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Famous Flanders Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Kipling, Rudyard
...oretold by the Word,
With the Crown on his brow and the Cross on his shoe,
 When the cock crew--when the cock crew--
In Flanders and Picardy when the cock crew!

The next time that Peter denied his Lord
 'Twas Mary the Mother in Heaven Who heard,
She grieved for the maidens and wives that they slew
 When the cock crew--when the cock crew--
At Tirmonde and Aerschott when the cock crew!

The next time that Peter denied his Lord
The Babe in the Manger awakened and stirred,
And H...Read more of this...



by Lehman, David
...can be written 
only when the poet has fortified herself with gin. 
Others come easily to one as feckless as Moll 
Flanders. Jorie beamed. "It happened here," 
she said. She had worn her best lingerie, 
and D. made the expected pass at her. "My hair 

was big that night, not that I make a fetish of hair, 
but some poems must not be written 
by bald sopranos." That night she lectured on lingerie 
to an enthusiastic audience of female gymnasts and g...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...FLANDERS, the name of a place, a country of people,
Spells itself with letters, is written in books.

“Where is Flanders?” was asked one time,
Flanders known only to those who lived there
And milked cows and made cheese and spoke the home language.

“Where is Flanders?” was asked.
And the slang adepts shot the reply: Search me.

A few thousan...Read more of this...

by McCrae, John
...In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you fro...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...racite
that drifted on us in our chapel benches:
from God's slow-grinding mills in Lancashire,
ash on the dead mired in Flanders' trenches,
as a gray drizzle now defiles the view

of this blue harbor, framed in windows where
two yellow palm fronds, jerked by the wind's rain,
agree like horses' necks, and nodding bear,
slow as a hearse, a haze of tasseled rain,
and, as the weather changes in a child,
the paradisal day outside grows dark,
the yachts flutter like moths in a gray...Read more of this...



by Marvell, Andrew
...ed (so they sing), 
St Albans promised him, and he the King: 
The Count forthwith is ordered all to close, 
To play for Flanders and the stake to lose, 
While, chained together, two ambassadors 
Like slaves shall beg for peace at Holland's doors. 
This done, among his Cyclops he retires 
To forge new thunder and inspect their fires. 

The court as once of war, now fond of peace, 
All to new sports their wanton fears release. 
From Greenwich (where intelligence the...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...

Joffre speaks a few words in French; this is a voice of the long firing line that runs from the salt sea dunes of Flanders to the white spear crags of the Swiss mountains.

This is the man on whose yes and no has hung the death of battalions and brigades; this man speaks of the tricolor of his country now melted in a great resolve with the starred bunting of Lincoln and Washington.

This is the hero of the Marne, massive, irreckonable; he lets tears roll down hi...Read more of this...

by Wyatt, Sir Thomas
...Spain, where one must him incline
Rather than to be, outwardly to seem:
I meddle not with wits that be so fine.
Nor Flanders' cheer letteth not my sight to deem
Of black and white; nor taketh my wit away
With beastliness; they beasts do so esteem.
Nor I am not where Christ is given in prey
For money, poison, and treason at Rome--
A common practice used night and day:
But here I am in Kent and Christendom
Among the Muses where I read and rhyme;
Where if thou list, my P...Read more of this...

by Boland, Eavan
...his friendless measures by.
His riddles and flatteries will have no reward.
His patrons sheath their swords in Flanders and Madrid.

Reader of poems, lover of poetry—
in case you thought this was a gentle art
follow this man on a moonless night
to the wretched bed he will have to make:

The Gaelic world stretches out under a hawthorn tree
and burns in the rain. This is its home,
its last frail shelter. All of it—
Limerick, the Wild Geese and what went bef...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...ded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...them and tried
Some new arrangement, but it would not do.

III
A lady in a Manor-house, alone, Whose husband 
is in Flanders with the Duke
Of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, she's grown Too apathetic 
even to rebuke
Her idleness. What is she on this Earth? No woman 
surely, since she neither can
Be wed nor single, must not let her mind Build 
thoughts upon a man
Except for hers. Indeed that were no dearth
Were her Lord here, for well she knew his worth,
And when sh...Read more of this...

by Owen, Wilfred
...s Prussia, --
 my ambition and those names will be content; for they will have
 achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders.


 Note. -- This Preface was found, in an unfinished condition, among Wilfred Owen's papers....Read more of this...

by Edgar, Marriott
...attire, 
For he had his suits made by the Blacksmith, 
And his underwear knitted of wire. 

He married a lady from Flanders, 
Berengaria's what they called her; 
She turned out a good wife to Richard, 
In spite of a name like that there. 

For when he came home from his fighting 
She'd bandage the wounds in his sconce, 
And every time a snake bit him 
She'd suck out the poison at once. 

In their 'ouse they'd a minstrel called Blondel 
To amuse them at t'end of t...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...don till the old man raised his hand -- 
A Scot of the Riverina who was hard to understand. 

The boy was killed in Flanders, where the best and bravest die. 
There were tears at the Grahame homestead and grief in Gundagai; 
But the old man ploughed at daybreak and the old man ploughed till the mirk --
There were furrows of pain in the orchard while his housefolk went to the kirk. 

The hurricane lamp in the rafters dimly and dimly burned; 
And the old man died at...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...[Written under a tree in the woods of St. Amand, in Flanders.]


SWEET BALMY HOUR! ­dear to the pensive mind,
Oft have I watch'd thy dark and weeping shade,
Oft have I hail'd thee in the dewy glade,
And drop'd a tear of SYMPATHY refin'd. 

When humming bees, hid in their golden bow'rs,
Sip the pure nectar of MAY'S blushing rose,
Or faint with noon-day toils, their limbs repose,
In Baths of Essence sto...Read more of this...

by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...well shall pilgrimages be,
And not from purple Wales only nor from elmy England,
But from beyond seas, Erin, France and Flanders, everywhere,
Pilgrims, still pilgrims, m?re p?lgrims, still more poor pilgrims.
. . . . . . . .
What sights shall be when some that swung, wretches, on crutches
Their crutches shall cast from them, on heels of air departing,
Or they go rich as roseleaves hence that loathsome c?me hither!
Not now to n?me even
Those...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
..., shadowy phantoms filled my brain;
They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again;

All the Foresters of Flanders,--mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer,
Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy Philip, Guy de Dampierre.

I beheld the pageants splendid that adorned those days of old;
Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece
of Gold

Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies;
Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease.

I...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
..., she kept the 'ome goin', she did:
She pinched and she scriped fer 'is scoolin', 'e was sich a fine 'andsome boy
('Alf Flanders seems packed on me panties) -- 'e's 'andsome no longer, pore kid!

This bit o' a board that I'm packin' and draggin' around in the mire,
I was tickled to death when I found it. Says I, "'Ere's a nice little glow."
I was chilled and wet through to the marrer, so I started to make me a fire;
And then I says: "No; 'ere, Goblimy, it'll do for a ...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ly deliver*, and great of strength. *wonderfully nimble*
And he had been some time in chevachie*, *cavalry raids
In Flanders, in Artois, and Picardie,
And borne him well, *as of so little space*, *in such a short time*
In hope to standen in his lady's grace.
Embroider'd was he, as it were a mead
All full of freshe flowers, white and red.
Singing he was, or fluting all the day;
He was as fresh as is the month of May.
Short was his gown, with sleeves long and wi...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...nd me
Till the lathes pick up their duty and the midnight-shift takes over.
 It is good for me to be here!

Guns in Flanders--Flanders guns!
(I had a man that worked 'em once!)
Shells for guns in Flanders, Flanders!
Shells for guns in Flanders, Flanders!
 Shells for guns in Flanders! Feeds the guns! 

The cranes and the carriers they boom over me,
The bays and the galleries they loom over me,
With their quarter-mile of pillars growing little in the distance--
 It is good ...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs