Famous Under The Gun Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Under The Gun poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous under the gun poems. These examples illustrate what a famous under the gun poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Wilfred Owen
Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,
Great gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse;
Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse
Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!
Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm,
And beat it down before its sins grow worse;
Spend our resentment, cannon,--yea, disburse
Our gold in shapes of flame, our breaths in storm.
Yet, for men's sakes whom...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Him goin' to ride for us! Him -- with the pants and the eyeglass and all.
Amateur! don't he just look it -- it's twenty to one on a fall.
Boss must be gone off his head to be sending out steeplechase crack
Out over fences like these with an object like that on his back.
Ride! Don't tell...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
The poppies gleamed like bloody pools through cotton-woolly mist;
The Captain kept a-lookin' at the watch upon his wrist;
And there we smoked and squatted, as we watched the shrapnel flame;
'Twas wonnerful, I'm tellin' you, how fast them bullets came.
'Twas weary work the waiting, though; I tried to sleep a wink,
For waitin' means a-thinkin', and it doesn't do to think.
So I...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.
The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking,...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
There was a rich old gentleman
Lived on a lonely moor in Switzerland,
And he was very hard to the wandering poor,
'Tis said he never lodged nor served them at his door.
'Twas on a stormy night, and Boreas blew a bitter blast,
And the snowflakes they fell thick and fast,
When a poor old mendicant, tired and footsore,
Who had travelled that day...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Did you ever hear tell of Chili? I was readin' the other day
Of President Balmaceda and of how he was sent away.
It seems that he didn't suit 'em -- they thought that they'd like a change,
So they started an insurrection and chased him across the range.
They seem to be restless people -- and, judging by...Read more of this...
by
Edward Lear
G was Papa's new Gun;He put it in a box; And then he went and bought a bun,And walked about the Docks. ...Read more of this...
by
John McCrae
Here all the day she swings from tide to tide,
Here all night long she tugs a rusted chain,
A masterless hulk that was a ship of pride,
Yet unashamed: her memories remain.
It was Nelson in the `Captain', Cape St. Vincent far alee,
With the `Vanguard' leading s'uth'ard in the haze --
Little Jervis and the Spaniards and the fight that was to be,
Twenty-seven...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
Good Father!… ’Twas an eve in middle June,
And war was waged anew
By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn
Men’s bones all Europe through.
Three nights ere this, with columned corps he’d crossed
The Sambre at Charleroi,
To move on Brussels, where the English host
Dallied in Parc and Bois.
The yestertide we’d heard the gloomy gun
Growl through...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
August 14th, 1914
Into the brazen, burnished sky, the cry hurls itself. The
zigzagging cry
of hoarse throats, it floats against the hard winds, and binds the
head
of the serpent to its tail, the long snail-slow serpent of marching
men.
Men weighed down with rifles and knapsacks, and parching with war.
The cry jars and splits against the brazen, burnished sky.
This is the...Read more of this...
by
Nikki Giovanni
For Saundrai wanted to write a poem that rhymes but revolution doesn't lend itself to be-bopping then my neighbor who thinks i hate asked – do you ever write tree poems – i like trees so i thought i'll write a beautiful green tree poem peeked from...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
The whole world on a raft! A King is here,
The record of his grandeur but a smear.
Is it his deacon-beard, or old bald pate
That makes the band upon his whims to wait?
Loot and mud-honey have his soul defiled.
Quack, pig, and priest, he drives camp-meetings wild
Until they shower their pennies like spring rain
That he may preach upon the Spanish main.
What...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Why need we newer arms invent,
Poor peoples to destroy?
With what we have let's be content
And perfect their employ.
With weapons that may millions kill,
Why should we seek for more,
A brighter spate of blood to spill,
A deeper sea of gore?
The lurid blaze of atom light
Vast continents will blind,
And steep in centuries of night
Despairing humankind.
So let's...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
COME up from the fields, father, here’s a letter from our Pete;
And come to the front door, mother—here’s a letter from thy dear son.
2
Lo, ’tis autumn;
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages, with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind;
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
Ithaca, October 1993: Jorie went on a lingerie
tear, wanting to look like a moll
in a Chandler novel. Dinner, consisting of three parts gin
and one part lime juice cordial, was a prelude to her hair.
There are, she said, poems that can be written
only when the poet is clad in black underwear.
But that's Jorie for you. Always cracking...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep;
It was past twelve on a mid-winter night,
When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep;
There, with much work to do before the light,
We lugged our clay-sucked boots as best we might
Along the trench; sometimes a bullet sang,
And droning shells burst with a hollow bang;
We...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
I ain't a timid man at all, I'm just as brave as most,
I'll take my chance in open fight and die beside my post;
But riding round the 'ole day long as target for a Krupp,
A-drawing fire from Koppies -- well, I'm fair fed up.
It's wonderful how few get hit, it's luck that pulls us through;...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
My Life had stood -- a Loaded Gun --
In Corners -- till a Day
The Owner passed -- identified --
And carried Me away --
And now We roam in Sovereign Woods --
And now We hunt the Doe --
And every time I speak for Him --
The Mountains straight reply --
And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow --
It is as...Read more of this...
by
Eavan Boland
This harbour was made by art and force.
And called Kingstown and afterwards Dun Laoghaire.
And holds the sea behind its barrier
less than five miles from my house.
Lord be with us say the makers of a nation.
Lord look down say the builders of a harbour.
They came and cut a shape out of ocean
and left stone to close around their labour.
Officers and...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I have never seen "Volcanoes" --
But, when Travellers tell
How those old -- phlegmatic mountains
Usually so still --
Bear within -- appalling Ordnance,
Fire, and smoke, and gun,
Taking Villages for breakfast,
And appalling Men --
If the stillness is Volcanic
In the human face
When upon a pain Titanic
Features keep their place --
If at length the smouldering anguish
Will not overcome --
And the palpitating Vineyard
In the dust,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
At evening when the lamp is lit,
Around the fire my parents sit;
They sit at home and talk and sing,
And do not play at anything.
Now, with my little gun, I crawl
All in the dark along the wall,
And follow round the forest track
Away behind the sofa back.
There, in the night, where none can...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
JACK was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun.
He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day,
and his hands were tougher than sole leather.
He married a tough woman and they had eight children
and the woman died and the children grew up and
went away and wrote the old man every two years.
He died in the poorhouse sitting on a bench in...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
yesterday the man was pleased
the sun sat in the tree and all
upon the land held to the harmony
his coming then expected
his gun in his arm
his dog at his heels
a blackbird sang on a high branch
a white horse ambled by the hedge
a brindled cow munched grass - the man
shared his heartbeat with them
his gun in his arm
...Read more of this...
by
Sir Thomas Wyatt
The furious gun in his raging ire,
When that the bowl is rammed in too sore
And that the flame cannot part from the fire,
Cracketh in sunder, and in the air doth roar
The shivered pieces; right so doth my desire,
Whose flame increaseth from more to more,
Which to let out I dare not look or speak;...Read more of this...
by
Seamus Heaney
The piper coming from far away is you
With a whitewash brush for a sporran
Wobbling round you, a kitchen chair
Upside down on your shoulder, your right arm
Pretending to tuck the bag beneath your elbow,
Your pop-eyes and big cheeks nearly bursting
With laughter, but keeping the drone going on
Interminably, between catches of breath.
*
The whitewash brush. An old blanched skirted thing
On the back...Read more of this...
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