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Famous Ruling Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...


“Of these am I—Coila my name:
And this district as mine I claim,
Where once the Campbells, chiefs of fame,
 Held ruling power:
I mark’d thy embryo-tuneful flame,
 Thy natal hour.


“With future hope I oft would gaze
Fond, on thy little early ways,
Thy rudely, caroll’d, chiming phrase,
 In uncouth rhymes;
Fir’d at the simple, artless lays
 Of other times.


“I saw thee seek the sounding shore,
Delighted with the dashing roar;
 Or when the North his fleecy store
...Read more of this...



by Spenser, Edmund
...ow'd with glist'ring stars more thick than grass,
Whereof each other doth in brightness pass,
But those two most, which ruling night and day,
As king and queen, the heavens' empire sway;

And tell me then, what hast thou ever seen
That to their beauty may compared be,
Or can the sight that is most sharp and keen
Endure their captain's flaming head to see?
How much less those, much higher in degree,
And so much fairer, and much more than these,
As these are fairer than the lan...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...when I am gone 
Who used to lay them! hold them outer fiends, 
Who leap at thee to tear thee; shake them aside, 
Dreams ruling when wit sleeps! yea, but to dream 
That any of these would wrong thee, wrongs thyself. 
Witness their flowery welcome. Bound are they 
To speak no evil. Truly save for fears, 
My fears for thee, so rich a fellowship 
Would make me wholly blest: thou one of them, 
Be one indeed: consider them, and all 
Their bearing in their common bond of...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...use of life; 
Nor call thy spirit barely adequate 
To help on life in straight ways, broad enough 
For vulgar souls, by ruling and the rest. 
Thou, in the daily building of thy tower,-- 
Whether in fierce and sudden spasms of toil, 
Or through dim lulls of unapparent growth, 
Or when the general work 'mid good acclaim 
Climbed with the eye to cheer the architect,-- 
Didst ne'er engage in work for mere work's sake-- 
Hadst ever in thy heart the luring hope 
Of some eventua...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...
And unmolested, fools and knaves at length
Induce long wars which sap a country's strength.
The sloth of leaders, ruling but in name, 
Has dragged full many a nation down to shame.
A word unspoken by the rightful lips
Has dyed the land with blood, and blocked the sea with ships.



XXII.
The word withheld, when Indians asked for aid, 
Came when the red man started on his raid.
What Justice with a gesture might have done
Was left for noisy war with bellow...Read more of this...



by Pope, Alexander
...r Shame or Pride, 
Weakness or Delicacy; all so nice, 
That each may seem a Virtue, or a Vice. 

In Men, we various Ruling Passions find; 
In Women, two almost divide the kind; 
Those, only fix'd, they first or last obey, 
The Love of Pleasure, and the Love of Sway. 

That, Nature gives; and where the lesson taught 
Is but to please, can Pleasure seem a fault? 
Experience, this; by Man's oppression curst, 
They seek the second not to lose the first. 

Men, some to...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...ut the whole must fall. 
Let Earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly, 
Planets and Suns run lawless thro' the sky, 
Let ruling Angels from their spheres be hurl'd, 
Being on being wreck'd, and world on world, 
Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod, 
And Nature tremble to the throne of God: 
All this dread ORDER break -- for whom? for thee? 
Vile worm! -- oh, Madness, Pride, Impiety!

IX. What if the foot, ordain'd the dust to tread, 
Or hand to toil, aspir'd to b...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...eates 
Th' harmonious city of the seven gates. 

Such was that wondrous order and consent, 
When Cromwell tuned the ruling Instrument, 
While tedious statesmen many years did hack, 
Framing a liberty that still went back, 
Whose numerous gorge could swallow in an hour 
That island, which the sea cannot devour: 
Then our Amphion issued out and sings, 
And once he struck, and twice, the powerful strings. 

The Commonwealth then first together came, 
And each one entered...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...at thou with holy mouth speakest,
Will with omnipotent power impel the wondering senses;
Thou but observest not the god ruling within thine own breast,
Not the might of the signet that bows all spirits before thee;
Simple and silent thou goest through the wide world thou hast won....Read more of this...

by Keats, John
..., our parentage,
The Heavens and the Earth, were manifest:
Then thou first born, and we the giant race,
Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms.
Now comes the pain of truth, to whom 'tis pain;
O folly! for to bear all naked truths,
And to envisage circumstance, all calm,
That is the top of sovereignty. Mark well!
As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far
Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs;
And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth
In form and...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ined on the burning lake; nor ever thence 
Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will 
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven 
Left him at large to his own dark designs, 
That with reiterated crimes he might 
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought 
Evil to others, and enraged might see 
How all his malice served but to bring forth 
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn 
On Man by him seduced, but on himself 
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured. ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ur and endurance. This deep world 
Of darkness do we dread? How oft amidst 
Thick clouds and dark doth Heaven's all-ruling Sire 
Choose to reside, his glory unobscured, 
And with the majesty of darkness round 
Covers his throne, from whence deep thunders roar. 
Mustering their rage, and Heaven resembles Hell! 
As he our darkness, cannot we his light 
Imitate when we please? This desert soil 
Wants not her hidden lustre, gems and gold; 
Nor want we skill or art from wh...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...es also know, and write, and teach
To admiration, led by Nature's light;
And with the Gentiles much thou must converse,
Ruling them by persuasion, as thou mean'st. 
Without their learning, how wilt thou with them,
Or they with thee, hold conversation meet?
How wilt thou reason with them, how refute
Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes?
Error by his own arms is best evinced.
Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount,
Westward, much nearer by south-west; behold
...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...fering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine--and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to a...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...grim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets of Mecca! 
You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Bab-el-mandeb, ruling your families and tribes!

You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth, Damascus, or Lake Tiberias!
You Thibet trader on the wide inland, or bargaining in the shops of Lassa! 
You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Borneo! 
All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of place! 
All y...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...im,
A watchful Sprite, and Ariel is my Name.
Late, as I rang'd the Crystal Wilds of Air,
In the clear Mirror of thy ruling Star
I saw, alas! some dread Event impend,
E're to the Main this Morning Sun descend. 
But Heav'n reveals not what, or how, or where:
Warn'd by thy Sylph, oh Pious Maid beware!
This to disclose is all thy Guardian can.
Beware of all, but most beware of Man!

He said; when Shock, who thought she slept too long,
Leapt up, and wak'd his Mistress ...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...ch
The humble lest they too reach 
Those splendid heights where a little band 
Have always stood and will always stand 
Ruling the fate of this small green land, 
Rulers of England—for them must I 
Send out my only son to die? 

LI 
And then, and then, 
I thought of Elizabeth stepping down 
Over the stones of Plymouth town 
To welcome her sailors, common men, 
She herself, as she used to say, 
Being' mere English' as much as they— 
Seafaring men who sailed away 
From rocky in...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Art with poisonous honey stolen from France, 
And that which knows, but careful for itself, 
And that which knows not, ruling that which knows 
To its own harm: the goal of this great world 
Lies beyond sight: yet--if our slowly-grown 
And crowned Republic's crowning common-sense, 
That saved her many times, not fail--their fears 
Are morning shadows huger than the shapes 
That cast them, not those gloomier which forego 
The darkness of that battle in the West, 
Where all of...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...ooded the sky with exhilarating song, welcoming the new tyrant who would affix the yoke of oppression to their necks by ruling the weak with bitter authority, and exploiting their bodies and killing their souls. For that destiny, the people were singing and drinking ecstatically to the heady of the new Emir. 

Another child entered life and that kingdom at the same time. While the crowds were glorifying the strong and belittling themselves by singing praise to a p...Read more of this...

by Harrison, Tony
...

Letters of transparent tubes and gas
in Düsseldorf are blue and flash out KRUPP.
Arms are hoisted for the British ruling class
and clandestine, genteel aggro keeps them up.

And there's HARRISON on some Leeds building sites
I've taken in fun as blazoning my name,
which I've also seen on books, in Broadway lights,
so why can't skins with spraycans do the same?

But why inscribe these graves with **** and ****?
Why choose neglected tombstones to disfigure?
This pitman...Read more of this...

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