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Famous Russia Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Hughes, Ted
...Russia and America circle each other;
Threats nudge an act that were without doubt 
A melting of the mould in the mother,
Stones melting about the root.

The quick of the earth burned out:
The toil of all our ages a loss
With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought
(Not to be thought ridiculous)

Shies from the world-cancelling black
Of its playing sha...Read more of this...



by Ginsberg, Allen
...isions and cosmic vibrations. 
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle 
 Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you. 
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by 
 Time Magazine? 
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine. 
I read it every week. 
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner 
 candystore. 
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. 
It's always telling me about responsibility. B...Read more of this...

by Yevtushenko, Yevgeny
...de, helpless. 
In vain I plead with these pogrom bullies. 
While they jeer and shout,
 "Beat the Yids. Save Russia!" 
some grain-marketeer beats up my mother. 
0 my Russian people!
 I know 
 you 
are international to the core. 
But those with unclean hands 
have often made a jingle of your purest name. 
I know the goodness of my land. 
How vile these anti-Semites-
 without a qualm 
they pompously called themselves 
the Union of the Russian People! ...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ing foolery 


Halfway into the next still, on and off! 
As when a traveller, bound from North to South, 
Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France? 
In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain? 
In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers! 
Linen goes next, and last the skin itself, 
A superfluity at Timbuctoo. 
When, through his journey, was the fool at ease? 
I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world, 
I take and like its way of life; I think 
My b...Read more of this...

by Reeser, Jennifer
...I’d buy you a Babushka doll, my heart,
and brush your ash-blonde hair until it gleams,
were Russia and our land not laid apart
by ocean so much deeper than it seems.

I have an oval pin, though -- glossy lacquer
hand-made in Moscow, after glasnost came,
with fine, deft roses on a background blacker
perhaps, than history’s collective shame.

I’ve done my best to compass you with roses:
the tablecloth, the walls, the pillowcase,
the western s...Read more of this...



by Plath, Sylvia
...ll me ---
The terrible brains
Of Krupp, black muzzles
Revolving, the sound
Punching out Absence! Like cannon.
It is Russia I have to get across, it is some was or other.
I am dragging my body
Quietly through the straw of the boxcars.
Now is the time for bribery.
What do wheels eat, these wheels
Fixed to their arcs like gods,
The silver leash of the will ----
Inexorable. And their pride!
All the gods know destinations.
I am a letter in this slot!
I fly ...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &
 Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out
 the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
 & put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an
 Aeon till it came out clean...Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...y cause beyond the guardian sea: 
The battle that they wage is thine; thou fallest if they fall; 
The swollen flood of Prussian pride will sweep unchecked o'er all. 

O cruel is the conquer-lust in Hohenzollern brains; 
The paths they plot to gain their goal are dark with shameful stains: 
No faith they keep, no law revere, no god but naked Might; -- 
They are the foemen of mankind. Up, Liberty, and smite! 

Britain, and France, and Italy, and Russia newly born, 
Have...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...to keep me awake.
Kit Marlowe taught me how to say my prayers:
"Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it."
Samoa, Russia, Ireland I complain of,
No less than England, France, and Italy. 
Because I wrote my novels in New Hampshire
Is no proof that I aimed them at New Hampshire.
When I left Massachusetts years ago
Between two days, the reason why I sought
New Hampshire, not Connecticut,
Rhode Island, New York, or Vermont was this:
Where I was living then, New Hamp...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...nks of convicted, demented by suffering,
As they, in regiments, walked along -
Stars of death stood over us
As innocent Russia squirmed
Under the blood-spattered boots and tyres
Of the black marias.

I

You were taken away at dawn. I followed you
As one does when a corpse is being removed.
Children were crying in the darkened house.
A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God. . .
The cold of an icon was on your lips, a death-cold
sweat
On your...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...r>

11
You, whoever you are! 
You daughter or son of England! 
You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia! 
You dim-descended, black, divine-soul’d African, large, fine-headed, nobly-form’d,
 superbly
 destin’d, on equal terms with me! 
You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you Prussian!
You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese! 
You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France! 
You Belge! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands! 
You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...zollern head:
There is no man-hunt of men remembered like this.

The four big brothers are out to kill.
France, Russia, Britain, America—
The four republics are sworn brothers to kill the kaiser.

Yes, this is the great man-hunt;
And the sun has never seen till now
Such a line of toothed and tusked man-killers,
In the blue of the upper sky,
In the green of the undersea,
In the red of winter dawns.
Eating to kill,
Sleeping to kill,
Asked by their mothers to kil...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...es named just below.

7. The knight had been placed at the head of the table, above
knights of all nations, in Prussia, whither warriors from all
countries were wont to repair, to aid the Teutonic Order in their
continual conflicts with their heathen neighbours in "Lettowe"
or Lithuania (German. "Litthauen"), Russia, &c.

8. Algesiras was taken from the Moorish king of Grenada, in
1344: the Earls of Derby and Salisbury took part in the siege.
Belmarie ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...e yellow fronts of houses,
Glittering each window to a flash.
Squeak! Squeak! Tap!
The hammers beat and rap.
A Prussian hussar on a grey horse goes by at a dash.
From other shops, the noise of striking blows:
Pounds, thumps, and whacks;
Wooden sounds: splinters -- cracks.
Paris is full of the galloping of horses and the knocking of hammers.
"Hullo! Friend Martin, is business slack
That you are in the street this morning? Don't turn your 
back
And scuttle i...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...igures of ivory.
The mud squirms with throats,
Stepping stones for French bootsoles.
The gilt and pink domes of Russia melt and float off

In the furnace of greed. Clouds, clouds.
So the swarm balls and deserts
Seventy feet up, in a black pine tree.
It must be shot down. Pom! Pom!
So dumb it thinks bullets are thunder.

It thinks they are the voice of God
Condoning the beak, the claw, the grin of the dog
Yellow-haunched, a pack-dog,
Grinning over i...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...ed resolutions not to fight, 
And statesmen muttered everything was right— 
Germany, a kindly, much ill-treated nation—
Russia was working out her own salvation
Within her borders. As for Spain, ah, Spain
Would buy from England when peace came again!
I listened and believed— believed through sheer
Terror. I could not look whither my fear
Pointed— that agony that I had known.
I closed my eyes, and was not alone.


Later than many, earlier than some,
I knew the ...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...f their say-so on the great clocks
of doom and damnation, soup and nuts: meteors flashed
their say-so: and out of great Russia came three
dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die
for: Bread, Peace, Land.

And I met a marine of the U.S.A., a leatherneck with a girl on his knee for a memory in ports circling the earth and he said: Tell me how to say three things and I always get by—gimme a plate of ham and eggs—how much?—and—do you love me, kid?...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...y the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands
Where bred the swallows, her melodious cry
Amid their barbarous twitter!
In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!
Ay, most likely, 'tis in Spain
That we and Waring meet again— 
Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane
Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid
All fire and shine—abrupt as when there's slid
Its stiff gold blazing pall
From some black coffin-lid.
Or, best of all,
I love to think
The leaving us was just a feint;
Bac...Read more of this...

by Walker, Alice
...her hair
And combed it
Everywhere she went.


According to her autobiography
Africans loved this.


In Russia, Minneapolis, London, Washington, D.C.,
Germany, Palestine, Tel Aviv and
Jerusalem
She never combed at all.
There was no point. In those
Places people said, "She looks like
Any other aging grandmother. She looks
Like a troll. Let's sell her cookery
And guns."


"Kreplach your cookery," said Golda.


Only i...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...rious
Gift take away forever --
Thus I pray after your liturgy
After many exhausting days,
That the cloud over dark Russia
Become cloud in the glory of rays.



x x x
"Where is your gypsy boy, tall one,
That over black kerchief did weep,
Where is your small first child
What memory of him do you keep?"

"Mother's role is a sweet torture,
I was not worthy of it.
The gate dissolved into white heaven,
Magdalene took the kid.

"Each day for me is ...Read more of this...

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