Famous Feudal Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Curse For A Nation

...ly under your breath
Shall favor the cause.
This is the curse. Write.

Ye shall watch while strong men draw
The nets of feudal law
To strangle the weak;
And, counting the sin for a sin,
Your soul shall be sadder within
Than the word ye shall speak.
This is the curse. Write.

When good men are praying erect
That Christ may avenge His elect
And deliver the earth,
The prayer in your ears, said low,
Shall sound like the tramp of a foe
That's driving you forth.
This is the curse. ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett


A Pastiche For Eve

...vegetables in Athens.
Chaste in the dungeon, swooning with voluptuousness,
The Lady of the Castle weds pure Christ, the feudal groom.

Their bowels almost drove Swift mad. "Sad stem,
Sweet evil, stretching out a lion's jaws," wrote Marbode.
Now we cling together in our caves. That not impossible she
That rots and wrinkles in the sun, the shadow
Of all men, man's counterpart, sweet rois
Of vertew and of gentilness... The brothel and the crib endure.
Past reason hunted. How we ...Read more of this...
by Kees, Weldon

As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free

...nd wary eye, O helmsman—thou carryest great
 companions,
Venerable, priestly Asia sails this day with thee, 
And royal, feudal Europe sails with thee. 

4
Beautiful World of new, superber Birth, that rises to my eyes, 
Like a limitless golden cloud, filling the western sky; 
Emblem of general Maternity, lifted above all;
Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons; 
Out of thy teeming womb, thy giant babes in ceaseless procession issuing, 
Acceding from such gestation, t...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario's Shores

...ngton
 at the head of the army? 
Have you possess’d yourself of the Federal Constitution? 
Do you see who have left all feudal processes and poems behind them, and assumed the poems
 and
 processes of Democracy? 
Are you faithful to things? do you teach as the land and sea, the bodies of men,
 womanhood,
 amativeness, angers, teach?
Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities? 
Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce contentions? are
 y...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Couplets on the Death of His Father

...ster,
Since we behold him overthrown
And swift beheaded!

His treasures that defied accounting,
His manors and his feudal lands,
His boundless power,—
What more than tears were their amounting?
What more than bonds to tie his hands
At life's last hour?

That other twain, Grand-Masters solely,
Yet with the fortunes as of kings
Fraternal reigning,—
Who brought the high as well as lowly
Submissive to their challengings
And laws' ordaining.

And what of all thei...Read more of this...
by Manrique, Jorge


Gertrude of Wyoming

...istant isles that hear the loud Corbrechtan roar!

Alas! poor Caledonia's mountaineer,
That wants stern edict e'er, and feudal grief,
Had forced him from a home he loved so dear!
Yet found he here a home and glad relief,
And plied the beverage from his own fair sheaf,
That fired his Highland blood with mickle glee:
And England sent her men, of men the chief,
Who taught those sires of empire yet to be,
To plant the tree of life,--to plant fair Freedom's tree!

Here was not min...Read more of this...
by Campbell, Thomas

I am ashamed -- I hide

...ore --
Raiment instead -- of Pompadour --
For Me -- My soul -- to wear --

Fingers -- to frame my Round Hair
Oval -- as Feudal Ladies wore --
Far Fashions -- Fair --
Skill to hold my Brow like an Earl --
Plead -- like a Whippoorwill --
Prove -- like a Pearl --
Then, for Character --
Fashion My Spirit quaint -- white --
Quick -- like a Liquor --
Gay -- like Light --
Bring Me my best Pride --
No more ashamed --
No more to hide --
Meek -- let it be -- too proud -- for Pride --
B...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Lara

...LARA. [1] 

CANTO THE FIRST. 

I. 

The Serfs are glad through Lara's wide domain, [2] 
And slavery half forgets her feudal chain; 
He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord — 
The long self-exiled chieftain is restored: 
There be bright faces in the busy hall, 
Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall; 
Far chequering o'er the pictured window, plays 
The unwonted fagots' hospitable blaze; 
And gay retainers gather round the hearth, 
With tongues all loudness, and with ey...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Mystic Trumpeter The

...ng and basking upon Heaven’s lake.

4
Blow again, trumpeter! and for my sensuous eyes, 
Bring the old pageants—show the feudal world. 

What charm thy music works!—thou makest pass before me, 
Ladies and cavaliers long dead—barons are in their castle halls—the troubadours
 are
 singing; 
Arm’d knights go forth to redress wrongs—some in quest of the Holy Grail:
I see the tournament—I see the contestants, encased in heavy armor, seated on
 stately,
 champing horses; 
I hear the...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Proud Music of The Storm

...lsh festivals:
I hear the minnesingers, singing their lays of love, 
I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the feudal ages. 

5
Now the great organ sounds, 
Tremulous—while underneath, (as the hid footholds of the earth, 
On which arising, rest, and leaping forth, depend,
All shapes of beauty, grace and strength—all hues we know, 
Green blades of grass, and warbling birds—children that gambol and play—the
 clouds of
 heaven above,) 
The strong base stands, and its pu...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Spanish Peasant

...ace
Even imposed at pistol point.
And we have learnt our lesson well,
By many a death, by many a tear;
So let us live a feudal spell, -
The cost of freedom is too dear.

Let us be the cattle kind,
Praying the goad be not a sword;
In servitude obeying blind
The tyrant ruling of our Lord.
His army can be swift to slay,
His Church teach us humility . . .
But never never will we pay
Again blood-price for Liberty....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Stoves and sunshine

...eed to heat the house--
'Neath balmy skies the native picks the mandolin and louse.

Now, we've no mouldy catacombs, no feudal castles grim,
No ruined monasteries, no abbeys ghostly dim;
Our ancient history is new, our future's all ahead,
And we've got a tariff bill that's made all Europe sick abed--
But what is best, though short on tombs and academic groves,
We double discount Christendom on sunshine and on stoves.

Dear land of mine! I come to you from months of chill and ...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene

The Bride of Abydos

...arasman Oglou, or Kara Osman Oglou, is the principle landholder in Turkey; he governs Magnesia. Those who, by a kind of feudal tenure, possess land on condition of service, are called Timariots; they serve as Spahis, according to the extent of territory, and bring a certain number into the field, generally cavalry. 

(8) When a Pacha is sufficiently strong to resist, the single messenger, who is always the first bearer of the order for his death, is strangled instead, and som...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Emigrants: Book II

...ding hosts, and to polluted fields
Add dire increase of horrors--But alas!
The Mother and the Infant perish both!--
The feudal Chief, whose Gothic battlements
Frown on the plain beneath, returning home
From distant lands, alone and in disguise,
Gains at the fall of night his Castle walls,
But, at the vacant gate, no Porter sits
To wait his Lord's admittance!--In the courts
All is drear silence!--Guessing but too well
The fatal truth, he shudders as he goes
Thro' the mute hall...Read more of this...
by Turner Smith, Charlotte

The Lady of the Lake

...Were each from home a banished man,
     There thought upon their own gray tower,
     Their waving woods, their feudal power,
     And deemed themselves a shameful part
     Of pageant which they cursed in heart.
     XXII.

     Now, in the Castle-park, drew out
     Their checkered bands the joyous rout.
     There morricers, with bell at heel
     And blade in hand, their mazes wheel;
     But chief, beside the butts, there stand
     Bold Robin Hood and ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Marmoreal Slumbers

...Thus, the souls of dismal feudal lineage,
Perpetuating their pride in illustrious sepulchres,
Stretch out their long, marble sleep upon the flagstones,
Weighted with dead centuries and funereal pasts,

The heraldic and grandiose white cadavers,
With righteous hands joined in ardent rigidity,
Pallid with faith, that rise from their bosoms
With sacerdotal gestures of prayer in ...Read more of this...
by Delville, Jean

The Princess (prologue)

...e Master, as a rogue in grain 
Veneered with sanctimonious theory. 
But while they talked, above their heads I saw 
The feudal warrior lady-clad; which brought 
My book to mind: and opening this I read 
Of old Sir Ralph a page or two that rang 
With tilt and tourney; then the tale of her 
That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls, 
And much I praised her nobleness, and 'Where,' 
Asked Walter, patting Lilia's head (she lay 
Beside him) 'lives there such a woman now?' 
...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

To William E. Channing

...Luther's, in the days of old,
Half-battles for the free.

Go on, until this land revokes
The old and chartered Lie,
The feudal curse, whose whips and yokes
Insult humanity.

A voice is ever at thy side
Speaking in tones of might,
Like the prophetic voice, that cried
To John in Patmos, "Write!"

Write! and tell out this bloody tale;
Record this dire eclipse,
This Day of Wrath, this Endless Wail,
This dread Apocalypse!...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Turn O Libertad

...ve, recording proofs of the past; 
From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past; 
From the chants of the feudal world—the triumphs of kings, slavery, caste;
Turn to the world, the triumphs reserv’d and to come—give up that backward
 world; 
Leave to the singers of hitherto—give them the trailing past; 
But what remains, remains for singers for you—wars to come are for you; 
(Lo! how the wars of the past have duly inured to you—and the wars of the present
 also
...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Variations of an Air

...nce-nez, 
Me piercing two thousand years with eye naked and not ashamed; 
The crown cannot hide you from me, 
Musty old feudal-heraldic trappings cannot hide you from me, 
I perceive that you drink. 
(I am drinking with you. I am as drunk as you are.) 
I see you are inhaling tobacco, puffing, smoking, spitting 
(I do not object to your spitting), 
You prophetic of American largeness, 
You anticipating the broad masculine manners of these States; 
I see in you also there are m...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

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