Famous Uniform Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Uniform poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous uniform poems. These examples illustrate what a famous uniform poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...shade of trees, beside the flow
Of the wild babbling rivulet; and now
The forest's solemn canopies were changed
For the uniform and lightsome evening sky.
Gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed
The struggling brook; tall spires of windlestrae
Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope,
And nought but gnarlèd roots of ancient pines
Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots
The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here
Yet ghastly. For, as fast yea...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ening to maturity; for the last-born? little and
big?
and for the errant?
What is this you bring my America?
Is it uniform with my country?
Is it not something that has been better told or done before?
Have you not imported this, or the spirit of it, in some ship?
Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness? is the good old cause in it?
Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians, literats, of enemies’
lands?
Does it not assume that what is notor...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...s gross till clothed upon:
I must take what men offer, with a grace
As though I would not, could I help it, take!
An uniform I wear though over-rich--
Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;
No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake
And despicable therefore! now folk kneel
And kiss my hand--of course the Church's hand.
Thus I am made, thus life is best for me,
And thus that it should be I have procured;
And thus it could not be another way,
I venture to imagine...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...f.
'O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!'
Is this your love so warm?
The love that loves a scarlet coat
Should be a little more uniform.
Said she, ' I loved a soldier once,
For he was blithe and brave;
But I will never have a man
With both legs in the grave
'Before you had those timber toes
Your love I did allow;
But then, you know, you stand upon
Another footing now.'
'O Nelly Gray! O Nelly Gray!
For all your jeering speeches,
At duty's call I left my legs
In Badajos's breaches.'...Read more of this...
by
Hood, Thomas
...ll to go. (To go where?)
Why are they all so big, other children?
So noisy? So much at home they
Must have been born in uniform
Lived all their lives in playgrounds
Spent the years inventing games
That don't let me in. Games
That are rough, that swallow you up.
And the railings.
All around, the railings.
Are they to keep out wolves and monsters?
Things that carry off and eat children?
Things you don't take sweets from?
Perhaps they're to stop us getting out
Running away from...Read more of this...
by
McGough, Roger
...ed with family and neighbors --
he was first back on the block --
he sat cross-legged on the floor
still in his wool uniform, smoking
and drinking as he spoke of passing
high over the dark cities she'd
only read about. He'd wanted to
go back again and again. He'd wanted
to do this for the country,
for this -- a small house with upstairs
bedrooms -- so he'd asked to go
on raid after raid as though
he hungered to kill or be killed.
THE PRESIDENT
Today on televisio...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...at it with pleats,
Sheet it with sheets
Of empty conceits,
And chop and chew,
And hack and hew,
And weld it into a uniform stanza,
And evolve a neat,
Complacent, complete,
Academic extravaganza!...Read more of this...
by
Graves, Robert
...Hi! slippery hitherao!
Water, get it! Panee lao! [Bring water swiftly.]
You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din."
The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind,
For a piece o' twisty rag
An' a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment 'e could find.
When the sweatin' troop-train lay
In a sidin' through the day,
Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl,
We shouted "Harry By!" [Mr. Atkins's equivalent for "O brother."...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...speak
And found my nostalgia
Wholly inappropriate.
Forgetting your glasses for the eleven plus,
No money for the uniform for the pass at thirteen.
It wasn’t - as I imagined - shame that kept you from telling
But fear of the consequences for your mother
Had you sobbed the night’s terrors
Of your father’s drunken homecomings,
Your mother sat with the door open
In all weathers while you, the oldest,
Waited with her, perhaps
Something might have been done.
He ne...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...en in the other
By inspiration. It proved there was something.
They kept their thoughts away from when the maples
Stood uniform in buckets, and the steam
Of sap and snow rolled off the sugarhouse.
When they made her related to the maples,
It was the tree the autumn fire ran through
And swept of leathern leaves, but left the bark
Unscorched, unblackened, even, by any smoke.
They always took their holidays in autumn.
Once they came on a maple in a glade,
Standing alone with smo...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...though to die by gunshot were
The finest play under the sun.
A brown Lieutenant and his men,
Half dressed in national uniform,
Stand at my door, and I complain
Of the foul weather, hail and rain,
A pear-tree broken by the storm.
I count those feathered balls of soot
The moor-hen guides upon the stream.
To silence the envy in my thought;
And turn towards my chamber, caught
In the cold snows of a dream.
VI. The Stare's Nest by My Window
The bees build in the crevices
Of ...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...h troops tar-bright,
Again our Nesbitt heaves in sight;
He comes, he comes, your lines to storm,
And rig your troops in uniform.
To meet such heroes will ye brag,
With fury arm'd, and feather-bag,
Who wield their missile pitch and tar
With engines new in British war?
"Lo! where our mighty navy brings
Destruction on her canvass wings,
While through the deep the British thunder
Shall sound th' alarm, to rob and plunder!
As Phoebus first, so Homer speaks,
When he march'd out t...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...One small complaint may hide a great one.
One injustice may hide another—one colonial may hide another,
One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath
may hide another bath
As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.
One idea may hide another: Life is simple
Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein
One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory
One invention may hide another invention,
One e...Read more of this...
by
Koch, Kenneth
...as late. She sudden shook, And
caught at her stopped heart. Her eyes had shown
Sir Everard emerging from the mist. His uniform was travel-stained
and torn,
His jackboots muddy, and his eager stride Jangled
his spurs. A thorn
Entangled, trailed behind him. To the tryst
He hastened. Eunice shuddered, ran -- a twist
Round a sharp turning and she fled to hide.
XLVI
But he had seen her as she swiftly ran, A
flash of white against the river's grey.
"Eunice," he called. "My Dar...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...nds
Me on all sides, everywhere I look.
And I cannot explain the action of leveling,
Why it should all boil down to one
Uniform substance, a magma of interiors.
My guide in these matters is your self,
Firm, oblique, accepting everything with the same
Wraith of a smile, and as time speeds up so that it is soon
Much later, I can know only the straight way out,
The distance between us. Long ago
The strewn evidence meant something,
The small accidents and pleasures
Of the day as ...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...d insistence
That they do not count, as well as their modest horror
Of letting one's sex be known in so many words.
The uniform grey of the nondescript buildings, the absence
Of churches or comfort-stations, have given observers
An odd impression of ostentatious meanness,
And it must be said of the citizens (muttering by
In their ratty sheepskins, shying at cracks in the sidewalk)
That they lack the peace of mind of the truly humble.
The tenor of life is careful, even in the ...Read more of this...
by
Wilbur, Richard
...and say, Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic;
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white;
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the
same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you, curling grass;
It may be you transpire from the ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...in regular pomp, stately and beauteous appear.
All gives token of rule and choice, and all has its meaning,--
'Tis this uniform plan points out the Ruler to me.
Brightly the glittering domes in far-away distance proclaim him.
Out of the kernel of rocks rises the city's high wall.
Into the desert without, the fauns of the forest are driven,
But by devotion is lent life more sublime to the stone.
Man is brought into nearer union with man, and around him
Closer, more actively wa...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...then saw England plain.
XXII
Johnnie and I were married. England then
Had been a week at war, and all the men
Wore uniform, as English people can,
Unconscious of it. Percy, the best man,
As thin as paper and as smart as paint,
Bade us good-by with admirable restraint,
Went from the church to catch his train to hell;
And died-saving his batman from a shell.
XXIII
We went down to Devon,
In a warm summer rain,
Knowing that our happiness
Might never come again; ...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...r fingers interlocked,
her sunken eyes staring upward
beyond all knowledge,
beyond the tiny figures of history,
some in uniform, some not,
marching onto the pages of this incredibly heavy book....Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
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