Famous Napoleon Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte

by George (Lord) Byron
 I 
'Tis done -- but yesterday a King! 
And arm'd with Kings to strive -- 
And now thou art a nameless thing: 
So abject -- yet alive! 
Is this the man of thousand thrones, 
Who strew'd our earth with hostile bones, 
And can he thus survive? 
Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star, 
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so...Read more of this...

The discreet collector

by Eugene Field
 Down south there is a curio-shop
Unknown to many men;
Thereat do I intend to stop
When I am south again;
The narrow street through which to go--
Aha! I know it well!
And may be you would like to know--
But no--I will not tell!

'T is there to find the loveliest plates
(The bluest of the blue!)
At such surprisingly low rates
You'd not believe it true!
And there...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Photographing

by Lewis Carroll
 From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing; 

But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid. 

This he perched upon a tripod -
Crouched beneath its...Read more of this...

Boy and Father

by Carl Sandburg
 THE BOY Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer.
The leather law books of Alexander’s father fill a room like hay in a barn.
Alexander has asked his father to let him build a house like bricklayers build, a house with walls and roofs made of big leather law books.

 The rain beats on the windows
 And the raindrops...Read more of this...

Kinsey Keene

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Your attention, Thomas Rhodes, president of the bank;
Coolbaugh Wedon, editor of the Argus;
Rev. Peet, pastor of the leading church;
A.D. Blood, several times Mayor of Spoon River;
And finally all of you, members of the Social Purity Club--
Your attention to Cambronne's dying words,
Standing with heroic remnant
Of Napoleon's guard on Mount Saint Jean
At the battle field of Waterloo,
When Maitland, the Englishman, called...Read more of this...

The Swarm

by Sylvia Plath
 Somebody is shooting at something in our town --
A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street.
Jealousy can open the blood,
It can make black roses.
Who are the shooting at?

It is you the knives are out for
At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon,
The hump of Elba on your short back,
And the snow, marshaling its brilliant cutlery
Mass after mass, saying Shh!

Shh! These are chess people...Read more of this...

The List of Famous Hats

by Edward Taylor
 Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous
hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for
show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all hon-
esty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a
corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The
first...Read more of this...

The First Grenadier of France

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in a certain regiment of French Grenadiers,
A touching and beautiful custom was observed many years;
Which was meant to commemorate the heroism of a departed comrade,
And when the companies assembled for parade,
There was one name at roll call to which no answer was made 

It was that of the noble La Tour d'Auvergne,
The first Grenadier of France, heroic and...Read more of this...

Napoleon

by Walter de la Mare
 'What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I:
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky;
Soldiers, this solitude
Through which we go
Is I.'...Read more of this...

Fact Or Fable?

by Victor Hugo
 (BISMARCK AND NAPOLEON III.) 
 
 ("Un jour, sentant un royal appétit.") 
 
 {Bk. III. iii., Jersey, September, 1852.} 


 One fasting day, itched by his appetite, 
 A monkey took a fallen tiger's hide, 
 And, where the wearer had been savage, tried 
 To overpass his model. Scratch and bite 
 Gave place, however, to mere...Read more of this...

Louis Napoleon

by Oscar Wilde
 Eagle of Austerlitz! where were thy wings
When far away upon a barbarous strand,
In fight unequal, by an obscure hand,
Fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings!

Poor boy! thou shalt not flaunt thy cloak of red,
Or ride in state through Paris in the van
Of thy returning legions, but instead
Thy mother France, free and republican,

Shall on thy dead and crownless...Read more of this...

Each And All

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,
Of thee, from the hill-top looking down;
And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton tolling the bell at noon,
Dreams not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's...Read more of this...

Gustav Richter

by Edgar Lee Masters
 After a long day of work in my hot-houses
Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side
Your dreams may be abruptly ended.
I was among my flowers where some one
Seemed to be raising them on trial,
As if after-while to be transplanted
To a larger garden of freer air.
And I was disembodied vision
Amid a light, as it were the sun
Had...Read more of this...

The Battle of Waterloo

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year 1815, and on the 18th day of June,
That British cannon, against the French army, loudly did boom,
Upon the ever memorable bloody field of Waterloo;
Which Napoleon remembered while in St. Helena, and bitterly did rue. 
The morning of the 18th was gloomy and cheerless to behold,
But the British soon recovered from the severe cold
That they had...Read more of this...

Second Poem

by Peter Orlovsky
 Morning again, nothing has to be done, 
 maybe buy a piano or make fudge.
At least clean the room up for sure like my farther I've done flick 
 the ashes & butts over the bed side on the floor.
But frist of all wipe my glasses and drink the water 
 to clean the smelly mouth.
A nock on the...Read more of this...

Louis Napoleon

by Oscar Wilde
 Eagle of Austerlitz! where were thy wings
When far away upon a barbarous strand,
In fight unequal, by an obscure hand,
Fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings!

Poor boy! thou shalt not flaunt thy cloak of red,
Or ride in state through Paris in the van
Of thy returning legions, but instead
Thy mother France, free and republican,

Shall on thy dead and crownless...Read more of this...

Napoleon "the Little."

by Victor Hugo
 ("Ah! tu finiras bien par hurler!") 
 
 {Bk. III. ii., Jersey, August, 1852.} 


 How well I knew this stealthy wolf would howl, 
 When in the eagle talons ta'en in air! 
 Aglow, I snatched thee from thy prey—thou fowl— 
 I held thee, abject conqueror, just where 
 All see the stigma of a fitting name...Read more of this...

My Napoleon

by Victor Hugo
 ("Toujours lui! lui partout!") 
 
 {XL., December, 1828.} 


 Above all others, everywhere I see 
 His image cold or burning! 
 My brain it thrills, and oftentime sets free 
 The thoughts within me yearning. 
 My quivering lips pour forth the words 
 That cluster in his name of glory— 
 The star gigantic with its...Read more of this...

Pick Offs

by Carl Sandburg
 THE TELESCOPE picks off star dust
on the clean steel sky and sends it to me.

The telephone picks off my voice and
sends it cross country a thousand miles.

The eyes in my head pick off pages of
Napoleon memoirs … a rag handler,
a head of dreams walks in a sheet of
mist … the palace panels shut in nobodies
drinking nothings out of silver
helmets...Read more of this...

Statistics

by Carl Sandburg
 NAPOLEON shifted,
Restless in the old sarcophagus
And murmured to a watchguard:
"Who goes there?"
"Twenty-one million men,
Soldiers, armies, guns,
Twenty-one million
Afoot, horseback,
In the air,
Under the sea."
And Napoleon turned to his sleep:
"It is not my world answering;
It is some dreamer who knows not
The world I marched in
From Calais to Moscow."
And he slept on
In the old sarcophagus
While the aeroplanes
Droned their motors
Between Napoleon's mausoleum
And the cool...Read more of this...

The Alarm

by Thomas Hardy
 In Memory of one of the Writer's Family who was a Volunteer during the War
with Napoleon

In a ferny byway
Near the great South-Wessex Highway,
A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;
The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no sky-way,
And twilight cloaked the croft.

'Twas hard to realize on
This snug side the mute horizon
That beyond it hostile armaments might steer,
Save from...Read more of this...

Always the Mob

by Carl Sandburg
 JESUS emptied the devils of one man into forty hogs and the hogs took the edge of a high rock and dropped off and down into the sea: a mob.

The sheep on the hills of Australia, blundering fourfooted in the sunset mist to the dark, they go one way, they hunt one sleep, they find one pocket of grass...Read more of this...

At the Tomb of Napoleon

by Alan Seeger
 I stood beside his sepulchre whose fame, 
Hurled over Europe once on bolt and blast, 
Now glows far off as storm-clouds overpast 
Glow in the sunset flushed with glorious flame. 
Has Nature marred his mould? Can Art acclaim 
No hero now, no man with whom men side 
As with their hearts' high needs personified? 
There are will say, One...Read more of this...

The List of Famous Hats

by James Tate
 Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous
hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for
show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all hon-
esty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a
corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The
first...Read more of this...

To The Napoleon Column

by Victor Hugo
 {Oct. 9, 1830.} 


 When with gigantic hand he placed, 
 For throne, on vassal Europe based, 
 That column's lofty height— 
 Pillar, in whose dread majesty, 
 In double immortality, 
 Glory and bronze unite! 
 Aye, when he built it that, some day, 
 Discord or war their course might stay, 
 Or here might break...Read more of this...

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