his arms.
The interpreter translates, “I was a friend of Kornilov, he asks me what to do and I tell him.”
A stub of a man, this Mohammedan colonel … a projectile shape … a bald head hammered …
“Does he fight or do they put him in a...Read more of this...

To Buddha

by Vachel Lindsay
 Awake again in Asia, Lord of Peace,
Awake and preach, for her far swordsmen rise.
And would they sheathe the sword before you, friend,
Or scorn your way, while looking in your eyes?

Good comrade and philosopher and prince,
Thoughtful and thoroughbred and strong and kind,
Dare they to move against your pride benign, 
Lord of the Law, high chieftain of the mind? 

But what...Read more of this...

The Bell From Europe

by Weldon Kees
 The tower bell in the Tenth Street Church
Rang out nostalgia for the refugee
Who knew the source of bells by sound.
We liked it, but in ignorance.
One meets authorities on bells infrequently.

Europe alone made bells with such a tone,
Herr Mannheim said. The bell
Struck midnight, and it shook the room.
He had heard bells in Leipzig, Chartres, Berlin,
Paris, Vienna, Brussels, Rome.
He was a...Read more of this...

Wild Dreams Of A New Beginning

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
 There's a breathless hush on the freeway tonight
Beyond the ledges of concrete
restaurants fall into dreams
with candlelight couples
Lost Alexandria still burns
in a billion lightbulbs
Lives cross lives
idling at stoplights
Beyond the cloverleaf turnoffs
'Souls eat souls in the general emptiness'
A piano concerto comes out a kitchen window
A yogi speaks at Ojai
'It's all taking pace in one mind'
On the lawn among the trees
lovers are...Read more of this...

For Whom The Bell Tolls

by John Donne
 No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Europe poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace