Famous Germans Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Munich Mannequins

by Sylvia Plath
 Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.
Cold as snow breath, it tamps the womb

Where the yew trees blow like hydras,
The tree of life and the tree of life

Unloosing their moons, month after month, to no purpose.
The blood flood is the flood of love,

The absolute sacrifice.
It means: no more idols but me,

Me and you.
So, in their sulfur loveliness, in their...Read more of this...

Enemies

by Siegfried Sassoon
 He stood alone in some ***** sunless place 
Where Armageddon ends. Perhaps he longed 
For days he might have lived; but his young face 
Gazed forth untroubled: and suddenly there thronged 
Round him the hulking Germans that I shot
When for his death my brooding rage was hot. 

He stared at them, half-wondering; and then 
They told him how I’d...Read more of this...

Dawn

by Rupert Brooke
 Opposite me two Germans snore and sweat.
Through sullen swirling gloom we jolt and roar.
We have been here for ever: even yet
A dim watch tells two hours, two aeons, more.
The windows are tight-shut and slimy-wet
With a night's foetor. There are two hours more;
Two hours to dawn and Milan; two hours yet.
Opposite me two Germans sweat and snore. . . .

One...Read more of this...

A Brother In Need

by Henrik Ibsen
 NOW, rallying once if ne'er again, 
With flag at half-mast flown, 
A people in dire need and strain 
Mans Tyra's bastion. 

Betrayed in danger's hour, betrayed 
Before the stress of strife! 
Was this the meaning that it had-- 
That clasp of hands at Axelstad 
Which gave the North new life? 

The words that seemed as if they rushed 
From...Read more of this...

Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn

by Carl Sandburg
 SMOKE of autumn is on it all.
The streamers loosen and travel.
The red west is stopped with a gray haze.
They fill the ash trees, they wrap the oaks,
They make a long-tailed rider
In the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star.. . .
Three muskrats swim west on the Desplaines River.

There is a sheet of red ember glow on the river;...Read more of this...

In Westminster Abbey

by John Betjeman
 Let me take this other glove off
As the vox humana swells,
And the beauteous fields of Eden
Bask beneath the Abbey bells.
Here, where England's statesmen lie,
Listen to a lady's cry.

Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans,
Spare their women for Thy Sake,
And if that is not too easy
We will pardon Thy Mistake.
But, gracious Lord, whate'er shall be,
Don't let anyone bomb me.

Keep our Empire...Read more of this...

Stoves and sunshine

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...

Stone Breaking

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 March wind rough
Clashed the trees,
Flung the snow;
Breaking stones,
In the cold,
Germans slow
Toiled and toiled;
Arrowy sun
Glanced and sprang,
One right blithe
German sang:
Songs of home, 
Fatherland:
Syenite hard,
Weary lot,
Callous hand,
All forgot:
Hammers pound,
Ringing round;
Rise the heaps,
To his voice,
Bounds and leaps
Toise on toise:
Toil is long,
But dear God
Gives us song,
At the end
Gives us test, 
Toil is best....Read more of this...

Albert and His Savings

by Marriott Edgar
 One day, little Albert Ramsbottom
To see 'ow much money 'e'd got
Stuck a knife in 'is money-box slot 'ole
And fiddled and fished out the lot.

It amounted to fifteen and fourpence
Which 'e found by a few simple sums
Were ninety two tuppenny ices
Or twice that in penn'orths of gums.

The sound of the chinkin' of money
Soon brought father's 'ead round the door
He said,...Read more of this...

The Ballad of the Calliope

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 By the far Samoan shore, 
Where the league-long rollers pour 
All the wash of the Pacific on the coral-guarded bay, 
Riding lightly at their ease, 
In the calm of tropic seas, 
The three great nations' warships at their anchors proudly lay. 
Riding lightly, head to wind, 
With the coral reefs behind, 
Three German and three Yankee ships were mirrored...Read more of this...

The Tombstone-Maker

by Siegfried Sassoon
 He primmed his loose red mouth and leaned his head 
Against a sorrowing angel’s breast, and said: 
‘You’d think so much bereavement would have made 
‘Unusual big demands upon my trade. 
‘The War comes cruel hard on some poor folk;
‘Unless the fighting stops I’ll soon be broke.’ 

He eyed the Cemetery across the road. 
‘There’s scores of bodies out...Read more of this...

Distichs

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 CHORDS are touch'd by Apollo,--the death-laden 
bow, too, he bendeth;

While he the shepherdess charms, Python he lays 
in the dust.

WHAT is merciful censure? To make thy faults appear 
smaller?

May be to veil them? No, no! O'er them to raise 
thee on high!

DEMOCRATIC food soon cloys on the multitude's stomach;
But I'll wager, ere long, other thou'lt give them instead.

WHAT in...Read more of this...

On A Great Hollow Tree

by William Strode
 Preethee stand still awhile, and view this tree
Renown'd and honour'd for antiquitie
By all the neighbour twiggs; for such are all
The trees adjoyning, bee they nere so tall,
Comparde to this: if here Jacke Maypole stood
All men would sweare 'twere but a fishing rodde.
Mark but the gyant trunk, which when you see
You see how many woods and groves there bee
Compris'd within...Read more of this...

Disabled

by Wilfred Owen
 He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees
And girls glanced...Read more of this...

I Remember

by Stevie Smith
 It was my bridal night I remember,
An old man of seventy-three
I lay with my young bride in my arms,
A girl with t.b.
It was wartime, and overhead
The Germans were making a particularly heavy raid on
 Hampstead.
What rendered the confusion worse, perversely
Our bombers had chosen that moment to set out for Germany.
Harry, do they ever collide?
I do not think it has...Read more of this...

To William Holden

by David Lehman
 (July 15) 

We know who 
the guards are 
in those POW 
movies with brutal 
but easy to 
fool fat Germans 
or sadistic Japanese 
who never smiled 
they're the grown-ups 
we're the kids 
that's the secret...Read more of this...

Elegy I: Jealousy

by John Donne
 Fond woman, which wouldst have thy husband die,
And yet complain'st of his great jealousy;
If swol'n with poison, he lay in his last bed,
His body with a sere-bark covered,
Drawing his breath, as thick and short, as can
The nimblest crocheting musician,
Ready with loathsome vomiting to spew
His soul out of one hell, into a new,
Made deaf with his poor kindred's howling cries,
Begging...Read more of this...

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