Famous Riders Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Riders poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous riders poems. These examples illustrate what a famous riders poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...a winner indeed
In my restless, troubled slumber;
While the night-mares race through my heated brain
And their devil-riders spur amain,
The trip for the Cup will reward my pain,
And I'll spot the winning number.
Thousands and thousands and thousands more,
Like sands on the white Pacific shore,
The crowding people cluster;
For evermore is the story old,
While races are bought and backers are sold,
Drawn by the greed of the gain of gold,
In their thousands still th...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...and his gaze fell down the well
Of the great darkness under the slick glitter,
And he was only one among eight million riders and
readers.
And all the while under his empty smile the shaking drum
Of the long determined passage passed through him
By his body mimicked and echoed. And then the train
Like a suddenly storming rain, began to rush and thresh--
The silent or passive night, pressing and impressing
The patients' foreheads with a tightening-like image
Of the rushing ...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...for sale?
If you love me as I love you
We'll play the game and win it too.
So long as Lust or Lucre tempt
Straight riders from the course,
So long as with each drink we pour
Black brewage of Remorse,
So long as those unloaded guns
We keep beside the bed,
Blow off, by obvious accident,
The lucky owner's head,
If you love me as I love you
What can Life kill of Death undo?
So long as Death 'twixt dance and dance
Chills best and bravest blood,
And drops the reckless r...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...ling?
His tongue is growing hotter now
Since Andy cross'd the Darling.
The gates are out of order now,
In storms the 'riders' rattle;
For far across the border now
Our Andy's gone with cattle.
Poor Aunty's looking thin and white;
And Uncle's cross with worry;
And poor old Blucher howls all night
Since Andy left Macquarie.
Oh, may the showers in torrents fall,
And all the tanks run over;
And may the grass grow green and tall
In pathways of the drover;
And may good ange...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...en.
The girl with the pretty face
is out picking olives.
The wind, playboy of towers,
grabs her around the waist.
Four riders passed by
on Andalusian ponies,
with blue and green jackets
and big, dark capes.
"Come to Cordoba, muchacha."
The girl won't listen to them.
Three young bullfighters passed,
slender in the waist,
with jackets the color of oranges
and swords of ancient silver.
"Come to Sevilla, muchacha."
The girl won't listen to them.
When the afternoon had turned
dar...Read more of this...
by
García Lorca, Federico
....
He looks upon his son’s house sorrowfully,
the wasted joy-house, the windy resting-place
lamenting and bereft. The riders sleep,
the heroes in their hiding-place.
There is no voice of the harp, no joy in the yard,
like there used to be— (ll. 2444-59)
XXXV.
“Then he goes to his bed, singing a sorrow-song,
alone for his lonely one. Everything seems too wide
for him, the fields and the places of habitation. (ll. 2460-62a)
“Just like that the helmet of the...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...altogether good in this long passage which describes the rejoicings of “the day after”; but the present shift from the riders on the road to the folk at the hall is not very violent, and is of a piece with the general style.
{14a} Unferth, Beowulf’s sometime opponent in the flyting.
{15a} There is no horrible inconsistency here such as the critics strive and cry about. In spite of the ruin that Grendel and Beowulf had made within the hall, the framework and roof held f...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...ots with Pancho Villa
And wrote letters of Villa as a rock of the people.
How can I tell how Don Magregor went?
Three riders emptied lead into him.
He lay on the main street of an inland town.
A boy sat near all day throwing stones
To keep pigs away.
The Villa men buried him in a pit
With twenty Carranzistas.
There is drama in that point…
…the boy and the pigs.
Griffith would make a movie of it to fetch sobs.
Victor Herbert would have the drums whirr
In a weave with a hig...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...urs? Here are two majesties.
Favor the Left a little, Hamilton,
Or you’ll be floundering in the ditch that waits
For riders who forget where they are riding.
If we and France, as you anticipate,
Must eat each other, what Cæsar, if not yourself,
Do you see for the master of the feast?
There may be a place waiting on your head
For laurel thick as Nero’s. You don’t know.
I have not crossed your glory, though I might
If I saw thrones at auction.
HAMILTON
Yes, you might...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ight-armed troops
In coats of mail and military pride.
In mail their horses clad, yet fleet and strong,
Prauncing their riders bore, the flower and choice
Of many provinces from bound to bound—
From Arachosia, from Candaor east,
And Margiana, to the Hyrcanian cliffs
Of Caucasus, and dark Iberian dales;
From Atropatia, and the neighbouring plains
Of Adiabene, Media, and the south
Of Susiana, to Balsara's haven.
He saw them in their forms of battle ranged,
How quick they wheel...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...dirty clothes
spills all day long
down the mountain
beating the rocks
with a horrible washer-woman's cry.
Now two riders go by
horseback on the dirt road.
Young women talking of antique latches,
blind to the dirty linen,
smells of urine, bedsores,
bowels of old women
left on their backs,
fat and lye,
lies of doctoring men.
Strange weather mid-summer
is summer spent.
I open a book of poems.
All lies on the psalter, I say,
the dead are silent.
The riders com...Read more of this...
by
Stone, Ruth
...rom the Latin speculum, mirror):
They seek and cannot find the meaning of the music.
We see only postures of the dream,
Riders of the motion that swings the face
Into view under evening skies, with no
False disarray as proof of authenticity.
But it is life englobed.
One would like to stick one's hand
Out of the globe, but its dimension,
What carries it, will not allow it.
No doubt it is this, not the reflex
To hide something, which makes the hand loom large
As it retreats sli...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...lutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with the ooze of my
skin;
I fall on the weeds and stones;
The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
Taunt my dizzy ears, and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks.
Agonies are one of my changes of garments;
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels—I myself become the wounded
person;
My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.
I am the mash’d fireman with breast-b...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ward his castle from out of the valley,
Men and women, like new-hatched spiders,
Come out with the morning to greet our riders.
And up they wound till they reached the ditch,
Whereat all stopped save one, a witch
That I knew, as she hobbled from the group,
By her gait directly and her stoop,
I, whom Jacynth was used to importune
To let that same witch tell us our fortune.
The oldest Gipsy then above ground;
And, sure as the autumn season came round,
She paid us a visit for pr...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...'er his head;
The foremost Tartar bites the ground!
Scarce had they time to check the rein,
Swift from their steeds the riders bound;
But three shall never mount again:
Unseen the foes that gave the wound,
The dying ask revenge in vain.
With steel unsheathed, and carbine bent,
Some o'er their courser's harness leant,
Half sheltered by the steed;
Some fly behind the nearest rock,
And there await the coming shock,
Nor tamely stand to bleed
Beneath the shaft of foes unseen,
Who...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...iumphant where
once a plot is weaved, a rider rides
into anonymity:
what is it that they seek -
These silent riders?
Glory? Memory?
What is it that they want among those
who have fallen from their swords?
Piety? Ablution? Anonymity?
It is not enough to bury the sword
in the fold of the embrace;
nor is it wise, even prudent, to
seek meaning in past deeds
when those deeds are immortal,
or of an impure genealogy -
What do they seek in th...Read more of this...
by
Nwakanma, Obi
...moment, and once more
The trumpet, and again: at which the storm
Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears
And riders front to front, until they closed
In conflict with the crash of shivering points,
And thunder. Yet it seemed a dream, I dreamed
Of fighting. On his haunches rose the steed,
And into fiery splinters leapt the lance,
And out of stricken helmets sprang the fire.
Part sat like rocks: part reeled but kept their seats:
Part rolled on the earth and ro...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...And wonder if thou haunt'st their shy retreats.
For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground!
Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe,
Returning home on summer-nights, have met
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bablock-hithe,
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,
As the punt's rope chops round;
And leaning backward in a pensive dream,
And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers
Plucked in the shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers,
And thine eyes resting on the moonlit s...Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...ng but Herod the Great!"
They thought the Wise Men were men insane,
As they spurred their horses across the plain,
Like riders in haste, and who cannot wait.
And when they came to Jerusalem,
Herod the Great, who had heard this thing,
Sent for the Wise Men and questioned them;
And said, "Go down unto Bethlehem,
And bring me tidings of this new king."
So they rode away; and the star stood still,
The only one in the gray of morn
Yes, it stopped, it stood still of its own fre...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...the morning town,
And leave the poppied pickthank where he lies;
The fences of the light are down,
All but the briskest riders thrown
And worlds hang on the trees....Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Dylan
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