Famous Majors Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Ballad Of The Ice-Worm Cocktail

by Robert William Service
 To Dawson Town came Percy Brown from London on the Thames.
A pane of glass was in his eye, and stockings on his stems.
Upon the shoulder of his coat a leather pad he wore,
To rest his deadly rifle when it wasn't seeking gore;
The which it must have often been, for Major Percy Brown,
According to his story was a hunter of...Read more of this...

Among Children

by Philip Levine
 I walk among the rows of bowed heads--
the children are sleeping through fourth grade
so as to be ready for what is ahead,
the monumental boredom of junior high
and the rush forward tearing their wings
loose and turning their eyes forever inward.
These are the children of Flint, their fathers
work at the spark plug factory or truck
bottled water in 5 gallon sea-blue jugs
to...Read more of this...

No Buyers

by Thomas Hardy
 A Load of brushes and baskets and cradles and chairs
Labours along the street in the rain:
With it a man, a woman, a pony with whiteybrown hairs. --
The man foots in front of the horse with a shambling sway
At a slower tread than a funeral train,
While to a dirge-like tune he chants his wares,
Swinging a Turk's-head brush (in a drum-major's...Read more of this...

Shakespeares Ghost - A Parody

by Friedrich von Schiller
 I, too, at length discerned great Hercules' energy mighty,--
Saw his shade. He himself was not, alas, to be seen.
Round him were heard, like the screaming of birds,
the screams of tragedians,
And, with the baying of dogs, barked dramaturgists around.
There stood the giant in all his terrors; his bow was extended,
And the bolt, fixed on the string, steadily aimed at the...Read more of this...

299. Sketch—New Year's Day 1790

by Robert Burns
 THIS day, Time winds th’ exhausted chain;
To run the twelvemonth’s length again:
I see, the old bald-pated fellow,
With ardent eyes, complexion sallow,
Adjust the unimpair’d machine,
To wheel the equal, dull routine.


 The absent lover, minor heir,
In vain assail him with their prayer;
Deaf as my friend, he sees them press,
Nor makes the hour one moment less,
Will you (the Major’s with the hounds,
The...Read more of this...

The Night Game

by Robert Pinsky
 Some of us believe
We would have conceived romantic
Love out of our own passions
With no precedents,
Without songs and poetry--
Or have invented poetry and music
As a comb of cells for the honey.

Shaped by ignorance,
A succession of new worlds,
Congruities improvised by
Immigrants or children.

I once thought most people were Italian,
Jewish or Colored.
To be white and called
Something like Ed Ford
Seemed aristocratic,
A rare distinction.

Possibly I...Read more of this...

Base Details

by Siegfried Sassoon
 If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath 
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base, 
And speed glum heroes up the line to death. 
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face, 
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel, 
Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap," 
I'd say -- "I used to know his father...Read more of this...

The Bell Buoy

by Rudyard Kipling
 1896
They christened my brother of old--
 And a saintly name he bears--
They gave him his place to hold
 At the head of the belfry-stairs,
 Where the minister-towers stand
And the breeding kestrels cry.
 Would I change with my brother a league inland?
(Shoal! 'Ware shoal!) Not I!

In the flush of the hot June prime,
 O'ersleek flood-tides afire,
I hear him hurry the...Read more of this...

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