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Famous Muskets Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...this double fight,
Some fell for wrang, and some for right;
But mony bade the world gude-night;
Say, pell and mell, wi’ muskets’ knell
How Tories fell, and Whigs to hell
 Flew off in frighted bands, man!
 La, la, la, la, &c....Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...me, dress’d in blue—with your tramping, sinewy legs; 
With your shoulders young and strong—with your knapsacks and your muskets; 
—How elate I stood and watch’d you, where, starting off, you march’d!

Pass;—then rattle, drums, again! 
Scream, you steamers on the river, out of whistles loud and shrill, your salutes! 
For an army heaves in sight—O another gathering army! 
Swarming, trailing on the rear—O you dread, accruing army! 
O you regiments so piteous, with your mortal di...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...is the camp—one regiment departs to-morrow; 
Do you hear the officers giving the orders? 
Do you hear the clank of the muskets?

Why, what comes over you now, old man? 
Why do you tremble, and clutch my hand so convulsively? 
The troops are but drilling—they are yet surrounded with smiles; 
Around them, at hand, the well-drest friends, and the women; 
While splendid and warm the afternoon sun shines down;
Green the midsummer verdure, and fresh blows the dallying breeze, 
O’e...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Robert
...br> 

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year--
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that s...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...es.
116 We have call'd an Assembly, but not to destroy; we have given gifts, not to the weak;
117 I hear rushing of muskets, and bright'ning of swords, and visages redd'ning with war,
118 Frowning and looking up from brooding villages and every dark'ning city.
119 Ancient wonders frown over the kingdom, and cries of women and babes are heard,
120 And tempests of doubt roll around me, and fierce sorrows, because of the nobles of France.
121 Depart! answer not! for ...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...ets, with their powerful throbs, with the beating drums, as now; 
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even the sight of the
 wounded;)

Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus—with varied chorus, and light
 of the
 sparkling eyes; 
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me....Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...n making speeches;
Where strength of brains united centers
With strength of lungs surpassing Stentor's.
But as some muskets so contrive it,
As oft to miss the mark they drive at,
And though well aim'd at duck or plover,
Bear wide, and kick their owners over:
So fared our 'Squire, whose reas'ning toil
Would often on himself recoil,
And so much injured more his side,
The stronger arguments he applied;
As old war-elephants, dismay'd,
Trod down the troops they came to aid,
An...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...ught with ass's jaw for rarity
With more success, or singularity.
I saw our vet'ran thousands yield,
And pile their muskets on the field,
And peasant guards, in rueful plight,
March off our captured bands from fight;
While every rebel fife in play
To Yankee-doodle tuned its lay,
And like the music of the spheres,
Mellifluous sooth'd their vanquish'd ears."


"Alas, I cried, what baleful star
Sheds fatal influence on the war?
And who that chosen Chief of fame,
That hea...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...r old woman who was combing
out her long white wraith hair
is gone, embalmed even now,
even tonight her arms are smooth
muskets at her side and nothing
issues from her but her last word - "Oh." Surprised by death.

It is snowing. Paper spots
are falling from the punch.
Hello? Mrs. Death is here!
She suffers according to the digits
of my hate. I hear the filaments
of alabaster. I would lie down
with them and lift my madness
off like a wig. I wou...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...e; 
Some, half-kill’d, attempted to crawl away;
These were despatch’d with bayonets, or batter’d with the blunts of
 muskets; 
A youth not seventeen years old seiz’d his assassin till two more came to
 release him; 
The three were all torn, and cover’d with the boy’s blood. 

At eleven o’clock began the burning of the bodies: 
That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men.

35
Would you hear of an old-fashion’d sea-fight? 
Would ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...sh to the last, reverberates round me; 
As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles; 
While the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders; 
While I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders;
While those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them, appearing in the distance, approach
 and
 pass
 on, returning homeward, 
Moving with steady motion, swaying to and fro, to the right and left, 
Evenly, lightly rising and falling, as the st...Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...thousands
Did the southern fields bedew.
In the darkness of their bondage,
In the depths of slavery's night,
Their muskets flashed the dawning,
And they fought their way to light.
They were comrades then and brothers,
Are they more or less to-day?
They were good to stop a bullet
And to front the fearful fray.
They were citizens and soldiers,
When rebellion raised its head;
And the traits that made them worthy,—
Ah! those virtues are not dead.
They have shared y...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...brave hero hastened on, and when he came there,
He found the thirty men had fled in wild despair;
Leaving their thirty muskets behind,
But to defend the garrison to the last he made up his mind. 

And in searching he found several boxes of ammunition not destroyed,
And for a moment he felt a little annoyed;
Then he fastened the main door, with the articles he did find,
And when he had done so he felt satisfied in mind. 

Then he ate heartily of the provisions he had ...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...es.
116 We have call'd an Assembly, but not to destroy; we have given gifts, not to the weak;
117 I hear rushing of muskets, and bright'ning of swords, and visages redd'ning with war,
118 Frowning and looking up from brooding villages and every dark'ning city.
119 Ancient wonders frown over the kingdom, and cries of women and babes are heard,
120 And tempests of doubt roll around me, and fierce sorrows, because of the nobles of France.
121 Depart! answer not! for ...Read more of this...

by Noyes, Alfred
...tead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two fo them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
 There was death at every window;
 And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now keep good watch!" and they kissed her. She heard the...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...and travel-worn, 
And, by twos, and threes, the young men stole away to join Kinghorn. 

Slipping powder-horns and muskets from beneath the floors and thatch, 
There were boys who kissed their mothers ere they softly dropped the latch; 
There were hunters' wives in backwoods who sat strangely still and white 
Till the dawn, because their men-folk went a-hunting in the night. 

But the rebels needed money, and so, through the Buckland hills, 
Came again, by night, the...Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...I have made them men."
They went to the blue lines gladly, and the blue lines took them in,
And the men who saw their muskets' fire thought not of their dusky skin.
The gray lines rose and melted beneath their scathing showers,
And they said, "'T is true, they have force to do, these old slave boys of ours."
Ah, Wagner saw their glory, and Pillow knew their blood,
That poured on a nation's altar, a sacrificial flood.
Port Hudson heard their war-cry that smote its smoke...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things