Famous Procession Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Broadway Pageant

...aded, impassive, 
Ride to-day through Manhattan. 

Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I behold, 
In the procession, along with the nobles of Asia, the errand-bearers, 
Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching; 
But I will sing you a song of what I behold, Libertad. 

2
When million-footed Manhattan, unpent, descends to her pavements;
When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me with the proud roar I love; 
When the round-mouth’d guns,...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt


A Grave

...but you cannot stand in the middle of this;
the sea has nothing to give but a well excavated grave.
The firs stand in a procession, each with an emerald turkey—
 foot at the top,
reserved as their contours, saying nothing;
repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of
 the sea;
the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.
There are others besides you who have worn that look—
whose expression is no longer a protest; the fish no longer
 investigate...Read more of this...
by Moore, Marianne

Absalom And Achitophel

...gave consent;
And peals of thunder shook the firmament.
Henceforth a series of new time began,
The mighty years in long procession ran:
Once more the god-like David was restor'd,
And willing nations knew their lawful lord....Read more of this...
by Dryden, John

As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free

...ted above all;
Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons; 
Out of thy teeming womb, thy giant babes in ceaseless procession issuing, 
Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual strength and life; 
World of the Real! world of the twain in one! 
World of the Soul—born by the world of the real alone—led to identity, body, by
 it
 alone;
Yet in beginning only—incalculable masses of composite, precious materials, 
By history’s cycles forwarded—by every nation...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days

...t I too announce solid things; 
Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing—I watch them,
Like a grand procession, to music of distant bugles, pouring, triumphantly moving—and
 grander heaving in sight; 
They stand for realities—all is as it should be. 

Then my realities; 
What else is so real as mine? 
Libertad, and the divine average—Freedom to every slave on the face of the earth,
The rapt promises and luminé of seers—the spiritual world—these centuries
 ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt


Bridge Over The Aire Book 1

...g

The Sabbath’s silence and the bell

Rope like a hangman’s noose, hymnals

Like tawses, incense like choking fog

The procession to the altar a parade

Of the dead and God was over the road

In the pink and blue threaded lupins

Massed behind the rusted padlock of

The gate to the unused path by the

Bridge over the railway.



I began this prayer of poetry in poverty

And this never-ending song started in silence

After the bells quietened and Sunday was in

Church or stil...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...y
Cheerily called the cock to the sleeping maids of the farm-house.
Soon o'er the yellow fields, in silent and mournful procession,
Came from the neighboring hamlets and farms the Acadian women,
Driving in ponderous wains their household goods to the sea-shore,
Pausing and looking back to gaze once more on their dwellings,
Ere they were shut from sight by the winding road and the woodland.
Close at their sides their children ran, and urged on the oxen,
While in their little h...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Give me the Splendid Silent Sun

...of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me! 
The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the torch-light procession! 
The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high piled military wagons following;
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants; 
Manhattan streets, 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, w...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Hiawathas Lamentation

...phets,
Came to visit Hiawatha;
Built a Sacred Lodge beside him,
To appease him, to console him,
Walked in silent, grave procession,
Bearing each a pouch of healing,
Skin of beaver, lynx, or otter,
Filled with magic roots and simples,
Filled with very potent medicines.
When he heard their steps approaching~,
Hiawatha ceased lamenting,
Called no more on Chibiabos;
Naught he questioned, naught he answered,
But his mournful head uncovered,
From his face the mourning colors
Washed...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

I Sing the Body Electric

...arf?
Each belongs here or anywhere, just as much as the well-off—just as much as you; 
Each has his or her place in the procession. 

(All is a procession; 
The universe is a procession, with measured and beautiful motion.) 

Do you know so much yourself, that you call the slave or the dull-face ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has no right to a sight? 
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float—and the soil is on t...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Passage to India

...
Passage to India! 
Lo, soul, for thee, of tableaus twain, 
I see, in one, the Suez canal initiated, open’d, 
I see the procession of steamships, the Empress Eugenie’s leading the van;
I mark, from on deck, the strange landscape, the pure sky, the level sand in the distance;

I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the workmen gather’d, 
The gigantic dredging machines. 

In one, again, different, (yet thine, all thine, O soul, the same,) 
I see over my own continent the Pacifi...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Song of the Exposition

...r thee come trooping up thy waters and thy lands:
Behold! thy fields and farms, thy far-off woods and mountains, 
As in procession coming. 

Behold! the sea itself! 
And on its limitless, heaving breast, thy ships: 
See! where their white sails, bellying in the wind, speckle the green and blue!
See! thy steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of port! 
See! dusky and undulating, their long pennants of smoke! 

Behold, in Oregon, far in the north and west, 
Or in Maine, ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Song of the Open Road

...rts, governments,—all that was or is apparent upon this
 globe
 or
 any globe, falls into niches and corners before the procession of Souls along the grand
 roads
 of
 the
 universe. 

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all
 other
 progress is the needed emblem and sustenance. 

Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied, 
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepte...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Sunday Morning

...d catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passion of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

2
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace

The Haunted House

...g and her brood,
The emmets of the steps has old possession,
And marched in search of their diurnal food
In undisturbed procession.

As undisturbed as the prehensile cell
Of moth or maggot, or the spider’s tissue,
For never foot upon that threshold fell,
To enter or to issue.

O’er all there hung the shadow of a fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted.

Howbeit, the door I pushed—or so I dreamed--
Which slowl...Read more of this...
by Hood, Thomas

The Jacquerie A Fragment

...en are slain
By the sharp facets of the gem of power,
And how the kings of men are slaves of stones.
But look! The long procession of the kings
Wavers and stops; the world is full of noise,
The ragged peoples storm the palaces,
They rave, they laugh, they thirst, they lap the stream
That trickles from the regal vestments down,
And, lapping, smack their heated chaps for more,
And ply their daggers for it, till the kings
All die and lie in a crooked sprawl of death,
Ungainly, f...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

The Lady of the Lake

...ruth;
     Again his soul he interchanged
     With friends whose hearts were long estranged.
     They come, in dim procession led,
     The cold, the faithless, and the dead;
     As warm each hand, each brow as gay,
     As if they parted yesterday.
     And doubt distracts him at the view,—
     O were his senses false or true?
     Dreamed he of death or broken vow,
     Or is it all a vision now?
     XXXIV.

     At length, with Ellen in a grove
     He s...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Poets Calendar

...efface, 
And drown the farms and hamlets with my rains. 

April 

I open wide the portals of the Spring 
To welcome the procession of the flowers, 
With their gay banners, and the birds that sing 
Their song of songs from their aerial towers. 
I soften with my sunshine and my showers 
The heart of earth; with thoughts of love I glide 
Into the hearts of men; and with the Hours 
Upon the Bull with wreathed horns I ride. 

May 

Hark! The sea-faring wild-fowl loud proclaim 
My ...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

The Triumph Of Eternity

...n dark despair."Now, what I am, and what I was, I know;I see the seasons in procession goWith still increasing speed; while things to come,Unknown, unthought, amid the growing gloomOf long futurity, perplex my soul,While life is posting to its final goal.Mine is the crime, who ought with clearer lightTo...Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

The Wanderer

...hard it blew! 

So that at midnight I was called on deck 
To keep an anchor-watch: I heard the sea 
Roar past in white procession filled with wreck; 
Intense bright stars burned frosty over me, 

And the Greek brig beside us dipped and dipped, 
White to the muzzle like a half-tide rock, 
Drowned to the mainmast with the seas she shipped; 
Her cable-swivels clanged at every shock. 

And like a never-dying force, the wind 
Roared till we shouted with it, roared until 
Its vast...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

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