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Famous Lances Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Spenser, Edmund
...eir eyes that inmost fair display,
As plain as light discovers dawning day.

Therein they see, through amorous eye-glances,
Armies of loves still flying to and fro,
Which dart at them their little fiery lances;
Whom having wounded, back again they go,
Carrying compassion to their lovely foe;
Who, seeing her fair eyes' so sharp effect,
Cures all their sorrows with one sweet aspect.

In which how many wonders do they rede
To their conceit, that others never see,
Now of ...Read more of this...



by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...rces
the cavalry of witticisms
 ready
to launch a wild hallooing charge,
reins its chargers still,
 raising
the pointed lances of the rhymes.
and all
 these troops armed to the teeth,
which have flashed by
 victoriously for twenty years,
all these,
 to their very last page,
I present to you,
 the planet’s proletarian.

The enemy
 of the massed working class
is my enemy too
 inveterate and of long standing.

Years of trial
 and days of hunger
 ordered us
to march 
...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...
Dragged him, and struck, but from the castle a cry 
Sounded across the court, and--men-at-arms, 
A score with pointed lances, making at him-- 
He dashed the pummel at the foremost face, 
Beneath a low door dipt, and made his feet 
Wings through a glimmering gallery, till he marked 
The portal of King Pellam's chapel wide 
And inward to the wall; he stept behind; 
Thence in a moment heard them pass like wolves 
Howling; but while he stared about the shrine, 
In which he scar...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...nd she would not die.

Come, as you love her,
Come close and cover
Her white face over,
And forth again
Ere sunset glances
On foam that dances,
Through lowering lances
Of bright white rain;
And make your playtime
Of winter's daytime,
As if the Maytime
Were here to sing;
As if the snowballs
Were soft like blowballs,
Blown in a mist from the stalk in the spring.

Each reed that grows in
Our stream is frozen,
The fields it flows in
Are hard and black;
The water-fairy
Wai...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...lade, 
The sound of many a heavily-galloping hoof 
Smote on her ear, and turning round she saw 
Dust, and the points of lances bicker in it. 
Then not to disobey her lord's behest, 
And yet to give him warning, for he rode 
As if he heard not, moving back she held 
Her finger up, and pointed to the dust. 
At which the warrior in his obstinacy, 
Because she kept the letter of his word, 
Was in a manner pleased, and turning, stood. 
And in the moment after, wild Lim...Read more of this...



by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...r> 

Iron-jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and they shall run,
Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun; 

Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks,
Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books-- 

Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild,
But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child. 

I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,
Like a beast wi...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...he empty
table of the miner.

Your light, your cornmeal, your hope
pervades America's solitudes,
and to hunger
your lances
are enemy legions.

Within your husks,
like gentle kernels,
our sober provincial
children's hearts were nurtured,
until life began
to shuck us from the ear....Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...come
And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares.
Next, the more temperate Toorkmuns of the south,
The Tukas, and the lances of Salore,
And those from Attruck and the Caspian sands;
Light men and on light steeds, who only drink
The acrid milk of camels, and their wells.
And then a swarm of wandering horse, who came
From far, and a more doubtful service own'd;
The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks
Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards
And close-set skull-caps; and th...Read more of this...

by Milligan, Spike
...s. 
The lush of the river singing morning songs 
Fish watch their ceilings turn sun-white. 
The grey-green pike lances upstream 
Kale, like mermaid's hair 
points the water's drift. 
All is morning hush 
and bird beautiful. 

I only, 
I didn't have flu....Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...rid glares; the gloom
Pounded with shouts and dying groans,
With the drip of blood on cold, hard stones.
Sabres and lances in streaks of light
Gleamed through the smoke, and at my right
A creese, like a licking serpent's tongue,
Glittered an instant, while it stung.
Streams, and points, and lines of fire!
The livid steel, which man's desire
Had forged and welded, burned white and cold.
Every blade which man could mould,
Which could cut, or slash, or cleave, or rip...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ogs," said he, "when wolf and gray wolf meet.
May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath;
What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn with Death?"
Lightly answered the Colonel's son: "I hold by the blood of my clan:
Take up the mare for my father's gift -- by God, she has carried a man!"
The red mare ran to the Colonel's son, and nuzzled against his breast;
"We be two strong men," said Kamal then, "but she loveth the younger best.
So she sh...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ere the melting snows, when the swollen banks break forth,
 When the red-coats crawl to the sungar wall, and his Usbeg lances fail:
 Ye have heard the song -- How long? How long? Wolves of the Zuka Kheyl!

They stoned him in the rubbish-field when dawn was in the sky,
According to the written word, "See that he do not die."

They stoned him till the stones were piled above him on the plain,
And those the labouring limbs displaced they tumbled back again.

One watched...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...n
Like a hare on the hill-side,
The hare has still more heart to run
Than you have heart to ride.

"That though all lances split on you,
All swords be heaved in vain,
We have more lust again to lose
Than you to win again.

"Your lord sits high in the saddle,
A broken-hearted king,
But our king Alfred, lost from fame,
Fallen among foes or bonds of shame,
In I know not what mean trade or name,
Has still some song to sing;

"Our monks go robed in rain and snow,
But the h...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...o the Balcony
Above the bronze gates and the crowded square,
Whose very fountains seem for ecstasy
To toss their silver lances in the air,
And stretching out weak hands to East and West
In vain sends peace to peaceless lands, to restless nations rest.

Is not yon lingering orange after-glow
That stays to vex the moon more fair than all
Rome's lordliest pageants! strange, a year ago
I knelt before some crimson Cardinal
Who bare the Host across the Esquiline,
And now - thos...Read more of this...

by Gray, Thomas
...to lower,
(Haste, the loom of Hell prepares!)
Iron-sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darkened air. 

Glittering lances are the loom,
Where the dusky warp we strain,
Weaving many a soldier's doom,
Orkney's woe and Randver's bane. 

See the grisly texture grow,
('Tis of human entrails made!)
And the weights that play below,
Each a gasping warrior's head. 

Shafts for shuttles, dipped in gore,
Shoot the trembling cords along.
Sword, that once a monarch bore,
...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...next from under ground, 
All the great table of our Arthur closed 
And clashed in such a tourney and so full, 
So many lances broken--never yet 
Had Camelot seen the like, since Arthur came; 
And I myself and Galahad, for a strength 
Was in us from this vision, overthrew 
So many knights that all the people cried, 
And almost burst the barriers in their heat, 
Shouting, "Sir Galahad and Sir Percivale!" 

`But when the next day brake from under ground-- 
O brother, had you kn...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...n triumph advances!
          Honored and blessed be the ever-green Pine!
     Long may the tree, in his banner that glances,
          Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line!
               Heaven send it happy dew,
               Earth lend it sap anew,
          Gayly to bourgeon and broadly to grow,
               While every Highland glen
               Sends our shout back again,
          'Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!'

     Ours is no sapling, ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...e trampled some beneath her horses' heels, 
And some were whelmed with missiles of the wall, 
And some were pushed with lances from the rock, 
And part were drowned within the whirling brook: 
O miracle of noble womanhood!' 

So sang the gallant glorious chronicle; 
And, I all rapt in this, 'Come out,' he said, 
'To the Abbey: there is Aunt Elizabeth 
And sister Lilia with the rest.' We went 
(I kept the book and had my finger in it) 
Down through the park: strange was th...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...n, Shabine have you, friend,
I shall scatter your lives like a handful of sand,
I who have no weapon but poetry and
the lances of palms and the sea's shining shield!


10 Out of the Depths

Next day, dark sea. A ****-aching dawn.
"Damn wind shift sudden as a woman mind."
The slow swell start cresting like some mountain range
with snow on the top.
 "Ay, skipper, sky dark!"
"This ain't right for August."
 "This light damn strange,
this season, sky should be ...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...
streets without statues, 
and a geography without myth. He wanted no armies 
but those regiments of bananas, thick lances of cane, 
and he sobbed,"I am powerless, except for love." 
She faded from him, because he could not kill; 
she shrunk to a bat that hung day and night 
in the back of his brain. He rose in his dream. 
(to be continued)...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things