Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Siege Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Herbert, George
...>
I was entangled in the world of strife, 
Before I had the power to change my life.

Yet, for I threatened oft the siege to raise, 
Not simpring all mine age, 
Thou often didst with Academic praise
Melt and dissolve my rage.
I took thy sweetened pill, till I came where
I could not go away, nor persevere.

Yet lest perchance I should too happy be
In my unhappiness, 
Turning my purge to food, thou throwest me
Into more sicknesses.
Thus doth thy power cross-bias...Read More



by Tebb, Barry
...





19



The dray wheels rolled

Over the ruts, the cobbles

Shone in the frost,

Standish’s woodyard

Burned in the Siege of Troy,

The ramparts of Eastend Park

Were lost when the great

Park gates crashed down.

I left my grandfather’s

Cabin trunk on the last

Bus to Crossgreen and

I put my hand between

The rusted gates to touch

The last lupin of Knostrop

Withering on its stem.





20



The bridge to nowhere

Stands in the abandoned goodsyard

With the we...Read More

by Angelou, Maya
...by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody...Read More

by Plath, Sylvia
...in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler.
Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitched reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetude, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling --
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drifting

Deep in your flux of silver
Th...Read More

by Dyke, Henry Van
...miser in the dark his joys would hide.
Love is most bold:
He leads his dreams like armed men in line;
Yet when the siege is set, and he must speak,
Calling the fortress to resign
Its treasure, valiant love grows weak,
And hardly dares his purpose to unfold.
Less with his faltering lips than with his eyes
He claims the longed-for prize:
Love fain would tell it all, yet leaves the best untold.

But thou shalt speak for love. Yea, thou shalt teach
The mystery of...Read More



by Angelou, Maya
...e by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across...Read More

by Milton, John
...will occasion want, nor shall we need 
With dangerous expedition to invade 
Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or siege, 
Or ambush from the Deep. What if we find 
Some easier enterprise? There is a place 
(If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven 
Err not)--another World, the happy seat 
Of some new race, called Man, about this time 
To be created like to us, though less 
In power and excellence, but favoured more 
Of him who rules above; so was his will 
Pronounced...Read More

by Milton, John
...nd place or refuge; and the more I see 
Pleasures about me, so much more I feel 
Torment within me, as from the hateful siege 
Of contraries: all good to me becomes 
Bane, and in Heaven much worse would be my state. 
But neither here seek I, no nor in Heaven 
To dwell, unless by mastering Heaven's Supreme; 
Nor hope to be myself less miserable 
By what I seek, but others to make such 
As I, though thereby worse to me redound: 
For only in destroying I find ease 
To my rel...Read More

by Milton, John
...stured late, now scattered lies 
With carcasses and arms the ensanguined field, 
Deserted: Others to a city strong 
Lay siege, encamped; by battery, scale, and mine, 
Assaulting; others from the wall defend 
With dart and javelin, stones, and sulphurous fire; 
On each hand slaughter, and gigantick deeds. 
In other part the sceptered heralds call 
To council, in the city-gates; anon 
Gray-headed men and grave, with warriours mixed, 
Assemble, and harangues are heard; but s...Read More

by Milton, John
..., human left from human free. 
But this usurper his encroachment proud 
Stays not on Man; to God his tower intends 
Siege and defiance: Wretched man!what food 
Will he convey up thither, to sustain 
Himself and his rash army; where thin air 
Above the clouds will pine his entrails gross, 
And famish him of breath, if not of bread? 
To whom thus Michael. Justly thou abhorrest 
That son, who on the quiet state of men 
Such trouble brought, affecting to subdue 
Rational ...Read More

by Lowell, Amy
...Sir Everard. Each incident

XXV
Must be related and each term explained. How 
troops were set in battle, how a siege
Was ordered and conducted. She complained Because 
he bungled at the fall of Liege.
The curious names of parts of forts she knew, And aired with 
conscious pride her ravelins,
And counterscarps, and lunes. The 
day drew on, And his dead fish's fins
In the hot sunshine turned a mauve-green hue.
At last Gervase, guessing the hour, withdre...Read More

by Whitman, Walt
...ter of blows on the helmeted head, 
The death-howl, the limpsey tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe thither, 
The siege of revolted lieges determin’d for liberty, 
The summons to surrender, the battering at castle gates, the truce and parley;
The sack of an old city in its time, 
The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly, 
Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness, 
Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe of...Read More

by Browning, Robert
...had discovered the lady's function;
Since ancient authors gave this tenet,
``When horns wind a mort and the deer is at siege,
``Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet,
``And, with water to wash the hands of her liege
``In a clean ewer with a fair toweling,
`` Let her preside at the disemboweling.''
Now, my friend, if you had so little religion
As to catch a hawk, some falcon-lanner,
And thrust her broad wings like a banner
Into a coop for a vulgar pigeon;
A...Read More

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...br>
In Lettowe had he reysed,* and in Russe, *journeyed
No Christian man so oft of his degree.
In Grenade at the siege eke had he be
Of Algesir, and ridden in Belmarie. 
At Leyes was he, and at Satalie,
When they were won; and in the Greate Sea
At many a noble army had he be.
At mortal battles had he been fifteen,
And foughten for our faith at Tramissene.
In listes thries, and aye slain his foe.
This ilke* worthy knight had been also *same 
Some t...Read More

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ut 
The figures, like a serpent, ran a scroll 
Of letters in a tongue no man could read. 
And Merlin called it "The Siege perilous," 
Perilous for good and ill; "for there," he said, 
"No man could sit but he should lose himself:" 
And once by misadvertence Merlin sat 
In his own chair, and so was lost; but he, 
Galahad, when he heard of Merlin's doom, 
Cried, "If I lose myself, I save myself!" 

`Then on a summer night it came to pass, 
While the great banquet lay along ...Read More

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...*won
By Theseus, and by his chivalry;
And of the greate battle for the nonce
Betwixt Athenes and the Amazons;
And how assieged was Hippolyta,
The faire hardy queen of Scythia;
And of the feast that was at her wedding
And of the tempest at her homecoming.
But all these things I must as now forbear.
I have, God wot, a large field to ear* *plough;
And weake be the oxen in my plough;
The remnant of my tale is long enow.
I will not *letten eke none of this rout*.Read More

by Angelou, Maya
...here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your bro...Read More

by Byron, George (Lord)
...the Turks, (in 1715), under the Prime Vizier, to open to themselves a way into the heart of the Morea, and to form the siege of Napoli di Romania, the most considerable place in all that country, [1] thought it best in the first place to attack Corinth, upon which they made several storms. The garrison being weakened, and the governor seeing it was impossible to hold out against so mighty a force, thought it fit to beat a parley; but while they were treating about the ar...Read More

by Johnson, Samuel
...rous skill,
280 And mould his passions till they make his will.

281 Unnumber'd maladies his joints invade,
282 Lay siege to life and press the dire blockade;
283 But unextinguish'd Av'rice still remains,
284 And dreaded losses aggravate his pains;
285 He turns, with anxious heart and crippled hands,
286 His bonds of debt, and mortgages of lands;
287 Or views his coffers with suspicious eyes,
288 Unlocks his gold, and counts it till he dies.

289 But grant, the virtue...Read More

by Darwish, Mahmoud
...for the rifle 
And you would have changed your mind: this is not the way 
to find one’s identity again. 

*** 
The siege is a waiting period 
Waiting on the tilted ladder in the middle of the storm. 

*** 
Alone, we are alone as far down as the sediment 
Were it not for the visits of the rainbows. 

*** 
We have brothers behind this expanse. 
Excellent brothers. They love us. They watch us and weep. 
Then, in secret, they tell each other: 
"Ah! if...Read More

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Siege poems.