Famous Feud Poems by Famous Poets

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

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In Memoriam A. H. H.: 82. I wage not any feud with death

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
No lower life that earth's embrace
May breed with him, can fright my faith.
Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter'd stalks,
Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.
Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human...Read more of this...

An Indian Love Song

by Sarojini Naidu
 He

Lift up the veils that darken the delicate moon 
of thy glory and grace,
Withhold not, O love, from the night 
of my longing the joy of thy luminous face,
Give me a spear of the scented keora 
guarding thy pinioned curls, 
Or a silken thread from the fringes 
that trouble the dream of thy glimmering pearls;
Faint grows my soul with...Read more of this...

Hero And Leander

by Friedrich von Schiller
 See you the towers, that, gray and old,
Frown through the sunlight's liquid gold,
Steep sternly fronting steep?
The Hellespont beneath them swells,
And roaring cleaves the Dardanelles,
The rock-gates of the deep!
Hear you the sea, whose stormy wave,
From Asia, Europe clove in thunder?
That sea which rent a world, cannot
Rend love from love asunder!

In Hero's, in Leander's heart,
Thrills the sweet anguish of the dart
Whose...Read more of this...

Blood Feud

by Elinor Wylie
 Once, when my husband was a child, there came
To his father's table, one who called him kin,
In sunbleached corduroys paler than his skin.
His look was grave and kind; he bore the name
Of the dead singer of Senlac, and his smile.
Shyly and courteously he smiled and spoke;
"I've been in the laurel since the winter broke;
Four months, I reckon; yes, sir,...Read more of this...

Impossible To Tell

by Robert Pinsky
 to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert


Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;
In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,

The secret courtesy that courses like ichor
Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke,
Impossible to tell in writing. "Bashõ"

He named himself, "Banana Tree": banana
After the plant some grateful students...Read more of this...

My Feud

by Robert William Service
 I hate my neighbour Widow Green;
 I'd like to claw her face;
But if I did she'd make a scene
 And run me round the place:
For widows are in way of spleen
 A most pugnacious race.

And yet I must do something quick
 To keep the hag in line,
Since her red rooster chose to pick
 Five lettuce heads of mine:
And so...Read more of this...

In Memoriam 82: I Wage Not Any Feud With Death

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
No lower life that earth's embrace
May breed with him, can fright my faith. 

Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter'd stalks,
Or ruin'd chrysalis of one. 

Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know...Read more of this...

On Seeing The Elgin Marbles For The First Time

by John Keats
 My spirit is too weak; mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep,
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the...Read more of this...

Little Puddleton

by Robert William Service
 I

Let others sing of Empire and of pomp beyond the sea,
A song of Little Puddleton is good enough for me,
A song of kindly living, and of coming home to tea.

I seldom read the papers, so I don't know what goes on.
I go to bed at sunset, and I leap alert at dawn,
To gossip with my garden, which I'll have...Read more of this...

Ring Out, Wild Bells

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that...Read more of this...

The Vale To You, To Me The Heights

by Victor Hugo
 A FABLE. 
 
 {Bk. III. vi., October, 1846.} 


 A lion camped beside a spring, where came the Bird 
 Of Jove to drink: 
 When, haply, sought two kings, without their courtier herd, 
 The moistened brink, 
 Beneath the palm—they always tempt pugnacious hands— 
 Both travel-sore; 
 But quickly, on the recognition, out flew brands...Read more of this...

87. The Twa Dogs

by Robert Burns
 ’TWAS 1 in that place o’ Scotland’s isle,
That bears the name o’ auld King Coil,
Upon a bonie day in June,
When wearin’ thro’ the afternoon,
Twa dogs, that were na thrang at hame,
Forgather’d ance upon a time.
 The first I’ll name, they ca’d him Caesar,
Was keepit for His Honor’s pleasure:
His hair, his size, his mouth, his lugs,
Shew’d he was nane o’...Read more of this...

Epistle to Katherine, Lady Aubigny

by Ben Jonson
  XIII. — EPISTLE TO KATHARINE LADY AUBIGNY.           As what they have lost t' expect, they dare deride. So both the prais'd and praisers suffer ; yet, For others ill ought none their good forget. I therefore, who profess myself in love With every virtue, wheresoe'er it move, And howsoever ;  as I am at feudBy arts, and practice of the...Read more of this...

The Eye

by Robinson Jeffers
 The Atlantic is a stormy moat; and the Mediterranean,
The blue pool in the old garden,
More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice
Of ships and blood, and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific--
Our ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant.
Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs
Nor any future world-quarrel of westering
And eastering man, the bloody migrations, greed of...Read more of this...

The Fishermen

by Emile Verhaeren
The spot is flaked with mist, that fills,
Thickening into rolls more dank,
The thresholds and the window-sills,
And smokes on every bank.


The river stagnates, pestilent
With carrion by the current sent
This way and that—and yonder lies
The moon, just like a woman dead,
That they have smothered overhead,
Deep in the skies.


In a few boats alone there gleam
Lamps that light up and magnify
The backs, bent over...Read more of this...

Count Eberhard The Groaner Of Wurtembert. A War Song

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Now hearken, ye who take delight
In boasting of your worth!
To many a man, to many a knight,
Beloved in peace and brave in fight,
The Swabian land gives birth.

Of Charles and Edward, Louis, Guy,
And Frederick, ye may boast;
Charles, Edward, Louis, Frederick, Guy--
None with Sir Eberhard can vie--
Himself a mighty host!

And then young Ulerick, his son,
Ha! how he loved the fray!
Young Ulerick,...Read more of this...

The Fire At Rosss Farm

by Henry Lawson
 The squatter saw his pastures wide 
Decrease, as one by one 
The farmers moving to the west 
Selected on his run; 
Selectors took the water up 
And all the black soil round; 
The best grass-land the squatter had 
Was spoilt by Ross's Ground. 

Now many schemes to shift old Ross 
Had racked the squatter's brains, 
But Sandy had the...Read more of this...

The Flesh and the Spirit

by Anne Bradstreet
 In secret place where once I stood
Close by the Banks of Lacrim flood,
I heard two sisters reason on
Things that are past and things to come.
One Flesh was call'd, who had her eye
On worldly wealth and vanity;
The other Spirit, who did rear
Her thoughts unto a higher sphere.
'Sister,' quoth Flesh, 'what liv'st thou on
Nothing but Meditation?
Doth Contemplation feed thee so
Regardlessly to...Read more of this...

The Morrow Of Grandeur

by Victor Hugo
 ("Non, l'avenir n'est à personne!") 
 
 {V. ii., August, 1832.} 


 Sire, beware, the future's range 
 Is of God alone the power, 
 Naught below but augurs change, 
 E'en with ev'ry passing hour. 
 Future! mighty mystery! 
 All the earthly goods that be, 
 Fortune, glory, war's renown, 
 King or kaiser's sparkling crown, 
...Read more of this...

The Half-breed Girl

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 She is free of the trap and the paddle,
The portage and the trail,
But something behind her savage life
Shines like a fragile veil.

Her dreams are undiscovered,
Shadows trouble her breast,
When the time for resting cometh
Then least is she at rest.

Oft in the morns of winter,
When she visits the rabbit snares,
An appearance floats in the crystal air
Beyond the balsam firs.

Oft in the...Read more of this...

The Ballad of East and West

by Rudyard Kipling
 Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the...Read more of this...

Jubal and Tubal Cain

by Rudyard Kipling
 Canadian
Jubal sang of the Wrath of God
 And the curse of thistle and thorn--
But Tubal got him a pointed rod,
 And scrabbled the earth for corn.
 Old--old as that early mould,
 Young as the sprouting grain-- 
 Yearly green is the strife between
 Jubal and Tubal Cain!

Jubal sang of the new-found sea,
 And the love that its waves divide--
But...Read more of this...

Adela

by Aleister Crowley
 Jupiter Mars P Moon
VENEZIA, "May" 19"th", 1910.


Jupiter's foursquare blaze of gold and blue
Rides on the moon, a lilac conch of pearl,
As if the dread god, charioted anew
Came conquering, his amazing disk awhirl
To war down all the stars. I see him through
The hair of this mine own Italian girl,
Adela
That bends her face on mine in the gondola!


There is scarce a...Read more of this...

Spirit

by Anne Bradstreet
 Be still, thou unregenerate part, 
Disturb no more my settled heart, 
For I have vow'd (and so will do) 
Thee as a foe still to pursue, 
And combat with thee will and must 
Until I see thee laid in th' dust. 
Sister we are, yea twins we be, 
Yet deadly feud 'twixt thee and me, 
For from one father...Read more of this...

Thistles

by Ted Hughes
 Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air
And crackle open under a blue-black pressure.

Every one a revengeful burst
Of resurrection, a grasphed fistful
Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up

From the underground stain of a decayed Viking.
They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects.
Every one manages a plume of blood.

Then...Read more of this...

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