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Famous Trader Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...by the swamp
 Moist and damp;
And the City and the Viceroy, as we see,
 Don't agree.
Once, two hundered years ago, the trader came
 Meek and tame.
Where his timid foot first halted, there he stayed,
 Till mere trade
Grew to Empire, and he sent his armies forth
 South and North
Till the country from Peshawur to Ceylon
 Was his own.
Thus the midday halt of Charnock -- more's the pity!
 Grew a City.
As the fungus sprouts chaotic from its bed,
 So it spread --
Chance-directed, c...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard



...ut his linen tunic and his sandals brazen-soled,

And a rich robe stained with the fishers' juice
Which of some swarthy trader he had bought
Upon the sunny quay at Syracuse,
And was with Tyrian broideries inwrought,
And by the questioning merchants made his way
Up through the soft and silver woods, and when the labouring day

Had spun its tangled web of crimson cloud,
Clomb the high hill, and with swift silent feet
Crept to the fane unnoticed by the crowd
Of busy priests, and...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...ll this. I do not know your name.

Skinny man, you are somebody's fault.
You ride on dark poles --
a wooden bird that a trader built
for some fool who felt
that he could make the flight. Now you roll
in your sleep, seasick
on your own breathing, poor old convict....Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...Rose-crowned lady from heaven, give us thy grace,
Help us the intricate, desperate battle to face 
Till the leer of the trader is seen nevermore in the land,
Till we bring every maid of the age to one sheltering hand.
Ah, they are priceless, the pale and the ivory and red!
Breathless we gaze on the curls of each glorious head!
Arm them with strength mediaeval, thy marvellous dower,
Blast now their tempters, shelter their steps with thy power.
Leave not life's fairest to peris...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel
...,
the whip and the cross. 
I am the lion's tooth
in the flesh of the gazelle.
In my veins I have
the blood of the slave trader. 

Hangman,
I have deserved the hunger of the wolves. 

My victims have left me nothing
but their deaths....Read more of this...
by Clare, John



...ning, mellow moons and happy skies,
Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise. 

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag; 

Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree--
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea. 

There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind,
In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts tha...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...burn the sleeping villages 
and kill the sick and old and lead the young 
in coffles to our factories. 

Twenty years a trader, twenty years, 
for there was wealth aplenty to be harvested 
from those black fields, and I'd be trading still 
but for the fevers melting down my bones. 


III 

Shuttles in the rocking loom of history, 
the dark ships move, the dark ships move, 
their bright ironical names 
like jests of kindness on a murderer's mouth; 
plough through thrashing gli...Read more of this...
by Hayden, Robert
...rosperity,
Darts on him his full beams; gasping he lies
Arraigning with his looks the patient skies,
While that inhuman trader lifts on high
The mangling scourge. Oh ye who at your ease
Sip the blood-sweeten'd beverage! thoughts like these
Haply ye scorn: I thank thee Gracious God!
That I do feel upon my cheek the glow
Of indignation, when beneath the rod
A sable brother writhes in silent woe....Read more of this...
by Southey, Robert
...the dark vassals of his will
He saw but Man and Woman!
No hunter of God's outraged poor
His Roanoke valley entered;
No trader in the souls of men
Across his threshold ventured.

And when the old and wearied man
Lay down for his last sleeping,
And at his side, a slave no more,
His brother-man stood weeping,
His latest thought, his latest breath,
To Freedom's duty giving,
With failing tongue and trembling hand
The dying blest the living.

Oh, never bore his ancient State
A tru...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...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 you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea! 
And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me!
And you, each and ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...world content: 
His little niece -- he never paid her: 
And then he stood for Parliament, 
Of course he was a rank free trader. 
His wealth was great, success appeared 
To smile propitious on his banner, 
But Providence it interfered 
In this most unexpected manner. 

A person -- call him Brown for short -- 
Who knew the story of this stealer, 
Went calmly down the town and bought 
Two pounds of sausage from a dealer, 
And then he got a long bamboo 
And tightly tied the sausa...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...de, and grow old at last, and die like ours.

Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles!
- As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea,
Descried at sunrise and emerging prow
Lifting the cool-haired creepers stealthily,
The fringes of a southward-facing brow
Among the Aegaean isles;
And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,
Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,
Green, bursting figs, and tunnies steeped in brine— 
And knew the intruders on his ancient home,

The youn...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things