Famous European Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Amandas Painting

by Les Murray
 In the painting, I'm seated in a shield,
coming home in it up a shadowy river.
It is a small metal boat lined in eggshell
and my hands grip the gunwale rims. I'm
a composite bow, tensioning the whole boat,
steering it with my gaze. No oars, no engine,
no sails. I'm propelling the little craft with speech.
The faded rings around the loose bulk shirt
are...Read more of this...

To a foil'd European Revolutionaire

by Walt Whitman
 1
COURAGE yet! my brother or my sister! 
Keep on! Liberty is to be subserv’d, whatever occurs; 
That is nothing, that is quell’d by one or two failures, or any number of failures, 
Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any unfaithfulness, 
Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.

Revolt! and still...Read more of this...

Zone

by Guillaume Apollinaire
ZONE 


In the end you are tired of this ancient world 
Shepherd oh Eiffel Tower the herd of bridges is bleating this morning 

You've had enough of living in Greek and Roman antiquity 

Here even the cars look antique 
Only religion has stayed new religion 
Has stayed simple like the hangars at Port-Aviation 

You alone in Europe are not ancient...Read more of this...

O Star of France

by Walt Whitman
 1
O STAR of France! 
The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame, 
Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long, 
Beseems to-day a wreck, driven by the gale—a mastless hulk; 
And ’mid its teeming, madden’d, half-drown’d crowds,
Nor helm nor helmsman. 

2
Dim, smitten star! 
Orb not of France alone—pale symbol of my soul, its dearest hopes, 
The...Read more of this...

The Song of Los

by William Blake
 AFRICA 

I will sing you a song of Los. the Eternal Prophet: 
He sung it to four harps at the tables of Eternity. 
In heart-formed Africa. 
Urizen faded! Ariston shudderd! 
And thus the Song began 

Adam stood in the garden of Eden: 
And Noah on the mountains of Ararat; 
They saw Urizen give his Laws to the Nations 
By...Read more of this...

Spain 1873–'74

by Walt Whitman
 OUT of the murk of heaviest clouds, 
Out of the feudal wrecks, and heap’d-up skeletons of kings, 
Out of that old entire European debris—the shatter’d mummeries, 
Ruin’d cathedrals, crumble of palaces, tombs of priests, 
Lo! Freedom’s features, fresh, undimm’d, look forth—the same immortal face
 looks
 forth;
(A glimpse as of thy mother’s face, Columbia, 
A flash significant as of a...Read more of this...

4:02 p.m

by Suheir Hammad
 poem supposed to be about
one minute and the lives of three women in it
writing it and up
the block a woman killed
by her husband

poem now about one minute
and the lives of four women
in it

haitian mother
she walks through
town carrying her son's
head—banging it against
her thigh calling out 
creole come see, see what
they've done to my flesh
holds on to him grip tight
through hair...Read more of this...

The Battle of Gujrat

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1849, and on the 20th of February,
Lord Gough met and attacked Shere Sing right manfully.
The Sikh Army numbered 40,000 in strength,
And showing a front about two miles length. 

It was a glorious morning, the sun was shining in a cloudless sky;
And the larks were singing merrily in the heavens high;
And 'twas about nine o'clock...Read more of this...

Things I Didnt Know I Loved

by Nazim Hikmet
 it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train 
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain 
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it 
I've never worked the earth
it must be my...Read more of this...

The Last Berkshire Eleven

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas at the disastrous battle of Maiwand, in Afghanistan,
Where the Berkshires were massacred to the last man;
On the morning of July the 27th, in the year eighteen eighty,
Which I'm sorry to relate was a pitiful sight to see. 

Ayoub Khan's army amounted to twelve thousand in all,
And honestly speaking it wasn't very small,
And by such a great force the...Read more of this...

Years of the Modern

by Walt Whitman
 YEARS of the modern! years of the unperform’d! 
Your horizon rises—I see it parting away for more august dramas; 
I see not America only—I see not only Liberty’s nation, but other nations
 preparing; 
I see tremendous entrances and exits—I see new combinations—I see the solidarity
 of
 races; 
I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world’s stage;
(Have...Read more of this...

Beautiful City

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Beautiful city

Beautiful city, the centre and crater of European confusion,
O you with your passionate shriek for the rights of an equal
humanity,
How often your Re-volution has proven but E-volution
Roll’d again back on itself in the tides of a civic insanity!...Read more of this...

Cigarette

by Ehsan Sehgal
"In the European societies, girls are just like a cigarette in different beautiful brands, buy it, smoke it and throw it."
Ehsan Sehgal?...Read more of this...

Waring

by Robert Browning
 I

What's become of Waring
Since he gave us all the slip,
Chose land-travel or seafaring,
Boots and chest, or staff and scrip,
Rather than pace up and down
Any longer London-town?

Who'd have guessed it from his lip,
Or his brow's accustomed bearing,
On the night he thus took ship,
Or started landward?—little caring
For us, it seems, who supped together,
(Friends of his too, I remember)
And walked home through...Read more of this...

Ginza Samba

by Robert Pinsky
 A monosyllabic European called Sax
Invents a horn, walla whirledy wah, a kind of twisted
Brazen clarinet, but with its column of vibrating
Air shaped not in a cylinder but in a cone
Widening ever outward and bawaah spouting
Infinitely upward through an upturned
Swollen golden bell rimmed
Like a gloxinia flowering
In Sax's Belgian imagination

And in the unfathomable matrix
Of mothers and fathers as a genius graven
Humming...Read more of this...

Respondez!

by Walt Whitman
 RESPONDEZ! Respondez! 
(The war is completed—the price is paid—the title is settled beyond recall;) 
Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none evade! 
Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking? 
Let me bring this to a close—I pronounce openly for a new distribution of roles;
Let that which stood in front go behind!...Read more of this...

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