Famous Union Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Union poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous union poems. These examples illustrate what a famous union poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Carl Sandburg
I WAITED today for a freight train to pass.
Cattle cars with steers butting their horns against the
bars, went by.
And a half a dozen hoboes stood on bumpers between
cars.
Well, the cattle are respectable, I thought.
Every steer has its transportation paid for by the farmer
sending it to market,
While the hoboes are law-breakers in riding a railroad
train without a ticket.
It reminded me...Read more of this...
by
Anthony Hecht
As though it were reluctant to be day,
.......Morning deploys a scale
.......Of rarities in gray,
And winter settles down in its chain-mail,
Victorious over legions of gold and red.
......The smokey souls of stones,
......Blunt pencillings of lead,
Pare down the world to glintless monotones
Of graveyard weather, vapors of a fen
.......We reckon through our pores.
.......Save for the garbage men,
Our children are the first ones out...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The first and second Adam.
Rom. 5:12,etc.
Deep in the dust before thy throne
Our guilt and our disgrace we own;
Great God! we own th' unhappy name
Whence sprang our nature and our shame;
Adam the sinner: at his fall,
Death like a conqueror seized us
A thousand new-born babes are dead
By fatal union to their head.
But whilst our spirits, filled with awe,
Behold the terrors...Read more of this...
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...
by
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
Today I am as old in years
as all the Jewish people.
Now I seem to be
a Jew.
Here I plod through ancient Egypt.
Here I perish crucified, on the cross,
and to this day I bear the scars of nails.
I seem...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
V. ? ON THE UNION. When was there contract better driven by fate, Or celebrated with more truth of state ? The world the temple was, the priest a king, The spoused pair two realms, the sea the ring....Read more of this...
by
W S Merwin
Why did he promise me
that we would build ourselves
an ark all by ourselves
out in back of the house
on New York Avenue
in Union City New Jersey
to the singing of the streetcars
after the story
of Noah whom nobody
believed about the waters
that would rise over everything
when I told my father
I wanted us to build
an ark of our own there
in the back yard under
the...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
For union with my love I sigh in vain,
The pangs of absence I can scarce sustain,
My grief I dare not tell to any friend;
O trouble strange, sweet passion, bitter pain!...Read more of this...
by
Seamus Heaney
I
To-night, a first movement, a pulse,
As if the rain in bogland gathered head
To slip and flood: a bog-burst,
A gash breaking open the ferny bed.
Your back is a firm line of eastern coast
And arms and legs are thrown
Beyond your gradual hills. I caress
The heaving province where our past has grown.
I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder
That you would neither...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
At the time when I had long suffered and the hours were snares to me, you appeared to me as the welcoming light that shines from the windows on to the snow in the depths of winter evenings.
The brightness of your hospitable soul touched my heart lightly without wounding it, like a hand of tranquil warmth.
Then came a holy trust,...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXXXII. Come 'l candido piè per l' erba fresca. HER WALK, LOOKS, WORDS, AND AIR. As o'er the fresh grass her fair form its sweetAnd graceful passage makes at evening hours,Seems as around the newly-wakening flowersFound virtue issue from her delicate feet.Love, which in true hearts only has his seat,Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
I KNOW an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with
pearl buttons the size of a dollar,
And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice-
box, helps himself to cold ham and rye bread,
Tells the bartender it's hotter than yesterday and will be
hotter yet to-morrow, by Jesus,
And is on his way with his head in the air and a...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
He staggered in from night and frost and fog
And lampless streets: he’d guzzled like a hog
And drunk till he was dazed. And now he came
To hear—he couldn’t call to mind the name—
But he’d been given a ticket for the show,
And thought he’d (hiccup) chance his luck and go.
The hall swam in his eyes, and...Read more of this...
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...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
FLAG of the heroes who left us their glory,
Borne through their battle-fields' thunder and flame,
Blazoned in song and illumined in story,
Wave o'er us all who inherit their fame!
Up with our banner bright,
Sprinkled with starry light,
Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore,
While through the sounding sky
Loud rings the Nation's cry,
UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE!
Light of our firmament, guide...Read more of this...
by
Robert Lowell
"Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam."
The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.
My hand draws back. I...Read more of this...
by
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Thoughts, go your way home.
Embrace,
depths of the soul and the sea.
In my view,
it is
stupid
to be
always serene.
My cabin is the worst
of all cabins -
All night above me
Thuds a smithy of feet.
All night,
stirring the ceiling’s calm,
dancers stampede
to a moaning motif:
“Marquita,
Marquita,
Marquita my darling,
why won’t you,
Marquita,
why won’t you love me …”
But why
...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
A Part of an Ode to the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that noble pair Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison
IT is not growing like a tree
In bulk doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak three hundred year
To fall a log at last dry bald and sere:
A lily of a day 5...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
I
When tulips bloom in Union Aquare,
And timid breaths of vernal air
Go wandering down the dusty town,
Like children lost in Vanity Fair;
When every long, unlovely row
Of westward houses stands aglow,
And leads the eyes to sunset skies
Beyond the hills where green trees grow;
Then wearly seems the street parade,
And weary books, and...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
O MATER! O fils!
O brood continental!
O flowers of the prairies!
O space boundless! O hum of mighty products!
O you teeming cities! O so invincible, turbulent, proud!
O race of the future! O women!
O fathers! O you men of passion and the storm!
O native power only! O beauty!
O yourself! O God! O divine average!
O...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Why are taste and genius so seldom met with united?
Taste of strength is afraid,--genius despises the rein....Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Mon duc, rien qu'un moment.")
{HERNANI, Act V.}
One little moment to indulge the sight
With the rich beauty of the summer's night.
The harp is hushed, and, see, the torch is dim,—
Night and ourselves together. To the brim
The cup of our felicity is filled.
Each sound is mute,...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
I
Not once in all our days of poignant love,
Did I a single instant give to thee
My undivided being wholly free.
Not all thy potent passion could remove
The barrier that loomed between to prove
The full supreme surrendering of me.
Oh, I was beaten, helpless utterly
Against the shadow-fact with which I strove.
For when a...Read more of this...
by
Marianne Moore
This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
about a thing one has believed in,
requiring public promises
of one's intention
to fulfill a private obligation:
I wonder what Adam and Eve
think of it by this time,
this firegilt steel
alive with goldenness;
how bright it shows --
"of circular traditions and impostures,
committing many spoils,"
requiring all one's criminal ingenuity
to...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Union poems.