Famous Warfare Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Warfare poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous warfare poems. These examples illustrate what a famous warfare poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...praise.
The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
How Abram was the friend of God on high;
Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage
With Amalek’s ungracious progeny;
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie
Beneath the stroke of Heaven’s avenging ire;
Or Job’s pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;
Or rapt Isaiah’s wild, seraphic fire;
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.
Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,
How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;
How He,...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...against you.
So then I expect from you a worse outcome,
although you have often availed in the rush of battle,
grim warfare, if you dare very near at hand
to await Grendel for the length of the entire night.” (ll. 506-28)
Beowulf made his reply, the son of Ecgtheow:
“What a whole lot of words, Unferth my friend,
you have spoken concerning Breca, drunk on beer,
telling of his trajectory. But I shall tell you all the truth:
that I possessed the greater strength at s...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...wide, the hot surge waiting
of furious flame. {1b} Nor far was that day
when father and son-in-law stood in feud
for warfare and hatred that woke again. {1c}
With envy and anger an evil spirit
endured the dole in his dark abode,
that he heard each day the din of revel
high in the hall: there harps rang out,
clear song of the singer. He sang who knew {1d}
tales of the early time of man,
how the Almighty made the earth,
fairest fields enfolded by water,
set, triumph...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...g deep with beak and talon,
For the body of Mondamin.
And with all their craft and cunning,
All their skill in wiles of warfare,
They perceived no danger near them,
Till their claws became entangled,
Till they found themselves imprisoned
In the snares of Hiawatha.
From his place of ambush came he,
Striding terrible among them,
And so awful was his aspect
That the bravest quailed with terror.
Without mercy he destroyed them
Right and left, by tens and twenties,
And their wretc...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...nd?
Scarce once herself, by turns all Womankind!
Who, with herself, or others, from her birth
Finds all her life one warfare upon earth:
Shines, in exposing Knaves, and painting Fools,
Yet is, whate'er she hates and ridicules.
No Thought advances, but her Eddy Brain
Whisks it about, and down it goes again.
Full sixty years the World has been her Trade,
The wisest Fool much Time has ever made.
From loveless youth to unrespected age,
No passion gratify'd except her R...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...y
Were girt by weeds and growths that had their way.
Couch-grass and ivy, and wild eglantine
In subtle scaling warfare all combine.
Subject to such attacks three hundred years,
The donjon yields, and ruin now appears,
E'en as by leprosy the wild boars die,
In moat the crumbled battlements now lie;
Around the snake-like bramble twists its rings;
Freebooter sparrows come on daring wings
To perch upon the swivel-gun, nor heed
Its murmuring growl ...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...nd,
And of happiness and plenty
In the land of the Ojibways,
In the pleasant land and peaceful.
"After many years of warfare,
Many years of strife and bloodshed,
There is peace between the Ojibways
And the tribe of the Dacotahs."
Thus continued Hiawatha,
And then added, speaking slowly,
"That this peace may last forever,
And our hands be clasped more closely,
And our hearts be more united,
Give me as my wife this maiden,
Minnehaha, Laughing Water,
Loveliest of Da...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...e round Athena's shrine
And mirror her divine economies,
And balanced symmetry of what in man
Would else wage ceaseless warfare, - this at least within the span
Between our mother's kisses and the grave
Might so inform our lives, that we could win
Such mighty empires that from her cave
Temptation would grow hoarse, and pallid Sin
Would walk ashamed of his adulteries,
And Passion creep from out the House of Lust with startled eyes.
To make the body and the spirit one
With al...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...,
That this inordinate man Lancelot,
This engine of renown, this hewer down daily
Of potent men by scores in our late warfare,
Has now inside his head a foreign fever
That urges him away to the last edge
Of everything, there to efface himself
In ecstasy, and so be done with us.
Hereafter, peradventure certain birds
Will perch in meditation on his bones,
Quite as if they were some poor sailor’s bones,
Or felon’s jettisoned, or fisherman’s,
Or fowler’s bones, or Mark o...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...s dearth
Which praying fails to do away.
Nor tears, nor tears this clay uncouth
Could mould, if any tears there were.
A warfare of my lips in truth,
Battling with God, is now my prayer....Read more of this...
by
Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...and still in bright array, ye Saints; here stand,
Ye Angels armed; this day from battle rest:
Faithful hath been your warfare, and of God
Accepted, fearless in his righteous cause;
And as ye have received, so have ye done,
Invincibly: But of this cursed crew
The punishment to other hand belongs;
Vengeance is his, or whose he sole appoints:
Number to this day's work is not ordained,
Nor multitude; stand only, and behold
God's indignation on these godless poured
By m...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...surprised. But first I mean
To exercise him in the Wilderness;
There he shall first lay down the rudiments
Of his great warfare, ere I send him forth
To conquer Sin and Death, the two grand foes.
By humiliation and strong sufferance
His weakness shall o'ercome Satanic strength,
And all the world, and mass of sinful flesh;
That all the Angels and aethereal Powers—
They now, and men hereafter—may discern
From what consummate virtue I have chose
This perfet man, by merit called...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...head and say: "To-day, I've no
Comment to make."
Oh, silence is a mighty shield,
Verbosity is vain;
let others wordy warfare wield,
From arguments abstain;
When faced with dialectic foes
Just shrug and turn away:
Be sure your wisest words are those
You do not say.
Yea, Silence is a gleaming sword
Whose wounds are hard to heal;
Its quiet stuns the spoken word
More than a thunder peal;
Against it there is no defense,
For like the grave-yard sod
Its hush is Heaven's eloquen...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...squall'Il twist her
Broadside on to it!--Row!
Heark'ee, Thor of the Thunder!
We are not here for a jest--
For wager, warfare, or plunder,
Or to put your power to test.
This work is none of our wishing--
We would house at home if we might--
But our master is wrecked out fishing.
We go to find him to-night.
For we hold that in all disaster--
As the Gods Themselves have said--
A Man must stand by his Master
Till one of the two is dead.
That is our way of thinking,
Now you c...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...oon rested those who fought; but thou
Who minglest in the harder strife
For truths which men receive not now,
Thy warfare only ends with life. 20
A friendless warfare! lingering long
Through weary day and weary year;
A wild and many-weaponed throng
Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear.
Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof, 25
And blench not at thy chosen lot,
The timid good may stand aloof,
The sage may frown¡ªyet faint thou not.
Nor heed the shaf...Read more of this...
by
Bryant, William Cullen
...in'd house, now falling can uphold;
5.13 It's not my Learning, Rhetoric, wit so large,
5.14 Now hath the power, Death's Warfare, to discharge.
5.15 It's not my goodly house, nor bed of down,
5.16 That can refresh, or ease, if Conscience frown;
5.17 Nor from alliance now can I have hope,
5.18 But what I have done well, that is my prop.
5.19 He that in youth is godly, wise, and sage
5.20 Provides a staff for to support his age.
5.21 Great mutations, some joyful, and some sad,
5...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...Dust
They have appealed, and to that barren arbiter they must
Repair for judgment; let them, if they can,
From Natural Warfare and insensate Chance,
Create the new Ideal rule for man!
Methinks that was not my inheritance;
For I was nurtured otherwise, my soul
Passes from higher heights of life to a more supreme goal.
Lo! while we spake the earth did turn away
Her visage from the God, and Hecate's boat
Rose silver-laden, till the jealous day
Blew all its torches out: I did n...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...ung, and still a harp unseen
Filled up the symphony between.
XXXI.
Song.
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking;
Dream of battled fields no more,
Days of danger, nights of waking.
In our isle's enchanted hall,
Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,
Fairy strains of music fall,
Every sense in slumber dewing.
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,
Drea...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...sind,
And of happiness and plenty
In the land of the Ojibways,
In the pleasant land and peaceful.
"After many years of warfare,
Many years of strife and bloodshed,
There is peace between the Ojibways
And the tribe of the Dacotahs."
Thus continued Hiawatha,
And then added, speaking slowly,
'That this peace may last forever,
And our hands be clasped more closely,
And our hearts be more united,
Give me as my wife this maiden,
Minnehaha, Laughing Water,
Loveliest of Dacotah wome...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...
But only of fighting through,
Blindly fighting through, through!
'Tis done
At last!
The victory won,
The dissonance of warfare past!
O Music mourn the dead
Whose loyal blood was shed,
And sound the taps for every hero slain;
Then lead into the song
That made their spirit strong,
And tell the world they did not die in vain.
Thank God we can see, in the glory of morn,
The invincible flag that our fathers defended;
And our hearts can repeat what the heroes have sworn,
That...Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
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