Famous German Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous German poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous german poems. These examples illustrate what a famous german poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Bertolt Brecht
AMONGST THE HIGHLY PLACED
It is considered low to talk about food.
The fact is: they have
Already eaten.
The lowly must leave this earth
Without having tasted
Any good meat.
For wondering where they come from and
Where they are going
The fine evenings find them
Too exhausted.
They have not yet seen
The mountains and the great sea
When their time is already up.
If the lowly do not
Think about what's...Read more of this...
by
Heather McHugh
We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the Mayor, mulled a couple
matters over. The Italian literati seemed
bewildered by the language of America: they asked us
what does "flat drink" mean? and the mysterious
"cheap date" (no explanation lessened
this one's mystery). Among Italian writers...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
I, born in Weimar
Of a mother who was French
And German father, a most learned professor,
Orphaned at fourteen years,
Became a dancer, known as Russian Sonia,
All up and down the boulevards of Paris,
Mistress betimes of sundry dukes and counts,
And later of poor artists and of poets.
At forty years, passée, I sought New York
And met old Patrick Hummer on the boat,
Red-faced and...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
There are two phrases, you must know,
So potent (yet so small)
That wheresoe'er a man may go
He needs none else at all;
No servile guide to lead the way
Nor lackey at his heel,
If he be learned enough to say
"Comme bien" and "Wie viel."
The sleek, pomaded Parleyvoo
Will air his sweetest airs
And quote the highest rates when you
"Comme bien" for his wares;
And, though...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Ye sons of Germany, your noble Emperor William now is dead.
Who oft great armies to battle hath led;
He was a man beloved by his subjects all,
Because he never tried them to enthral.
The people of Germany have cause now to mourn,
The loss of their hero, who to them will ne'er return;
But his soul I hope to Heaven has fled...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Sonnex, clarions!")
{Bk. VI. vii.}
Flourish the trumpet! and rattle the drum!
The Reiters are mounted! the Reiters will come!
When our bullets cease singing
And long swords cease ringing
On backplates of fearsomest foes in full flight,
We'll dig up their dollars
To string for girls' collars—
...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
If we sang in the wood (and Death is a German expert)
while snows flies, chill, after so frequent knew
so many all nothing,
for lead & fire, it's not we would assert
particulars, but animal; cats mew,
horses scream, man sing.
Or: men pslam. Man palms his ears and moans.
Death is a German expert. Scrambling, sitting,
spattering, we hurry.
I try to. Odd & trivial, atones
somehow...Read more of this...
by
Bertolt Brecht
AMONGST THE HIGHLY PLACED
It is considered low to talk about food.
The fact is: they have
Already eaten.
The lowly must leave this earth
Without having tasted
Any good meat.
For wondering where they come from and
Where they are going
The fine evenings find them
Too exhausted.
They have not yet seen
The mountains and the great sea
When their time is already up.
If the lowly do not
Think about what's...Read more of this...
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...
by
Philip Levine
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is--if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
What tree may not the fig be gathered from?
The grape may not be gathered from the birch?
It's all you know the grape, or know the birch.
As a girl gathered from the birch myself
Equally with my weight in grapes, one autumn,
I ought to know what tree the grape is fruit of.
I was born, I suppose, like anyone,
And grew...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,
Or wounded in a mentionable place.
You worship decorations; you believe
That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.
You make us shells. You listen with delight,
By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
You...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Once for the sceptre of Germany, fought with Bavarian Louis
Frederick, of Hapsburg descent, both being called to the throne.
But the envious fortune of war delivered the Austrian
Into the hands of the foe, who overcame him in fight.
With the throne he purchased his freedom, pledging his honor
For the victor to draw 'gainst his own people his sword;
But what he vowed...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
When I am in New York, I like to drop around at night,
To visit with my honest, genial friends, the Stoddards hight;
Their home in Fifteenth street is all so snug, and furnished so,
That, when I once get planted there, I don't know when to go;
A cosy cheerful refuge for the weary homesick guest,
Combining Yankee comforts with the freedom of...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
in the wares before you spread,
Types of all things may be read.
'NEATH the shadow
Of these bushes,
On the meadow
Where the cooling water gushes.
Phoebus gave me, when a boy,
All life's fullness to enjoy.
So, in silence, as the God
Bade them with his sov'reign nod,
Sacred Muses train'd my days
To his praise.--
With the bright and silv'ry flood
Of Parnassus stirr'd my blood,
And the seal so...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
By no kind Augustus reared,
To no Medici endeared,
German art arose;
Fostering glory smiled not on her,
Ne'er with kingly smiles to sun her,
Did her blooms unclose.
No,--she went by monarchs slighted
Went unhonored, unrequited,
From high Frederick's throne;
Praise and pride be all the greater,
That man's genius did create her,
From man's worth alone.
Therefore, all from loftier mountains,
Purer wells and richer fountains,
Streams our poet-art;
So no rule...Read more of this...
by
Marge Piercy
In flat America, in Chicago,
Graceland cemetery on the German North Side.
Forty feet of Corinthian candle
celebrate Pullman embedded
lonely raisin in a cake of concrete.
The Potter Palmers float
in an island parthenon.
Barons of hogfat, railroads and wheat
are postmarked with angels and lambs.
But the Getty tomb: white, snow patterned
in a triangle of trees...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
In the outskirts of the village
On the river's winding shores
Stand the Occidental plane-trees,
Stand the ancient sycamores.
One long century hath been numbered,
And another half-way told
Since the rustic Irish gleeman
Broke for them the virgin mould.
Deftly set to Celtic music
At his violin's sound they grew,
Through the moonlit eves of summer,
Making Amphion's...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(Not in the English sense of the word, but the German, where it
has the meaning of betrothed.)
I SLEPT,--'twas midnight,--in my bosom woke,
As though 'twere day, my love-o'erflowing heart;
To me it seemed like night, when day first broke;
What is't to me, whate'er it may impart?
She was away; the world's unceasing strife
For her alone I suffer'd through the heat
Of sultry day;...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
"OLD Norbert with the flat blue cap--
A German said to be--
Why let your pipe die on your lap,
Your eyes blink absently?"--
--"Ah!... Well, I had thought till my cheek was wet
Of my mother--her voice and mien
When she used to sing and pirouette,
And touse the tambourine
"To the march that yon street-fiddler plies;
She told me 'twas the same
She'd heard from the trumpets,...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser decreed,
To ease the strong of their burden, to help the weak in their need,
He sent a word to the peoples, who struggle, and pant, and sweat,
That the straw might be counted fairly and the tally of bricks be set.
The Lords of Their Hands assembled; from the East and...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
I SAT with a dynamiter at supper in a German saloon
eating steak and onions.
And he laughed and told stories of his wife and children
and the cause of labor and the working class.
It was laughter of an unshakable man knowing life to be
a rich and red-blooded thing.
Yes, his laugh rang like the call of gray birds filled with
a glory of...Read more of this...
by
Gregory Corso
Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass
The bumpy club of One Million B.C. the mace the flail the axe
Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone
Ah and the sad desparate gun...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
Prate, ye who will, of so-called charms you find across the sea--
The land of stoves and sunshine is good enough for me!
I've done the grand for fourteen months in every foreign clime,
And I've learned a heap of learning, but I've shivered all the time;
And the biggest bit of wisdom I've acquired--as I can see--
Is that which teaches that this...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
Just now the lilac is in bloom,
All before my little room;
And in my flower-beds, I think,
Smile the carnation and the pink;
And down the borders, well I know,
The poppy and the pansy blow...
Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through,
Beside the river make for you
A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep
Deeply above; and green and deep
The stream mysterious glides beneath,
Green as a...Read more of this...
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