Famous Volleys Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Volleys poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous volleys poems. These examples illustrate what a famous volleys poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Artilleryman's Vision The

by Walt Whitman
 WHILE my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long, 
And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes, 
And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath of my infant, 
There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me: 
The...Read more of this...

The Disabled Debauchee

by John Wilmot
 As some brave admiral, in former war,
Deprived of force, but pressed with courage still,
Two rival fleets appearing from afar,
Crawls to the top of an adjacent hill;

From whence (with thoughts full of concern) he views
The wise and daring conduct of the fight,
And each bold action to his mind renews
His present glory, and his past delight;

From his fierce eyes, flashes of...Read more of this...

North Country

by Kenneth Slessor
 North Country, filled with gesturing wood, 
With trees that fence, like archers' volleys, 
The flanks of hidden valleys 
Where nothing's left to hide 

But verticals and perpendiculars, 
Like rain gone wooden, fixed in falling, 
Or fingers blindly feeling 
For what nobody cares; 

Or trunks of pewter, bangled by greedy death, 
Stuck with black staghorns, quietly sucking, 
And trees whose...Read more of this...

The Last Berkshire Eleven

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas at the disastrous battle of Maiwand, in Afghanistan,
Where the Berkshires were massacred to the last man;
On the morning of July the 27th, in the year eighteen eighty,
Which I'm sorry to relate was a pitiful sight to see. 

Ayoub Khan's army amounted to twelve thousand in all,
And honestly speaking it wasn't very small,
And by such a great force the...Read more of this...

Venus and Adonis

by William Shakespeare
 Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold
That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.

Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow;
"O thou clear god, and patron of all light,
From whom each lamp and shining star...Read more of this...

141. Tam Samson's Elegy

by Robert Burns
 HAS auld Kilmarnock seen the deil?
Or great Mackinlay 1 thrawn his heel?
Or Robertson 2 again grown weel,
 To preach an’ read?
“Na’ waur than a’! cries ilka chiel,
 “Tam Samson’s dead!”


Kilmarnock lang may grunt an’ grane,
An’ sigh, an’ sab, an’ greet her lane,
An’ cleed her bairns, man, wife, an’ wean,
 In mourning weed;
To Death she’s dearly pay’d the kane—
 Tam...Read more of this...

The Relief of Mafeking

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Success to Colonel Baden-Powell and his praises loudly sing,
For being so brave in relieving Mafeking,
With his gallant little band of eight hundred men,
They made the Boers fly from Mafeking like sheep escaping from a pen. 

'Twas in the year of 1900 and on the 18th of May,
That Colonel Baden-Powell beat the Boers without dismay,
And made them fly from Mafeking...Read more of this...

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