Famous Scout Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Scout poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous scout poems. These examples illustrate what a famous scout poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Horace,
...
For, since Janiculum is lost,
Nought else can save the town."
XX
Just then a scout came flying,
All wild with haste and fear:
"To arms! to arms! Sir Consul:
Lars Porsena is here."
On the low hills to westward
The Consol fixed his eye,
And saw the swarthy storm of dust
Rise fast along the sky.
XXI
And nearer fast and nearer
Doth the red ...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...1913
These are our regulations--
There's just one law for the Scout
And the first and the last, and the present and the past,
And the future and the perfect is "Look out!"
I, thou and he, look out!
We, ye and they, look out!
Though you didn't or you wouldn't
Or you hadn't or you couldn't;
You jolly well must look out!
Look out, when you start for the day
That your kit is packed to your mind;
There is no use g...Read more of this...
by
Davidson, John
...I hang about the streets all day,
At night I hang about;
I sleep a little when I may,
But rise betimes the morning's scout;
For through the year I always hear
Afar, aloft, a ghostly shout.
My clothes are worn to threads and loops;
My skin shows here and there ;
About my face like seaweed droops
My tangled beard, my tangled hair;
From cavernous and shaggy brows
My stony eyes untroubled stare.
I move from eastern wretchedness
Through Fleet Street and the Strand;
An...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...ere,
Who shall wonder
That I ponder
A conclusion? I will try it there.
IX
As,—why must one, for the love forgone,
Scout mere liking?
Thunder-striking
Earth,—the heaven, we looked above for, gone!
X
Why with beauty, needs there money be—
Love with liking?
Crush the fly-king
In his gauze, because no honey bee?
XI
May not liking be so simple-sweet,
If love grew there
'Twould undo there
All that breaks the cheek to dimples sweet?
XII
Is the creature too imperfect, sa...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ldren at play—or on his father’s lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips
move! how
he smiles in his sleep!)
The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi—he ascends a
knoll
and
sweeps his eye around;
California life—the miner, bearded, dress’d in his rude costume—the stanch
California
friendship—the sweet air—the graves one, in passing, meets, solitary, just
aside the
horsepath;
Down in Texas, the cotton-field, the *****-cabins—drivers ...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...is cool pomegranate-trees,
Clutches his sword in fierce surmise
When on the mountain-side he sees
The fleet-foot Marri scout, who comes
To tell how he hath heard afar
The measured roll of English drums
Beat at the gates of Kandahar.
For southern wind and east wind meet
Where, girt and crowned by sword and fire,
England with bare and bloody feet
Climbs the steep road of wide empire.
O lonely Himalayan height,
Grey pillar of the Indian sky,
Where saw'st thou last in ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...and befriend
Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end
Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,
Ere the blabbing eastern scout,
The nice Morn on the Indian steep,
From her cabined loop-hole peep,
And to the tell-tale Sun descry
Our concealed solemnity.
Come, knit hands, and beat the ground
In a light fantastic round.
The Measure.
Break off, break off! I feel the different pace
Of some chaste footing near about this ground.
Run to your shrouds within these b...Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...die, ' quoth he, ' mine be the part
To fall upon the field, a bullet in my heart.'
XII.
At break of dawn the scouts crept in to say
The foe was camped a rifle shot away.
The baying of a dog, an infant's cry
Pierced through the air; sleep fled from every eye.
To horse! to arms! the dead demand the dead!
Let the grand charge upon the lodge be led!
Let the Mosaic law, life for a life
Pay the long standing debt of blood. War to the knife!
XIII.
So ...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...to their worldly joys,
The "statesman" laughs at a hint of war – but something has told the boys.
The schoolboy scouts of the White Man's Land are out on the hills to-day;
They trace the tracks from the sea-beach sand and sea-cliffs grim and grey;
They take the range for a likely shot by every cape and head,
And they spy the lay of each lonely spot where an enemy's foot might tread.
In the cooling breeze of the coastal streams, or out where the townships bake...Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...annot imagine
for the life of me what that might be.
He is out there always before me,
blazing my trail, invisible scout,
hound that pulls me along,
shade I am doomed to follow,
my perfect double,
only bumped an inch into the future,
and not nearly as well-versed as I
in the love poems of Ovid —
I who went back to the house
that fateful winter morning and got the book....Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...shed it luck!
With happiness my heart was light,
To see how fair it flew;
To do my good deed I delight,
As grey-haired scouts should do;
Yet oh my bright reward's to write
This simple rhyme for you!...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...armed watch, that render all access
Impregnable: oft on the bodering Deep
Encamp their legions, or with obscure wing
Scout far and wide into the realm of Night,
Scorning surprise. Or, could we break our way
By force, and at our heels all Hell should rise
With blackest insurrection to confound
Heaven's purest light, yet our great Enemy,
All incorruptible, would on his throne
Sit unpolluted, and th' ethereal mould,
Incapable of stain, would soon expel
Her mischie...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...d by steps of gold to Heaven-gate,
Looks down with wonder at the sudden view
Of all this world at once. As when a scout,
Through dark?;nd desart ways with?oeril gone
All?might,?;t?kast by break of cheerful dawn
Obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill,
Which to his eye discovers unaware
The goodly prospect of some foreign land
First seen, or some renowned metropolis
With glistering spires and pinnacles adorned,
Which now the rising sun gilds with his beams:
...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...command.
XXV.
That summer morn had Roderick Dhu
Surveyed the skirts of Benvenue,
And sent his scouts o'er hill and heath,
To view the frontiers of Menteith.
All backward came with news of truce;
Still lay each martial Graeme and Bruce,
In Rednock courts no horsemen wait,
No banner waved on Cardross gate,
On Duchray's towers no beacon shone,
Nor scared the herons from Loch Con;
All seemed at peace.—Now w...Read more of this...
by
Stevenson, Robert Louis
...roaring lions come to drink.
I see the others far away
As if in firelit camp they lay,
And I, like to an Indian scout,
Around their party prowled about.
So when my nurse comes in for me,
Home I return across the sea,
And go to bed with backward looks
At my dear land of Story-books....Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...eels
Came the scuffling tread of horses and the heavy crunch of wheels;
So they took the road to Buckland, with their scout out to take heed,
And a quiet man of fifty on a grey horse in the lead.
There was silence in the city, there was silence as of night –
Women in the ghostly daylight, kneeling, praying, deathly white,
As their mothers knelt before them, as their daughters knelt since then,
And as ours shall, in the future, kneel and pray for fighting men. ...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...eaven no longer needs),
Such dance around the trysting-place
The moonstruck lover leads;
Which superstition I should scout
There is more faith in honest doubt
(As Tennyson has pointed out)
Than in those nasty creeds.
But peace and righteousness (St John)
In Roundabout can kiss,
And since that's all that's found about
The pleasant town of Roundabout,
The roads they simply bound about
To find out where it is.
Some say that when Sir Lancelot
Went forth to ...Read more of this...
by
Owen, Wilfred
...Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids
Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there
In posting next for duty, and sending a scout
To beg a stretcher somewhere, and floundering about
To other posts under the shrieking air.
Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed,
And one who would have drowned himself for good, --
I try not to remember these things now.
Let dread hark back for one word only: how
Half-listening to that sentry's moans and jumps,
And the wild chatteri...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...and close his `wings', and shut his angels out,
And steel his heart for the end of things,
who'd ride with a stockman scout,
When the race they ride on the battle track, and the waning distance hums,
And the shelled sky shrieks or the rifles crack
like stockwhip amongst the gums --
And the `straight' is reached and the field is `gapped'
and the hoof-torn sward grows red
With the blood of those who are handicapped with iron and steel and lead;
And the gaps are filled,...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...ore them, the soldiers marched beside;
Oh, starched white frocks and sashes and suits that high schools wear,
The boy scout and the boy lout and all the rest were there,
And all flags save Australia's flag waved high in sun and air!
The Girls' High School, and Grammar School and colleges of stone
Flew all flags from their walls and towers – all flags except our own!
And down here in the alleys where Premiers never come,
Nor candidate, nor delegate, nor sound of fife a...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Scout poems.