Famous Herdsman Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Herdsman poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous herdsman poems. These examples illustrate what a famous herdsman poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Horace,
...he stags that champ the boughs
Of the Ciminian hill;
Beyond all streams Clitumnus
Is to the herdsman dear;
Best of all pools the fowler loves
The great Volsinian mere.
VII
But now no stroke of woodman
Is heard by Auser's rill;
No hunter tracks the stag's green path
Up the Ciminian hill;
Unwatched along Clitumnus
Grazes the milk-white steer;
Unharmed the wa...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...ade;
Ah! little care indeed, for he had seen
The breasts of Pallas and the naked wonder of the Queen.
But when the herdsman called his straggling goats
With whistling pipe across the rocky road,
And the shard-beetle with its trumpet-notes
Boomed through the darkening woods, and seemed to bode
Of coming storm, and the belated crane
Passed homeward like a shadow, and the dull big drops of rain
Fell on the pattering fig-leaves, up he rose,
And from the gloomy forest went h...Read more of this...
by
Manrique, Jorge
...es any more enduring;
Nor are the popes, nor emperors,
Nor prelatries
A longer stay or truce securing
Than the poor herdsman of the moors
From Death's decrees.
Recount no more of Troy, or foeman
The echo of whose wars is now
But far tradition;
Recount no more how fared the Roman
(His scroll of glories we allow)
Nor his perdition;
Nor here rehearse the homely fable
Of such as yielded up their sway
These decades gone;
But let us say what lamentable
Fate the ...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...oe flaunted,
Such as the Druids cut down with golden hatchets at Yule-tide,
Stood, secluded and still, the house of the herdsman. A garden
Girded it round about with a belt of luxuriant blossoms,
Filling the air with fragrance. The house itself was of timbers
Hewn from the cypress-tree, and carefully fitted together.
Large and low was the roof; and on slender columns supported,
Rose-wreathed, vine-encircled, a broad and spacious veranda,
Haunt of the humming-bird ...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...y winds to stand and fight,
And these above its diadem uphold
Night's living canopy of clouds unrolled.
The herdsman fears, and thinks its shadow creeps
To follow him; and superstition keeps
Such hold that Corbus as a terror reigns;
Folks say the Fort a target still remains
For the Black Archer—and that it contains
The cave where the Great Sleeper still sleeps sound.
The country people all the castle round
Are frightened easily, for legends gr...Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Dylan
...is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under th...Read more of this...
by
Morris, William
...
Between the trees a large moon, the wind lows
"Not loud, but as a cow begins to low,
Wishing for strength to make the herdsman hear:
The ripe corn gathereth dew; yea, long ago,
In the old garden life, my Guenevere
"Loved to sit still among the flowers, till night
Had quite come on, hair loosen'd, for she said,
Smiling like heaven, that its fairness might
Draw up the wind sooner to cool her head.
"Now while I ride how quick the moon gets small,
As it did then: I tell m...Read more of this...
by
Voznesensky, Andrei
...hey lie.
We drive them round
for cows are sacred!
They are loyal to the highway,
we wonder why.
"Old herdsman, we want our question answered:
Why have the cows gone mad?" "God forbid!
The point is that flies do not like asphalt."
Those modern cows! The are wise indeed!
They got it, the sly ones! Cattle of genius!
Unlike the poor, unfortunate flies.
"The flies know that asphalt
is carcinogenic."
Those modern flies! They are real...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...ye shall hear them and guess.
By night, before the moon-rise, I will send for my cess,
And the wolf shall be your herdsman
By a landmark removed;
For the Karela, the bitter Karela,
Shall seed where ye loved!
I will reap your fields before you at the hands of a host.
Ye shall glean behind my reapers for the bread that is lost;
And the deer shall be your oxen
On a headland untilled;
For the Karela, the bitter Karela,
Shall leaf where ye build!
I have untied a...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...hters grow
About the mother tree, a pillared shade
High over-arched, and echoing walks between:
There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,
Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds
At loop-holes cut through thickest shade: Those leaves
They gathered, broad as Amazonian targe;
And, with what skill they had, together sewed,
To gird their waist; vain covering, if to hide
Their guilt and dreaded shame! O, how unlike
To that first naked glory! Such of late
Colu...Read more of this...
by
Seeger, Alan
...
Bare bodies beautiful, brown, glistening,
Decked with green plumes and rings of yellow gold.
Do you suppose the herdsman sometimes hears
Vague echoes borne beneath the moon's pale ray
From those old, old, far-off, forgotten years?
Who knows? Here where his ancient kings held sway
He stands. Their names are strangers to his ears.
Even their memory has passed away....Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...s but manifold qualities,
Immeasurable complexities of soul?
What are these isles but a song sung by island voices?
The herdsman sings ancestral memories
And the song makes the singer wise,
But only while he sings
Songs that were old when the old themselves were young,
Songs of these hills only, and of no isles but these.
For other hills and isles this language has no words.
The mountains are like manna, for one day given,
To each his own:
Strangers have crossed the ...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...flute
Pressed to his lips some Faun might raise his head
By the green water-flags, ah! sweet indeed
To see the heavenly herdsman call his white-fleeced flock to feed.
Then sing to me thou tuneful chorister,
Though what thou sing'st be thine own requiem!
Tell me thy tale thou hapless chronicler
Of thine own tragedies! do not contemn
These unfamiliar haunts, this English field,
For many a lovely coronal our northern isle can yield
Which Grecian meadows know not, many a ro...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...ddening in the evening sun,
From far, the domes of Syracuse!--
When towards him comes Philostratus
(His leal and trusty herdsman he),
And to the master bends his knee.
"Back--thou canst aid thy friend no more,
The niggard time already flown--
His life is forfeit--save thine own!
Hour after hour in hope he bore,
Nor might his soul its faith give o'er;
Nor could the tyrant's scorn deriding,
Steal from that faith one thought confiding!"
"Too late! what horror hast thou spo...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...
Stout Grief shall walk, the driver of the team.
Midst every herd of cattle on the hills,
Dull Grief shall lie, the herdsman of the drove.
Oh Grief shall grind your bread and play your lutes
And marry you and bury you.
-- How else?
Who's here in France, can win her people's faith
And stand in front and lead the people on?
Where is the Church?
The Church is far too fat.
Not, mark, by robust swelling of the thews,
But puffed and flabby large with gross increase
...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...'
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.
I sat and mused and drank sweet wine;
A herdsman came from inland valleys,
Crying, the pirates drove his swine
To fill their dark-beaked hollow galleys.
I called my battle-breaking men
And my loud brazen battle-cars
From rolling vale and rivery glen;
And under the blinking of the stars
Fell on the pirates by the deep,
And hurled them in the gulph of sleep:
These hands won many a torque of gold...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...ed its high granite wall;
And its cupola, sister of the cloud,
Has now to lowest mire its tall head bowed.
The herdsman comes to it to choose the stones
To build a hut, and overturns the bones,
From which he has just scared a jackal pack,
Waiting to gnaw them when he turns his back.
Upon this scene the night is doubly night,
And the lone passer vainly strains his sight,
Musing: Was Belus not buried near this spot?
The royal resting-place is now f...Read more of this...
by
Field, Eugene
...s to stay!"
II
Once came Venus to me, bringing
Eros where my cattle fed--
"Teach this little boy your singing,
Gentle herdsman," Venus said.
I was young--I did not know
Whom it was that Venus led--
That was many years ago!
In a lusty voice but mellow--
Callow pedant! I began
To instruct the little fellow
In the mysteries known to man;
Sung the noble cithern's praise,
And the flute of dear old Pan,
And the lyre that Hermes plays.
But he paid no heed unto me--
Nay, ...Read more of this...
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