Famous Traditions Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Traditions poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous traditions poems. These examples illustrate what a famous traditions poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
George William Russell
WHILE the yellow constellations shine with pale and tender glory,
In the lilac-scented stillness let us listen to earth’s story.
All the flowers like moths a-flutter glimmer rich with dusky hues;
Everywhere around us seem to fall from nowhere the sweet dews.
Through the drowsy lull, the murmur, stir of leaf and sleepy hum,
We can feel a gay heart beating, hear a magic...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
THE Government--I heard about the Government and
I went out to find it. I said I would look closely at
it when I saw it.
Then I saw a policeman dragging a drunken man to
the callaboose. It was the Government in action.
I saw a ward alderman slip into an office one morning
and talk with a judge. Later in the day the judge
dismissed...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!
The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
Wave their broad curtains in the southwind's breath,
While underneath these leafy tents they keep
The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.
And these sepulchral stones,...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
An angel was tired of heaven, as he lounged in the golden street;
His halo was tilted sideways, and his harp lay mute at his feet;
So the Master stooped in His pity, and gave him a pass to go,
For the space of a moon, to the earth-world, to mix with the men below.
He doffed his celestial garments, scarce waiting to...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Should you ask me,
whence these stories?
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odors of the forest
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?
I should answer, I should tell you,
"From the forests and the prairies,
From the great...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
ONCE I pass'd through a populous city, imprinting my brain, for future use, with its
shows, architecture, customs, and traditions;
Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman I casually met there, who detain'd me
for love of me;
Day by day and night by night we were together,--All else has long been forgotten by me;...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A little overflowing word
That any, hearing, had inferred
For Ardor or for Tears,
Though Generations pass away,
Traditions ripen and decay,
As eloquent appears --...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
PRELUDE.
Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long drooping boughs between
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;
Or where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move.
Beneath some patriarchal tree
I lay upon the ground;
His...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
If she had been the Mistletoe
And I had been the Rose --
How gay upon your table
My velvet life to close --
Since I am of the Druid,
And she is of the dew --
I'll deck Tradition's buttonhole --
And send the Rose to you....Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
The pure products of America
go crazy—
mountain folk from Kentucky
or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and
valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves
old names
and promiscuity between
devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer lust of adventure—
and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday
to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no
peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt
sheer rags-succumbing...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
NATIONS ten thousand years before These States, and many times ten thousand years before
These
States;
Garner’d clusters of ages, that men and women like us grew up and travel’d their
course, and pass’d on;
What vast-built cities—what orderly republics—what pastoral tribes and nomads;
What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others;
What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions;
What sort...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In those days said Hiawatha,
"Lo! how all things fade and perish!
From the memory of the old men
Pass away the great traditions,
The achievements of the warriors,
The adventures of the hunters,
All the wisdom of the Medas,
All the craft of the Wabenos,
All the marvellous dreams and visions
Of the Jossakeeds, the Prophets!
"Great men die and are forgotten,
Wise men speak; their words of wisdom
Perish...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene.
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;
Or where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move.
Beneath some patriarchal tree
I lay upon the ground;
His...Read more of this...
by
Marianne Moore
This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
about a thing one has believed in,
requiring public promises
of one's intention
to fulfill a private obligation:
I wonder what Adam and Eve
think of it by this time,
this firegilt steel
alive with goldenness;
how bright it shows --
"of circular traditions and impostures,
committing many spoils,"
requiring all one's criminal ingenuity
to...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
ALL submit to them, where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to analysis, in the
Soul;
Not traditions—not the outer authorities are the judges—they are the judges of
outer
authorities, and of all traditions;
They corroborate as they go, only whatever corroborates themselves, and touches
themselves;
For all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate far and near,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
An imaginary composer.]
I.
Hist, but a word, fair and soft!
Forth and be judged, Master Hugues!
Answer the question I've put you so oft:
What do you mean by your mountainous fugues?
See, we're alone in the loft,---
II.
I, the poor organist here,
Hugues, the composer of note,
Dead though, and done with, this many a year:
Let's have a colloquy, something to quote,
Make the world prick up...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
(a)
they seek to celebrate the word
not to bring their knives out on a poem
dissecting it to find a heart
whose beat lies naked on a table
not to score in triumph on a line
no sensitive would put a nostril to
but simply to receive it as an
offering glimpsing the sacred there
poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving...Read more of this...
by
Aleksandr Blok
In your hidden memories
There are fatal tidings of doom...
A curse on sacred traditions,
A desecration of happiness;
And a power so alluring
That I am ready to repeat the rumour
That you have brought angels down from heaven,
Enticing them with your beauty...
And when you mock at faith,
That pale, greyish-purple halo
Which I once saw before
Suddenly begins...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
I
The thick lids of Night closed upon me
Alone at the Bill
Of the Isle by the Race {1} -
Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face -
And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me
To brood and be still.
II
No wind fanned the flats of the ocean,
Or...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
I
When of tender mind and body
I was moved by minstrelsy,
And that strain "The Bridge of Lodi"
Brought a strange delight to me.
II
In the battle-breathing jingle
Of its forward-footing tune
I could see the armies mingle,
And the columns cleft and hewn
III
On that far-famed spot by Lodi
Where Napoleon clove his way
To...Read more of this...
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