Famous Sword Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Sword poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sword poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sword poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I
Thy trivial harp will never please
Or fill my craving ear;
Its chords should ring as blows the breeze,
Free, peremptory, clear.
No jingling serenader's art,
Nor tinkle of piano strings,
Can make the wild blood start
In its mystic springs.
The kingly bard
Must smile the chords rudely and hard,
As with hammer or with mace;
That they...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
THE WHILE my mad brain whirled around
She only looked with eyes elate
Immortal love at me. I found
How deep the glance of love can wound,
How cruel pity is to hate.
I was begirt with hostile spears:
My angel warred in me for you
Whose gentle calmness all too fierce
Made unseen lightnings to pierce
My heart that dripped with ruddy dew.
I know how on the...Read more of this...
by
James Henry Leigh Hunt
I have been reading Pomfret's "Choice" this spring,
A pretty kind of--sort of--kind of thing,
Not much a verse, and poem none at all,
Yet, as they say, extremely natural.
And yet I know not. There's an art in pies,
In raising crusts as well as galleries;
And he's the poet, more or less, who knows
The charm that...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Prayer for deliverance answered.
Isa. 26:12,20,21.
In thine own ways, O God of love,
We wait the visits of thy grace,
Our soul's desire is to thy name,
And the remembrance of thy face.
My thoughts are searching, Lord, for thee
'Mongst the black shades of lonesome night;
My earnest cries salute the skies
Before the dawn restore the light.
Look, how rebellious men deride
The tender patience of...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
Lay his sword by his side -- it hath served him too well
Not to rest near his pillow below;
To the last moment true, from his hand ere it fell,
Its point was still turn'd to a flying foe.
Fellow-labourers in life, let them slumber in death,
Side by side, as becomes the reposing brave --
That sword...Read more of this...
by
Les Murray
Scarlet as the cloth draped over a sword,
white as steaming rice, blue as leschenaultia,
old curried towns, the frog in its green human skin;
a ploughman walking his furrow as if in irons, but
as at a whoop of young men running loose
in brick passages, there occurred the thought
like instant stitches all through crumpled silk:
as if he'd had to leap to catch...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
I do not choose to dream; there cometh on me
Some strange old lust for deeds.
As to the nerveless hand of some old warrior
The sword-hilt or the war-worn wonted helmet
Brings momentary life and long-fled cunning,
So to my soul grown old -
Grown old with many a jousting, many a foray,
Grown old with namy a hither-coming and hence-going -
Till...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
From the wheel and the drift of Things
Deliver us, Good Lord,
And we will face the wrath of Kings,
The ****** and the sword!
Lay not thy Works before our eyes
Nor vex us with thy Wars,
Lest we should feel the straining skies
O'ertrod by trampling stars.
Hold us secure behind the gates
Of saving flesh and...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I. Ancestral Houses
Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.
Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Time, the Jester, jeers at you;
Your life's a fleeting breath;
Your birthday's flimsy I.O.U.
To that old devil, Death.
And though to glory you attain,
Or be to beauty born,
Your pomp and vanity are vain:
Time ticks you off with scorn.
Time, the Cynic, sneers at you,
And stays you in your stride;
He flouts the daring deeds you do,
And pillories your pride.
The triumph of your yesterday
He...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Crane
Fast rode the knight
With spurs, hot and reeking,
Ever waving an eager sword,
"To save my lady!"
Fast rode the knIght,
And leaped from saddle to war.
Men of steel flickered and gleamed
Like riot of silver lights,
And the gold of the knight's good banner
Still waved on a castle wall.
. . . . .
A horse,
Blowing, staggering, bloody thing,
Forgotten at foot of castle wall.
A horse
Dead at...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
A wild and woeful race he ran
Of lust and sin by land and sea;
Until, abhorred of God and man,
They swung him from the gallows-tree.
And then he climbed the Starry Stair,
And dumb and naked and alone,
With head unbowed and brazen glare,
He stood before the Judgment Throne.
The Keeper of the Records spoke:
"This man, O Lord, has mocked Thy Name.
The weak have...Read more of this...
by
Henrik Ibsen
NOW, rallying once if ne'er again,
With flag at half-mast flown,
A people in dire need and strain
Mans Tyra's bastion.
Betrayed in danger's hour, betrayed
Before the stress of strife!
Was this the meaning that it had--
That clasp of hands at Axelstad
Which gave the North new life?
The words that seemed as if they rushed
From...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
I -- In Church
Thou whose birth on earth
Angels sang to men,
While thy stars made mirth,
Saviour, at thy birth,
This day born again;
As this night was bright
With thy cradle-ray,
Very light of light,
Turn the wild world's night
To thy perfect day.
God whose feet made sweet
Those wild ways they trod,
From thy fragrant feet
Staining field and street
With the blood of God;
God whose breast is rest
In...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
June
No hope, no change! The clouds have shut us in,
And through the cloud the sullen Sun strikes down
Full on the bosom of the tortured Town,
Till Night falls heavy as remembered sin
That will not suffer sleep or thought of ease,
And, hour on hour, the dry-eyed Moon in spite
Glares through the haze and mocks with watery light
The...Read more of this...
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
After the Hazara War
I lie alone beneath the Almond blossoms,
Where we two lay together in the spring,
And now, as then, the mountain snows are melting,
This year, as last, the water-courses sing.
That was...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
Sunder me from my bones, O sword of God
Till they stand stark and strange as do the trees;
That I whose heart goes up with the soaring woods
May marvel as much at these.
Sunder me from my blood that in the dark
I hear that red ancestral river run
Like branching buried floods that find the sea...Read more of this...
by
William Allingham
A man there came, whence none could tell,
Bearing a Touchstone in his hand;
And tested all things in the land
By its unerring spell.
Quick birth of transmutation smote
The fair to foul, the foul to fair;
Purple nor ermine did he spare,
Nor scorn the dusty coat.
Of heirloom jewels, prized so much,
Were many changed to...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
v.1,5,8,16,21,22
C. M.
The judgment of hypocrites.
When Christ to judgment shall descend,
And saints surround their Lord,
He calls the nations to attend,
And hear his awful word.
"Not for the want of bullocks slain
Will I the world reprove;
Altars, and rites, and forms are vain,
Without the fire of love.
"And what have hypocrites to do
To bring their sacrifice?
They call my statutes just and true,
But deal...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
(For S. M. L.)
I like to look at the blossomy track of the moon upon the sea,
But it isn't half so fine a sight as Main Street used to be
When it all was covered over with a couple of feet of snow,
And over the crisp and radiant road the ringing sleighs would go.
Now, Main Street bordered with autumn leaves,...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Who gives him the Bath?
"I," said the wet,
Rank-Jungle-sweat,
"I'll give him the Bath!"
Who'll sing the psalms?
"We," said the Palms.
"Ere the hot wind becalms,
"We'll sing the psalms."
Who lays on the sword ?
"I," said the Sun,
Before he has done,
"I'll lay on the sword."
"Who fastens his belt?
"I," said Short-Rations,
" I know all the fashions
"Of tightening a belt!"
Who gives him his spur?
"I," said...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CCXXIV. Cara la vita, e dopo lei mi pare. HONOUR TO BE PREFERRED TO LIFE. Methinks that life in lovely woman first,And after life true honour should be dear;Nay, wanting honour—of all wants the worst—Friend! nought remains of loved or lovely here.And who, alas! has honour's barrier burst,Unsex'd and...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Accourez tous, oiseaux de proie!")
{VII., September, 1825.}
Ho! hither flock, ye fowls of prey!
Ye wolves of war, make no delay!
For foemen 'neath our blades shall fall
Ere night may veil with purple pall.
The evening psalms are nearly o'er,
And priests who follow in our train
Have...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Alas! now o'er the civilised world there hangs a gloom
For brave General Gordon, that was killed in Khartoum,
He was a Christian hero, and a soldier of the Cross,
And to England his death will be a very great loss.
He was very cool in temper, generous and brave,
The friend of the poor, the sick, and the slave;
And many a poor...Read more of this...
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