Famous Mission Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Mission poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous mission poems. These examples illustrate what a famous mission poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Alan Seeger
I
Ay, it is fitting on this holiday,
Commemorative of our soldier dead,
When -- with sweet flowers of our New England May
Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray --
Their graves in every town are garlanded,
That pious tribute should be given too
To our intrepid few
Obscurely fallen here beyond the seas.
Those to preserve...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
A Frenchman and an Englishman
Resolved to fight a duel,
And hit upon a savage plan,
Because their hate was cruel.
They each would fire a single shot
In room of darkness pitchy,
And who was killed and who was not
Would hang on fingers twitchy.
The room was bare and dark as death,
And each ferocious fighter
Could hear his fierce opponent's breath
And clutched his pistol tighter.
The Gaston...Read more of this...
by
Edward Taylor
She has one good bumblebee
which she leads about town
on a leash of clover.
It's as big as a Saint Bernard
but also extremely fragile.
People want to pet its long, shaggy coat.
These would be mostly whirling dervishes
out shopping for accessories.
When Lily winks they understand everything,
right down to the particle
of a butterfly's wing lodged
in her last good eye,
so the situation is avoided,
the potential...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
I've quenched my lamp, I struck it in that start
Which every limb convulsed, I heard it fall
The crash blent with my sleep, I saw depart
Its light, even as I woke, on yonder wall;
Over against my bed, there shone a gleam
Strange, faint, and mingling also with my dream.
It sunk, and I am wrapt in utter gloom;
How far is...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
I never shall furgit that night when father hitched up Dobbin,
An' all us youngsters clambered in an' down the road went bobbin'
To school where we was kep' at work in every kind o' weather,
But where that night a spellin'-bee was callin' us together.
'Twas one o' Heaven's banner nights, the stars was all a glitter,
The moon was shinin' like the hand...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
In an immense wood in the south of Kent,
There lived a band of robbers which caused the people discontent;
And the place they infested was called the Weald,
Where they robbed wayside travellers and left them dead on the field.
Their leader was called Grif, of the Bloody Hand,
And so well skilled in sword practice there's few could him withstand;
And sometimes...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
This is the story of G.R.D.,
Who went on a mission across the sea
To borrow some money for you and me.
This G. R. Dibbs was a stalwart man
Who was built on a most extensive plan,
And a regular staunch Republican.
But he fell in the hands of the Tory crew
Who said, "It's a shame that...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
ADIEU, O soldier!
You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,)
The rapid march, the life of the camp,
The hot contention of opposing fronts—the long manoeuver,
Red battles with their slaughter,—the stimulus—the strong, terrific game,
Spell of all brave and manly hearts—the trains of Time through you, and like of you,
all
fill’d,
With war, and war’s expression.
Adieu,...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
The First Elegy
Who if I cried out would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
I that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror which we still are just able to endure
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
(for matt – 15)
in the first seven years you choose your howdah
having by then bare inklings of a journey
but where or why - confusion there to cloud a
judgement no more ready than a sore knee
to enter the lists of a whole life’s tourney -
but after this howdah-do (this introduction)
what’s to carry you where - from muddy fluxion
and glimpsing that...Read more of this...
by
Lisel Mueller
In Sleeping Beauty's castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don't even rub their eyes.
The cook's right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy's left ear;
the boy's tensed vocal cords
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
and the fly, arrested mid-plunge
above the strawberry...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
Good Father!… ’Twas an eve in middle June,
And war was waged anew
By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn
Men’s bones all Europe through.
Three nights ere this, with columned corps he’d crossed
The Sambre at Charleroi,
To move on Brussels, where the English host
Dallied in Parc and Bois.
The yestertide we’d heard the gloomy gun
Growl through...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[I feel considerable hesitation in venturing
to offer this version of a poem which Carlyle describes to be 'a
beautiful piece (a very Hans Sacks beatified, both in character
and style), which we wish there was any possibility of translating.'
The reader will be aware that Hans Sachs was the celebrated Minstrel-
Cobbler of Nuremberg, who Wrote 208 plays,...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
God has his plans, and what if we
With our sight be too blind to see
Their full fruition; cannot he,
Who made it, solve the mystery?
One whom we loved has fall'n asleep,
Not died; although her calm be deep,
Some new, unknown, and strange surprise
In Heaven holds enrapt her eyes.
And can you blame her that her gaze
Is turned away from earthly ways,
When to her...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("O vous que votre âge défende")
{IX., February, 1840.}
In youthful spirits wild,
Smile, for all beams on thee;
Sport, sing, be still the child,
The flower, the honey-bee.
Bring not the future near,
For Joy too soon declines—
What is man's mission here?
Toil, where no sunlight...Read more of this...
by
Ellis Parker Butler
A merry burgomaster
In a burgh upon the Rhine
Said, “Our burghers all are
Far too fond of drinking wine.”
So the merry burgomaster,
When the burgomasters met,
Bade them look into the matter
Ere the thing went farther yet.
And the merry burgomasters
Did decide the only way
To alleviate the evil
Without worry or delay
Would be just to call a meeting
Of...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
My job is done; my rhymes are ranked and ready,
My word-battalions marching verse by verse;
Here stanza-companies are none too steady;
There print-platoons are weak, but might be worse.
And as in marshalled order I review them,
My type-brigades, unfearful of the fray,
My eyes that seek their faults are seeing through them
Immortal visions of an epic day.
It seems I'm...Read more of this...
by
Derek Walcott
There were still shards of an ancient pastoral
in those shires of the island where the cattle drank
their pools of shadow from an older sky,
surviving from when the landscape copied such objects as
"Herefords at Sunset in the valley of the Wye."
The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheel
sprinkling like petals from the...Read more of this...
by
Wang Wei
Weicheng morning rain moisten light dust
Visitor house green green willow colour new
Urge gentleman further finish one cup alcohol
West outside Yang Pass no friend person
At Weicheng morning rain has dampened light dust,
By the hostel, the willows are all fresh and green.
I urge my friend to drink a last cup of wine,
West of Yang...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Striving is life, yet life is striving;
I fight to live, yet live to fight;
The vital urge is in my driving,
Yet I must drive with all my might:
Each day a battle, and the fray
Stoutly renewed the coming day.
A am myself - yet when I strive
I build a self that's truer, higher;
I keep my bit of God alive
And forgive me in...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.
All the air was full of freshness,
All the earth was bright and joyous,
And before him, through the sunshine,
Westward toward the neighboring forest
Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,
Passed the bees, the honey-makers,
Burning, singing In the sunshine.
Bright above him shone the...Read more of this...
by
Louisa May Alcott
Brighter shone the golden shadows;
On the cool wind softly came
The low, sweet tones of happy flowers,
Singing little Violet's name.
'Mong the green trees was it whispered,
And the bright waves bore it on
To the lonely forest flowers,
Where the glad news had not gone.
Thus the Frost-King lost his kingdom,
And his power to harm...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
You want me to tell you a story, a yarn of the firin' line,
Of our thin red kharki 'eroes, out there where the bullets whine;
Out there where the bombs are bustin',
and the cannons like 'ell-doors slam --
Just order another drink, boys, and I'll tell you of Soulful Sam.
Oh, Sam, he was never 'ilarious, though I've 'ad some mates as...Read more of this...
by
Robert Duncan
My mother would be a falconress,
And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist,
would fly to bring back
from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize,
where I dream in my little hood with many bells
jangling when I'd turn my head.
My mother would be a falconress,
and she sends me as far as her will goes.
She...Read more of this...
by
Jorge Luis Borges
in these red labyrinths of London
I find that I have chosen
the strangest of all callings,
save that, in its way, any calling is strange.
Like the alchemist
who sought the philosopher's stone
in quicksilver,
I shall make everyday words--
the gambler's marked cards, the common coin--
give off the magic that was their
when Thor was both the god and the din,
the thunderclap and the prayer.
In today's...Read more of this...
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