Famous Triumphal Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sonnet CLXXXIX

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CLXXXIX. Dodici donne onestamente lasse. HAPPY WHO STEERED THE BOAT, OR DROVE THE CAR, WHEREIN SHE SAT AND SANG.  Twelve ladies, their rare toil who lightly bore,Rather twelve stars encircling a bright sun,I saw, gay-seated a small bark upon,Whose like the waters never cleaved before:Not such took Jason to the...Read more of this...

The Cloud

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains...Read more of this...

From Far Dakota's Cañons

by Walt Whitman
 FROM far Dakota’s cañons, 
Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the silence, 
Haply to-day a mournful wail, haply a trumpet-note for heroes. 

The battle-bulletin, 
The Indian ambuscade, the craft, the fatal environment,
The cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism, 
In the midst of their little circle, with their slaughter’d horses for breastworks,...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 3

by Alexander Pope
 Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs, 
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the...Read more of this...

The Occultation Of Orion

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 I saw, as in a dream sublime,
The balance in the hand of Time.
O'er East and West its beam impended;
And day, with all its hours of light,
Was slowly sinking out of sight,
While, opposite, the scale of night
Silently with the stars ascended.

Like the astrologers of eld,
In that bright vision I beheld
Greater and deeper mysteries.
I saw, with its celestial keys,
Its chords of...Read more of this...

Early Poems

by Victor Hugo
 MOSES ON THE NILE. 
 
 ("Mes soeurs, l'onde est plus fraiche.") 
 
 {TO THE FLORAL GAMES, Toulouse, Feb. 10, 1820.} 


 "Sisters! the wave is freshest in the ray 
 Of the young morning; the reapers are asleep; 
 The river bank is lonely: come away! 
 The early murmurs of old Memphis creep 
 Faint on...Read more of this...

A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton

by James Thomson
 Shall the great soul of Newton quit this earth, 
To mingle with his stars; and every muse,
Astonish'd into silence, shun the weight
Of honours due to his illustrious name?
But what can man?--Even now the sons of light,
In strains high-warbled to seraphic lyre,
Hail his arrival on the coast of bliss.
Yet am not I deterr'd, though high the theme,
And sung to harps...Read more of this...

To a Skylark

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
HAIL to thee, blithe spirit! 
Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven, or near it, 
Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher 
From the earth thou springest, 
Like a cloud of fire 
The blue deep thou wingest, 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning 
Of the sunken sun, 
O'er...Read more of this...

Delhi – A Re-visitation

by John Matthew
 It’s akin to visiting my foster mother, today, 
That I am returning to you, mother city, after twenty years,
I look at your broad, bereft blood-stained streets, mater,
Through which emperors, prime ministers cavalcaded,
In victory and defeat, through gates and triumphal arches,
That murmur of the pains of your rape and impregnation.

The sudden shock of your poverty upsets me,
It is evident in...Read more of this...

Insularum Ocelle

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Sark, fairer than aught in the world that the lit skies cover,
Laughs inly behind her cliffs, and the seafarers mark
As a shrine where the sunlight serves, though the blown clouds hover,
Sark.

We mourn, for love of a song that outsang the lark,
That nought so lovely beholden of Sirmio's lover
Made glad in Propontis the flight of his Pontic bark.

Here earth lies...Read more of this...

To A Young Lady

by John Trumbull
 In vain, fair Maid, you ask in vain,
My pen should try th' advent'rous strain,
And following truth's unalter'd law,
Attempt your character to draw.
I own indeed, that generous mind
That weeps the woes of human kind,
That heart by friendship's charms inspired,
That soul with sprightly fancy fired,
The air of life, the vivid eye,
The flowing wit, the keen reply--
To paint these beauties as they...Read more of this...

Train Ride

by Federico García Lorca
 After rain, through afterglow, the unfolding fan
of railway landscape sidled onthe pivot
of a larger arc into the green of evening;
I remembered that noon I saw a gradual bud
still white; though dead in its warm bloom;
always the enemy is the foe at home.
And I wondered what surgery could recover
our lost, long stride of indolence and leisure
which is labor in reverse;...Read more of this...

Boaz Asleep

by Victor Hugo
 ("Booz s'était couché.") 
 
 {Bk. II. vi.} 


 At work within his barn since very early, 
 Fairly tired out with toiling all the day, 
 Upon the small bed where he always lay 
 Boaz was sleeping by his sacks of barley. 
 
 Barley and wheat-fields he possessed, and well, 
 Though rich, loved justice; wherefore...Read more of this...

On the Death of Robert Browning

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 He held no dream worth waking; so he said,
He who stands now on death's triumphal steep,
Awakened out of life wherein we sleep
And dream of what he knows and sees, being dead.
But never death for him was dark or dread;
"Look forth," he bade the soul, and fear not. Weep,
All ye that trust not in his truth, and keep
Vain memory's vision...Read more of this...

Sonnet IV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET IV. Quel ch' infinita providenza ed arte. HE CELEBRATES THE BIRTHPLACE OF LAURA.  He that with wisdom, goodness, power divine,Did ample Nature's perfect book design,Adorn'd this beauteous world, and those above,Kindled fierce Mars, and soften'd milder Jove:When seen on earth the shadows to fulfillOf the less volume which conceal'd...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXIX: Like Some Weak Lords

by Sir Philip Sidney
 Like some weak lords, neighbor'd by mighty kings, 
To keep themselves and their chief cities free, 
Do easily yield, that all their coasts may be 
Ready to store their camps of needful things: 

So Stella's heart finding what power Love brings, 
To keep itself in life and liberty, 
Doth willing grant, that in the frontiers he 
Use all to...Read more of this...

Lord Roberts Triumphal Entry into Pretoria

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1900, and on the 5th of June,
Lord Roberts entered Pretoria in the afternoon;
His triumphal entry was magnificent to see,
The British Army marching behind him fearlessly. 

With their beautiful banners unfurled to the breeze,
But the scene didn't the Boers please;
And they immediately made some show of fight,
But at the charge of the bayonet they were...Read more of this...

France the 18th year of These States

by Walt Whitman
 1
A GREAT year and place; 
A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother’s heart closer
 than
 any yet. 

I walk’d the shores of my Eastern Sea, 
Heard over the waves the little voice, 
Saw the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully wailing, amid the roar of cannon,
 curses,
 shouts, crash of falling buildings;
Was not so sick from...Read more of this...

Friend your white beard sweeps the ground

by Stephen Crane
 Friend, your white beard sweeps the ground.
Why do you stand, expectant?
Do you hope to see it
In one of your withered days?
With your old eyes
Do you hope to see
The triumphal march of justice?
Do not wait, friend!
Take your white beard
And your old eyes
To more tender lands....Read more of this...

Questions From A Worker Who Reads

by Bertolt Brecht
 Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finnished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of...Read more of this...

Sonnet CCXXV

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 226] SONNET CCXXV. Arbor vittoriosa e trionfale. HE EXTOLS THE VIRTUE OF LAURA.  Tree, victory's bright guerdon, wont to crownHeroes and bards with thy triumphal leaf,How many days of mingled joy and griefHave I from thee through life's short passage known.Lady, who, reckless of the world's renown,Read more of this...

Four Quartets 2: East Coker

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 I

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and...Read more of this...

Train Ride

by John Wheelwright
 For Horace Gregory

After rain, through afterglow, the unfolding fan
of railway landscape sidled onthe pivot
of a larger arc into the green of evening;
I remembered that noon I saw a gradual bud
still white; though dead in its warm bloom;
always the enemy is the foe at home.
And I wondered what surgery could recover
our lost, long stride of indolence and leisure
which is labor...Read more of this...

Belisarius

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 I am poor and old and blind;
The sun burns me, and the wind
Blows through the city gate
And covers me with dust
From the wheels of the august
Justinian the Great. 

It was for him I chased
The Persians o'er wild and waste,
As General of the East;
Night after night I lay
In their camps of yesterday;
Their forage was my feast. 

For him, with sails...Read more of this...

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