Famous Proclamation Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Corinnas Going A-Maying

by Robert Herrick
 Get up, get up for shame! the blooming morn
Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.
See how Aurora throws her fair
Fresh-quilted colours through the air!
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
The dew bespangled herb and tree.
Each flower has wept and bowed toward the east
Above an hour since,—yet you not dressed;
Nay! not so much as out of bed?
When all the birds have...Read more of this...

Mothers Day Proclamation

by Julia Ward Howe
 Arise then...women of this day! 
Arise, all women who have hearts! 
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! 
Say firmly: 
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, 
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, 
For caresses and applause. 
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn 
All that we have...Read more of this...

The Reckoning

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 LEADER.

LET no cares now hover o'er us

Let the wine unsparing run!
Wilt thou swell our merry chorus?

Hast thou all thy duty done?

SOLO.

Two young folks--the thing is curious--

Loved each other; yesterday
Both quite mild, to-day quite furious,

Next day, quite the deuce to pay!
If her neck she there was stooping,

He must here needs pull his hair.
I revived their spirits drooping,

And they're now a...Read more of this...

The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race

by Vachel Lindsay
 I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, 
A deep rolling bass.
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
THEN I had religion, THEN...Read more of this...

Proclamation Without Pretension

by Tristan Tzara
 Art is going to sleep for a new world to be born
"ART"-parrot word-replaced by DADA,
PLESIOSAURUS, or handkerchief

The talent THAT CAN BE LEARNED makes the
poet a druggist TODAY the criticism
of balances no longer challenges with resemblances

Hypertrophic painters hyperaes-
theticized and hypnotized by the hyacinths
of the hypocritical-looking muezzins

CONSOLIDATE THE HARVEST OF EX-
ACT CALCULATIONS

Hypodrome of immortal guarantees: there is
no such thing as importance...Read more of this...

The Dandelions pallid tube

by Emily Dickinson
 The Dandelion's pallid tube
Astonishes the Grass,
And Winter instantly becomes
An infinite Alas --

The tube uplifts a signal Bud
And then a shouting Flower, --
The Proclamation of the Suns
That sepulture is o'er....Read more of this...

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

by Anne Sexton
 If you danced from midnight
to six A.M. who would understand?

The runaway boy
who chucks it all
to live on the Boston Common
on speed and saltines,
pissing in the duck pond,
rapping with the street priest,
trading talk like blows,
another missing person,
would understand.

The paralytic's wife
who takes her love to town,
sitting on the bar stool,
downing stingers and peanuts,
singing "That ole Ace down in the hole,"
would understand.

The...Read more of this...

The Beasts Confession

by Jonathan Swift
 To the Priest, on Observing how most Men mistake their own Talents
When beasts could speak (the learned say, 
They still can do so ev'ry day),
It seems, they had religion then,
As much as now we find in men.
It happen'd, when a plague broke out
(Which therefore made them more devout),
The king of brutes (to make it plain,
Of quadrupeds I only mean)
By...Read more of this...

Hymn to Proserpine (After the Proclamation of the Christian

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Vicisti, Galilæe
I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that weep;
For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.
Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of...Read more of this...

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