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Famous Officers Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...that ignorant British reckon with "Dagoes and such" – 
(Where'er, on a wreck titanic, in a scene of wild despair, 
The officers call for assistance, a Swede or a Norse is there.) 

Tale of a wreck titanic, with the last boat over the side, 
And a brave young husband fighting his clinging, hysterical bride; 
He strikes her fair on the temple, while the decks are scarce afloat, 
And he kisses her once on the forehead, and he drops her into the boat. 
So he goes to his death to...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry



...ght enjoy,
If kings unquestion'd can those laws destroy.
Yet, if the crowd be judge of fit and just,
And kings are only officers in trust,
Then this resuming cov'nant was declar'd
When Kings were made, or is for ever bar'd:
If those who gave the sceptre could not tie
By their own deed their own posterity,
How then could Adam bind his future race?
How could his forfeit on mankind take place?
Or how could heavenly justice damn us all,
Who ne'er consented to our father's fall?
T...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John
...ew seconds, not a shot fired on either side; 
Then resumed, the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls, and orders of officers; 
While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears a shout of applause,
 (some
 special success;) 
And ever the sound of the cannon, far or near, (rousing, even in dreams, a devilish
 exultation,
 and
 all the old mad joy, in the depths of my soul;)
And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions—batteries, cavalry, moving
 ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...stimony, are you and me, 
Its crimes, lies, thefts, defections, slavery, are you and me,
Its Congress is you and me—the officers, capitols, armies, ships, are you and me, 
Its endless gestations of new States are you and me, 
The war—that war so bloody and grim—the war I will henceforth forget—was
 you and
 me, 
Natural and artificial are you and me, 
Freedom, language, poems, employments, are you and me,
Past, present, future, are you and me. 

18
I swear I dare not shirk an...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...orm of Chastity!
I see ye visibly, and now believe
That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,
Would send a glistering guardian, if need were,
To keep my life and honour unassailed. . . .
Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
I did not err: there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night,
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.
I cannot hallo to my brothers, but
Such...Read more of this...
by Milton, John



...all his blood
Drew in the dewy meadowy morning-breath
Of England, blown across her ghostly wall:
And that same morning officers and men
Levied a kindly tax upon themselves,
Pitying the lonely man, and gave him it:
Then moving up the coast they landed him,
Ev'n in that harbor whence he sail'd before. 

There Enoch spoke no word to anyone,
But homeward--home--what home? had he a home?
His home, he walk'd. Bright was that afternoon,
Sunny but chill; till drawn thro' either chas...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...afe to give. Let them on powders, oils, and paintings spend, Till that no usurer, nor his bawds dare lend Them or their officers ;  and no man know,When their own parasites laugh at their fall, May they have nothing left, whereof they can Boast, but how oft they have gone wrong to man, And call it their brave sin : for such there be That do sin only for the infamy ; And never think, how vice doth every hour Eat on her clients, and some one devour. You, madam, young have learn...Read more of this...
by Jonson, Ben
...lful destruction of the spirit)
by those loudspeaking themselves
as poetry's protectors - publishers
editors literature officers
poetry societies and centres

all all jumping on the flagship
competition's crock of gold
find the winners pick the famous
all the hopefuls cry please name us
aspiring poets search their wardrobes
for the wordy swimsuit likely
to catch the eyeful of the judges
(winners too in previous contests

inured to the needle of success
but this time though no...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg
...d the ether, they making bloody
The tray of knives, the antiseptic funeral;

Bring out the black patrol,
Your monstrous officers and the decaying army,
The sexton sentinel, garrisoned under thistles,
A cock-on-a-dunghill
Crowing to Lazarus the morning is vanity,
Dust be your saviour under the conjured soil.)

As they drown, the chime travels,
Sweetly the diver's bell in the steeple of spindrift
Rings out the Dead Sea scale;
And, clapped in water till the triton dangles,
Strun...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan
...it is rather there then in my coffers. 

For I blessed God in St James's Park till I routed all the company. 

For the officers of the peace are at variance with me, and the watchman smites me with his staff. 

For I am the seed of the WELCH WOMAN and speak the truth from my heart. 

For they lay wagers touching my life. -- God be gracious to the winners. 

For the piety of Rizpah is imitable in the Lord -- wherefore I pray for the dead. 

For the Lord is my ROCK and I am th...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher
...like the spice he stole. 
Headless St Denys so his head does bear, 
And both of them alike French martyrs were. 
Court officers, as used, the next place took, 
And followed, Fox, but with disdainful look. 
His birth, his youth, his brokage all dispraise 
In vain, for always he commands that pays. 
Then the procurers under Progers filed-- 
Gentlest of men-- and his lieutenant mild, 
Brounker--Love's squire--through all the field arrayed, 
No troop was better clad, nor so well...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew
...fierce like mighty Nimrod,
Made on our troops a furious inroad,
And levelling squint on barrel round,
Brought our beau-officers to ground;
While sunburnt wigs, in high command,
Rush daring on our frighted band,
And ancient beards and hoary hair,
Like meteors, stream in troubled air;
While rifle-frocks drove Gen'rals cap'ring,
And Red-coats shrunk from leathern apron,
And epaulette and gorget run
From whinyard brown and rusty gun.
With locks unshorn not Samson more
Made usele...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John
...of Magdalen
whose sin was of the flesh alone;

of spirit, Peter's,
falling, beneath the flares,
among the "servants and officers."

Old holy sculpture
could set it all together
in one small scene, past and future:

Christ stands amazed,
Peter, two fingers raised
to surprised lips, both as if dazed.

But in between
a little cock is seen
carved on a dim column in the travertine,

explained by gallus canit;
flet Petrus underneath it,
There is inescapable hope, the pivot;

yes, a...Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth
...-days, the defeat at Brooklyn, 
Washington stands inside the lines—he stands on the intrench’d hills, amid a
 crowd of
 officers, 
His face is cold and damp—he cannot repress the weeping drops, 
He lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes—the color is blanch’d from his
 cheeks, 
He sees the slaughter of the southern braves confided to him by their parents.

The same, at last and at last, when peace is declared, 
He stands in the room of the old tavern—the well-belov’d soldiers...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...iskers; 
The flames, spite of all that can be done, flickering aloft and below; 
The husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for duty;
Formless stacks of bodies, and bodies by themselves—dabs of flesh upon the
 masts and spars, 
Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves, 
Black and impassive guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent, 
Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore,
 death-messages...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...iction, except that
of the Pope, which made them exceedingly obnoxious to the
bishops and of course to all the inferior officers of the national
hierarchy." Both tales, whatever their origin, are bitter satires
on the greed and worldliness of the Romish clergy.



THE TALE.


Whilom* there was dwelling in my country *once on a time
An archdeacon, a man of high degree,
That boldely did execution,
In punishing of fornication,
Of witchecraft, and eke of bawdery,
Of defamation, a...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...own say the builders of a harbour.
They came and cut a shape out of ocean
and left stone to close around their labour.

Officers and their wives promenaded
on this spot once and saw with their own eyes
the opulent horizon and obedient skies
which nine tenths of the law provided.

And frigates with thirty-six guns, cruising
the outer edges of influence, could idle
and enter here and catch the tide of
empire and arrogance and the Irish Sea rising

and rising through a century o...Read more of this...
by Boland, Eavan
...he high school prom,

they pack their equipment in silence.

Last night they played the Police Academy Ball and
all the officers slow-danced with target range silhouettes.



This year the theme for the prom is the Tetragrammaton.

A yellow Corsair sails through the disco parking lot
and swaying palms presage the lot of young libertines.

Inside the car a young lady wears a corsage of bullet-sized rodents.
Her date, the handsome cornerback, stretches his talons over the
molde...Read more of this...
by Berman, David
...Promoted to a huntsman’s job, and scent 
Was rotten, and all the foxes disappeared,
And hounds were short of blood; and officers 
From barracks over-rode ’em all day long 
On weedy, whistling nags that knocked a hole 
In every fence; good sportsmen to a man 
And brigadiers by now, but dreadful hard
On a young huntsman keen to show some sport. 

Ay, Hell was thick with captains, and I rode 
The lumbering brute that’s beat in half a mile, 
And blunders into every blind old ditc...Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried
...bling and screaming priest—(soon, soon deserted;)
Of the lessening, year by year, of venerableness, and of the dicta of officers, statutes,
 pulpits, schools; 
Of the rising forever taller and stronger and broader, of the intuitions of men and women,
 and
 of self-esteem, and of personality; 
—Of the New World—Of the Democracies, resplendent, en-masse; 
Of the conformity of politics, armies, navies, to them and to me, 
Of the shining sun by them—Of the inherent light, greater...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry