Famous Kinship Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Little Lives Of Earth And Form

by Philip Larkin
 The little lives of earth and form,
Of finding food, and keeping warm,
 Are not like ours, and yet
A kinship lingers nonetheless:
We hanker for the homeliness
 Of den, and hole, and set.

And this identity we feel
- Perhaps not right, perhaps not real -
 Will link us constantly;
I see the rock, the clay, the chalk,
The flattened grass, the swaying stalk,
 And...Read more of this...

handyman

by Rg Gregory
 the two hands of me make inimical gestures
that only long after betray the one tune

though they have the same taste in throats
they go to their crime disgusted with kinship

the right has to act as if crazy for order
the left as a dawdler dangling by water

on sundays they plan suicides for each other
splitting time's atoms or drowning in feathers

between them...Read more of this...

To Catullus

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 My brother, my Valerius, dearest head
Of all whose crowning bay-leaves crown their mother
Rome, in the notes first heard of thine I read
My brother.

No dust that death or time can strew may smother
Love and the sense of kinship inly bred
From loves and hates at one with one another.

To thee was Caesar's self nor dear nor dread,
Song and the sea were...Read more of this...

Ionicus

by Sir Henry Newbolt
 With failing feet and shoulders bowed 
Beneath the weight of happier days, 
He lagged among the heedless crowd, 
Or crept along suburban ways. 
But still through all his heart was young, 
A courage, a pride, a rapture, sprung 
Of the strength and splendour of England's war. 

From ill-requited toil he turned 
To ride with Picton and with Pack, 
Among...Read more of this...

Unsolved

by John McCrae
 Amid my books I lived the hurrying years,
Disdaining kinship with my fellow man;
Alike to me were human smiles and tears,
I cared not whither Earth's great life-stream ran,
Till as I knelt before my mouldered shrine,
God made me look into a woman's eyes;
And I, who thought all earthly wisdom mine,
Knew in a moment that the eternal skies
Were measured but in inches,...Read more of this...

Flower Gardener

by Robert William Service
 Gas got me in the first World War,
And all my mates at rest are laid.
I felt I might survive them for
I am a gardener by trade.
My life is in the open air,
And kindly is the work I do,
Since flowers are my joy and care,
 And comfort too.

My flowers are a fairy sight,
Yes I'm an ugly, warped old man,
For I...Read more of this...

Modern Love IV: All Other Joys of Life

by George Meredith
 All other joys of life he strove to warm, 
And magnify, and catch them to his lip: 
But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship, 
And gazed upon him sallow from the storm. 
Or if Delusion came, 'twas but to show 
The coming minute mock the one that went. 
Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent, 
Stood high...Read more of this...

The Aisne

by Alan Seeger
 We first saw fire on the tragic slopes 
Where the flood-tide of France's early gain, 
Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes, 
Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne. 


The charge her heroes left us, we assumed, 
What, dying, they reconquered, we preserved, 
In the chill trenches, harried, shelled, entombed, 
Winter came down on us, but no...Read more of this...

The Children Look At The Parents

by A S J Tessimond
 We being so hidden from those who
Have quietly borne and fed us,
How can we answer civilly
Their innocent invitations?

How can we say "we see you
As but-for-God's-grace-ourselves, as
Our caricatures (we yours), with
Time's telescope between us"?

How can we say "you presumed on
The accident of kinship,
Assumed our friendship coatlike,
Not as a badge one fights for"?

How say "and you remembered
The sins of our outlived...Read more of this...

The Crystal

by Sidney Lanier
 At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time,
When far within the spirit's hearing rolls
The great soft rumble of the course of things --
A bulk of silence in a mask of sound, --
When darkness clears our vision that by day
Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl
For truth and flitteth here and there about
Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft
Is minded...Read more of this...

Kinship

by George William Russell
 IN summer time, with high imaginings
Of proud Crusaders and of Paynim kings,
The children crowned themselves with famous names,
And fought there, building up their merry games,
Their mimic war, from old majestic things.


There was no bitter hate then in the fight,
For ancient law ruled victory and flight,
And, victory and defeat alike forgot,
They slept together in the selfsame cot,
With arms about each...Read more of this...

Twilight by the Cabin

by George William Russell
 DUSK, a pearl-grey river, o’er
 Hill and vale puts out the day—
What do you wonder at, asthore,
 What’s away in yonder grey?


Dark the eyes that linger long—
 Dream-fed heart, awake, come in,
Warm the hearth and gay the song:
 Love with tender words would win.


Fades the eve in dreamy fire,
 But the heart of night is lit:
Ancient beauty, old desire,
...Read more of this...

The Rovers

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Over the fields we go, through the sweets of the purple clover,
That letters a message for us as for every vagrant rover;
Before us the dells are abloom, and a leaping brook calls after,
Feeling its kinship with us in lore of dreams and laughter. 

Out of the valleys of moonlight elfin voices are calling;
Down from the misty hills faint, far...Read more of this...

With French to Kimberley

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The Boers were down on Kimberley with siege and Maxim gun; 
The Boers were down on Kimberley, their numbers ten to one! 
Faint were the hopes the British had to make the struggle good -- 
Defenceless in an open plain the Diamond City stood. 
They built them forts with bags of sand, they fought from roof and wall, 
They...Read more of this...

With French to Kimberley

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The Boers were down on Kimberley with siege and Maxim gun; 
The Boers were down on Kimberley, their numbers ten to one! 
Faint were the hopes the British had to make the struggle good -- 
Defenceless in an open plain the Diamond City stood. 
They built them forts with bags of sand, they fought from roof and wall, 
They...Read more of this...

A Channel Crossing

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Forth from Calais, at dawn of night, when sunset summer on autumn shone,
Fared the steamer alert and loud through seas whence only the sun was gone:
Soft and sweet as the sky they smiled, and bade man welcome: a dim sweet hour
Gleamed and whispered in wind and sea, and heaven was fair as a field in flower,
Stars fulfilled the desire...Read more of this...

With French to Kimberley

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The Boers were down on Kimberley with siege and Maxim gun; 
The Boers were down on Kimberley, their numbers ten to one! 
Faint were the hopes the British had to make the struggle good -- 
Defenceless in an open plain the Diamond City stood. 
They built them forts with bags of sand, they fought from roof and wall, 
They...Read more of this...

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