Famous Tyranny Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Tyranny poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous tyranny poems. These examples illustrate what a famous tyranny poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Vachel Lindsay
(Being a Chant of the American Soap-Box and the Russian Revolution.)
O market square, O slattern place,
Is glory in your slack disgrace?
Plump quack doctors sell their pills,
Gentle grafters sell brass watches,
Silly anarchists yell their ills.
Shall we be as weird as these?
In the breezes nod and wheeze?
Heaven's mass is sung,
Tomorrow's mass is sung
In a spirit tongue
By wind and...Read more of this...
by
John Clare
Old Elm that murmured in our chimney top
The sweetest anthem autumn ever made
And into mellow whispering calms would drop
When showers fell on thy many coloured shade
And when dark tempests mimic thunder made
While darkness came as it would strangle light
With the black tempest of a winter night
That rocked thee like a cradle to thy root
How did I love to hear...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
Roll up, Eureka's heroes, on that grand Old Rush afar,
For Lalor's gone to join you in the big camp where you are;
Roll up and give him welcome such as only diggers can,
For well he battled for the rights of miner and of Man.
In that bright golden country that lies beyond our sight,
The record of his honest life shall be...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CCXII. Solea lontana in sonno consolarme. SHE ANNOUNCES TO HIM, IN A VISION, THAT HE WILL NEVER SEE HER MORE. To soothe me distant far, in days gone by,With dreams of one whose glance all heaven combined,Was mine; now fears and sorrow haunt my mind,Nor can I from that grief, those...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XI. Se la mia vita dall' aspro tormento. HE HOPES THAT TIME WILL RENDER HER MORE MERCIFUL. If o'er each bitter pang, each hidden throeSadly triumphant I my years drag on,Till even the radiance of those eyes is gone,Lady, which star-like now illume thy brow;And silver'd are those locks of...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
We knew thee of old,
Oh divinely restored,
By the light of thine eyes
And the light of they Sword.
From the graves of our slain
Shall thy valour prevail
As we greet thee again --
Hail, Liberty! Hail!
Long time didst thou dwell
Mid the peoples that mourn,
Awaiting some voice
That should bid thee return.
Ah, slow broke that day
And no man...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the inmost sea of all the...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
"Was I at Eureka?" His figure was drawn to a youthful height,
And a flood of proud recollections made the fire in his grey eyes bright;
With pleasure they lighted and glisten'd, tho' the digger was grizzled and old,
And we gathered about him and listen'd while the tale of Eureka he told.
"Ah, those were the days," said the digger, "twas a...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
I am a poet of the Hudson River and the heights above it,
the lights, the stars, and the bridges
I am also by self-appointment the laureate of the Atlantic
-of the peoples' hearts, crossing it
to new America.
I am burdened with the truck and chimera, hope,
acquired in the sweating sick-excited passage
in steerage, strange and estranged
Hence...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Marvell
Now does Spains Fleet her spatious wings unfold,
Leaves the new World and hastens for the old:
But though the wind was fair, the slowly swoome
Frayted with acted Guilt, and Guilt to come:
For this rich load, of which so proud they are,
Was rais'd by Tyranny, and rais'd for war;
Every capatious Gallions womb was fill'd,
With what the Womb of wealthy Kingdomes yield,
The...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
While about the shore of Mona those Neronian legionaries
Burnt and broke the grove and altar of the Druid and Druidess,
Far in the East Boadicea, standing loftily charioted,
Mad and maddening all that heard her in her fierce volubility,
Girt by half the tribes of Britain, near the colony Camulodune,
Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters o'er a wild confederacy.
`They that scorn...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
(Presbyter of Christ in Americas 1683-1708)
To thee, plain hero of a rugged race,
We bring the meed of praise too long delayed!
Thy fearless word and faithful work have made
For God's Republic firmer path and place
In this New World: thou hast proclaimed the grace
And power of Christ in many a forest glade,
Teaching the truth that leaves men unafraid
Of...Read more of this...
by
Phillis Wheatley
HAIL, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,
Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn:
The northern clime beneath her genial ray,
Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway:
Elate with hope her race no longer mourns,
Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns,
While in thine hand with pleasure we behold
The silken reins, and Freedom's charms unfold.
Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies
She shines supreme, while...Read more of this...
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...
by
Omar Khayyam
Bow down, heaven's tyranny to undergo,
Quaff wine to face the world, and all its woe;
Your origin and end are both in earth,
But now you are above earth, not below!...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
To tribulations of mankind
Dame Nature is indifferent;
To human sorrow she is blind,
And deaf to human discontent.
Mid fear and fratricidal fray,
Mid woe and tyranny of toil,
She goes her unregarding way
Of sky and sun and soil.
In leaf and blade, in bud and bloom
Exultantly her gladness glows,
And careless of Man's dreary doom
Around the palm she wreathes the rose;
Creating beauty everywhere,
With...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
SCENE.--A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. Prometheus is discovered bound to the Precipice. Panthea and Ione areseated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks.
Prometheus.
Monarch of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits
But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
Which Thou and I alone of living things
Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
Made...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I make His Crescent fill or lack --
His Nature is at Full
Or Quarter -- as I signify --
His Tides -- do I control --
He holds superior in the Sky
Or gropes, at my Command
Behind inferior Clouds -- or round
A Mist's slow Colonnade --
But since We hold a Mutual Disc --
And front a Mutual Day --
Which is the Despot, neither knows...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
A cloud has lowered that shall not soon pass o'er.
The world takes sides: whether for impious aims
With Tyranny whose bloody toll enflames
A generous people to heroic war;
Whether with Freedom, stretched in her own gore,
Whose pleading hands and suppliant distress
Still offer hearts that thirst for Righteousness
A glorious cause to strike or perish for....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Ah! wheel of heaven to tyranny inclined,
'Twas e'er your wont to show yourself unkind;
And, cruel earth, if they should cleave your breast,
What store of buried jewels they would find!...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
NOT in scorn do I reprove thee,
Not in pride thy vows I waive,
But, believe, I could not love thee,
Wert thou prince, and I a slave.
These, then, are thine oaths of passion ?
This, thy tenderness for me ?
Judged, even, by thine own confession,
Thou art steeped in perfidy.
Having vanquished, thou wouldst leave me !
Thus I read thee long ago;
Therefore, dared I...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXXXIV. Non veggio ove scampar mi possa omai. AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS HER EYES ARE MORE POWERFUL THAN AT FIRST. No hope of respite, of escape no way,Her bright eyes wage such constant havoc here;Alas! excess of tyranny, I fear,My doting heart, which ne'er has truce, will slay:Fain would I flee,...Read more of this...
by
Constantine P Cavafy
In these darkened rooms, where I spend
oppresive days, I pace to and fro
to find the windows. -- When a window
opens, it will be a consolation. --
But the windows cannot be found, or I cannot
find them. And maybe it is best that I do not find them.
Maybe the light will be a new tyranny.
Who knows what new things it will...Read more of this...
by
Hafez
She went.—O whither too, O one true love,
Went my sad heart, thou knowest. Lo my prayer
Followeth thee, & faith that nought may move.
With prayer I came, & now with pleading strong
I leave thee, that my flinchless trust thou share;
So shall God aid us, who to him belong.
Though all earth censure me, by Heaven I swear,
Though tyranny me test with trial...Read more of this...
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