Famous Twelfth Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Twelfth poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous twelfth poems. These examples illustrate what a famous twelfth poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Burns, Robert
...INSTEAD of a Song, boy’s, I’ll give you a Toast;
Here’s to the memory of those on the twelfth that we lost!—
That we lost, did I say?—nay, by Heav’n, that we found;
For their fame it will last while the world goes round.
The next in succession I’ll give you’s THE KING!
Whoe’er would betray him, on high may he swing!
And here’s the grand fabric, our free CONSTITUTION,
As built on the base of our great Revolution!
And longer with Politics n...Read more of this...
by
Ibsen, Henrik
...hem meet,
'Twixt Norse and Danish lord?
Oh! nothing! only to repeat
King Gustav's play at Stockholm's seat
With the Twelfth Charles' sword.
"A people doomed, whose knell is rung,
Betrayed by every friend!" --
Is the book closed and the song sung?
Is this our Denmark's end?
Who set the craven colophon,
While Germans seized the hold,
And o'er the last Dane lying prone
Old Denmark's tattered flag was thrown
With doubly crimsoned fold?
But thou, my brother Nor...Read more of this...
by
Clampitt, Amy
...a mutilated dazzle—
niched shards of solitude
embedded in these brownstone
walkups such that the Hudson
at the foot of Twelfth Street
might be a thing that's
done with mirrors: definition
by deracination—grunge,
hip-hop, Chinese takeout,
co-ops—while the globe's
elixir caters, year by year,
to the resurgence of this
climbing tentpole, frilled and stippled
yet again with bloom
to greet the solstice:
What year was it it over-
took the fire escape? The
roof's its next object...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...pers;
Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the gestation of new States,
Congress convening every Twelfth-month, the members duly coming up from the uttermost
parts;
Surrounding the noble character of mechanics and farmers, especially the young men,
Responding their manners, speech, dress, friendships—the gait they have of persons
who
never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors,
The freshness and candor of their physiognomy, the co...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...l silent.
The king looked like Munch's Scream
Fairies' prophecies,
in times like those,
held water.
However the twelfth fairy
had a certain kind of eraser
and thus she mitigated the curse
changing that death
into a hundred-year sleep.
The king ordered every spinning wheel
exterminated and exorcised.
Briar Rose grew to be a goddess
and each night the king
bit the hem of her gown
to keep her safe.
He fastened the moon up
with a safety pin
to give her perpet...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...who are here for him;
The Secretaries act in their bureaus for you—not you here for them;
The Congress convenes every Twelfth-month for you;
Laws, courts, the forming of States, the charters of cities, the going and coming of
commerce
and
mails, are all for you.
List close, my scholars dear!
All doctrines, all politics and civilization, exurge from you;
All sculpture and monuments, and anything inscribed anywhere, are tallied in you;
The gist of histories and st...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...f
steamboats, I
look’d.
I too many and many a time cross’d the river, the sun half an hour high;
I watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls—I saw them high in the air, floating with motionless
wings,
oscillating their bodies,
I saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies, and left the rest in strong
shadow,
I saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging toward the south.
I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eye...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...For there is no profit in the generation of man and the loss of millions is not worth God's tear.
For this is the twelfth day of the MILLENNIUM of the MILLENNIUM foretold by the prophets -- give the glory to God ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY --
For the Planet Mars is the word FORTITUDE.
For to worship naked in the Rain is the bravest thing for the refreshing and purifying the body.
For the Planet Jupiter is the WORD DISPENSATION.
For Tully say...Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
...Tax evaders
And Vitamin A,
Vice crusaders,
And tattletale gray -
These, with many another phobia,
We owe to that famous Twelfth of Octobia.
O misery, misery, mumble and moan!
Someone invented the telephone,
And interrupted a nation's slumbers,
Ringing wrong but similar numbers.
Someone devised the silver screen
And the intimate Hollywood magazine,
And life is a Hades
Of clicking cameras,
And foreign ladies
Behaving amorous.
Gags have erased
Amusing dialog,
As gas ...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...to work, you Tuscan bastard,
Rome calls for a man who can drive horses.”
The units of conquest led by Charles the Twelfth,
The whirling whimsical Napoleonic columns:
They saw me one of the horseshoers.
I trimmed the feet of a white horse Bonaparte swept the night stars with.
Lincoln said, “Get into the game; your nation takes you.”
And I drove a wagon and team and I had my arm shot off
At Spottsylvania Court House.
I am an ancient reluctant conscript....Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...
Then in correct order I recited the twelve least important
things ever said about Great Falls, Montana. For the twelfth
and least important thing of all, I said, "Yeah, the telephone
would ring in the morning. I'd get out of bed. I didn't have to
answer the telephone. That had all been taken care of, years
in advance.
"It would still be dark outside and the yellow wallpaper in
the hotel room would be running back off the light bulb. I'd
put...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...
--This sense could shadow all the time's curving fruits,
But we will taste of them the whole night long,
Forgetting no twelfth night, no fete of June,
But in the daylight knowing our nothingness.
Let Freud and Marx be wedding guests indeed!
Let them mark out masks that face us there,
For of all anguish, weakness, loss and failure,
No form is cruel as self-deception, none
Shows day-by-day a bad dream long lived
And unbroken like the lies
We tell each other because we are...Read more of this...
by
Fletcher, John Gould
...t the ninth hour, they sealed up the tomb;
And the earth was then silent for the space of three hours.
But at the twelfth hour, a single lily from the gloom
Shot forth, and was followed by a whole host of flowers....Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...nd then
Athene takes Achilles by the hair,
Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born,
Because the hero's crescent is the twelfth.
And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must,
Before the full moon, helpless as a worm.
The thirteenth moon but sets the soul at war
In its own being, and when that war's begun
There is no muscle in the arm; and after,
Under the frenzy of the fourteenth moon,
The soul begins to tremble into stillness,
To die into the labyrinth of itself!
...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...h and ice in the river, half-frozen mud in
the
streets, a gray, discouraged sky overhead, the short, last daylight of Twelfth-month,
A hearse and stages—other vehicles give place—the funeral of an old Broadway
stage-driver, the cortege mostly drivers.
Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, the gate is pass’d, the
new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the hearse uncloses,
The coffin is pass’d out, lower’d and settled, the whip is lai...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...His first infidelity was a mistake, but not as big
As her false pregnancy. Later, the boy found out
He was born three months earlier than the date
On his birth certificate, which had turned into
A marriage license in his hands. Had he been trapped
In a net, like a moth mistaken for a butterfly?
And why did she--what was in it for her?
It took him ...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
...'s last oration.
The hawkers have not got 'em yet -
Your honour please to buy a set?
Here's Woolston's tracts, the twelfth edition,
'Tis read by ev'ry politician:
The country members, when in town,
To all their boroughs send them down;
You never met a thing so smart!
The courtiers have them all by heart;
Those maids of honour (who can read),
Are taught to use them for their creed.
The rev'rend author's good intention
Has been rewarded with a pension.
He does an h...Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Edward
...n at sight
Of any hill although as fair
And loftier. For infinite
The change, late unperceived, this year,
The twelfth, suddenly, shows me plain.
Hope now,--not health nor cheerfulness,
Since they can come and go again,
As often one brief hour witnesses,--
Just hope has gone forever. Perhaps
I may love other hills yet more
Than this: the future and the maps
Hide something I was waiting for.
One thing I know, that love with chance
And use and ti...Read more of this...
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