Famous Washington Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Washington poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous washington poems. These examples illustrate what a famous washington poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Sexton, Anne
...of tourists. Once I called breakfast the sexiest
meal of the day. Once I invited arrest
at the peace march in Washington. Once I was young and bold
and left hundreds of unmatched people out in the cold....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...of the first day of the first year of
Independence, sign’d by the Commissioners, ratified by The States, and read by
Washington
at the head of the army?
Have you possess’d yourself of the Federal Constitution?
Do you see who have left all feudal processes and poems behind them, and assumed the poems
and
processes of Democracy?
Are you faithful to things? do you teach as the land and sea, the bodies of men,
womanhood,
amativeness, angers, teach?
Have you sped throug...Read more of this...
by
Field, Eugene
...thy Pratt is richly blest
With a relic of art and a land effete--
A pitcher of glass that's cut, not pressed.
And a Washington teapot is possessed
Down in Pelham by Marthy Stone--
Think ye now that I say in jest
"These do I love, and these alone?"
Were Hepsy Higgins inclined to mate,
Or Dorcas Eastman prone to invest
In Cupid's bonds, they could find their fate
In the bootless bard of Crockery Quest.
For they've heaps of trumpery--so have the rest
Of those spinsters ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...nd glee
To sparkle with the birthday spirit.
Let me inform myself each day
Who's proudmost on the natal roster;
If Washington or Henry Clay,
Or Eugene Field or Stephen Foster.
oh lots of famous folks I'll find
Who more than measure to my rating,
And so thanksgivingly inclined
Their birthdays I'll be celebrating.
For Oh I know the cheery glow|
Of Anniversary rejoicing;
Let me reflect its radiance so
My daily gladness I'll be voicing.
And though I'm stooped an...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...s,
By you, your banks, Connecticut,
By you, and all your teeming life, Old Thames,
By you, Potomac, laving the ground Washington trod—by you Patapsco,
You, Hudson—you, endless Mississippi—not by you alone,
But to the high seas launch, my thought, his memory.
5
Lo, Soul, by this tomb’s lambency,
The darkness of the arrogant standards of the world,
With all its flaunting aims, ambitions, pleasures.
(Old, commonplace, and rusty saws,
The rich, the gay, the supe...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...
"Can I call Baltimore?" she asks.
She can, but she knows no one
in Baltimore, no one in
St. Louis, Boston, Washington.
She imagines herself standing
before the glass wall high
over Lake Shore Drive, the cars
below fanning into the city.
East she can see all the way
to Gary and the great gray clouds
of exhaustion rolling over
the lake where her vision ends.
This is where her brother lives.
At such height there's nothing,
no birds, no gro...Read more of this...
by
Kumin, Maxine
...n the smallest soul could swim
the English Channel in that time
or climb, like a ten-month-old child,
every step of the Washington Monument
to travel across, up, down, over or through
--you won't know till you get there which to do.
He laid on me for a few seconds
said Roscoe Black, who lived to tell
about his skirmish with a grizzly bear
in Glacier Park.He laid on me not doing anything.I could feel his heart
beating against my heart.
Never mind lie and lay, ...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...ill shall you steer, on land or ocean,
By like eccentric lunar motion;
Eclips'd in many a fatal crisis,
And dimm'd when Washington arises.
"And see how Fate, herself turn'd traitor,
Inverts the ancient course of nature;
And changes manners, tempers, climes,
To suit the genius of the times!
See, Bourbon forms a gen'rous plan,
New guardian of the rights of man,
And prompt in firm alliance joins
To aid the Rebels' proud designs!
Behold from realms of eastern day
His sails ...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ific incident in American history, may be supposed to have occurred a few months previous to Hamilton’s retirement from Washington’s Cabinet in 1795 and a few years before the political ingenuities of Burr—who has been characterized, without much exaggeration, as the inventor of American politics—began to be conspicuously formidable to the Federalists. These activities on the part of Burr resulted, as the reader will remember, in the Burr-Jefferson tie for the Presidency ...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...a mustache. Then they talked about some
other guy who did the twist forty-four hours in a row until
he saw George Washington crossing the Delaware.
"Man, that's what I call twisting, " one of the kids said.
"I don't think I could twist no forty-four hours in a row, "
the other kid said. "That's a lot of twisting. "
I got off the bus right next to an abandoned Time Gasoline
filling station and an abandoned fifty-cent self-service car
wash. Th...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...es in fake Italian.
Tra-la-la-la-la-la-Spa-ghet-tiii !
I remember Trout Fishing in America Shorty passed out
in Washington Square, right in front of the Benjamin Frank-
lin statue. He had fallen face first out of his wheelchair and
just lay there without moving.
Snoring loudly.
Above him were the metal works of Benjamin Franklin
like a clock, hat in hand.
Trout Fishing in America Shorty lay there below, his
face spread out like a fan in the g...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...settle down.
"I've written to Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexi-
co, Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington for
their hunting and fishing regulations, and I'm studying them
all, " he said.
"I've got enough money to travel around for six months,
looking for a place to settle down where the hunting and fish-
ing is good. I'11 get twelve hundred dollars back in income
tax returns by not working any more this year. That's two
hundred a m...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...kie parents in British Nigeria and came
to America when he was two years old and was raised as a
ranch kid in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
He was a machinegunner in the Second World War, against
the Germans. He fought in France and Germany. Sergeant
Pard. Then he came back from the war and went to some
hick college in Idaho.
After he graduated from college, he went to Paris and be-
came an Existentialist, He had a photograph taken of Exis-
tent...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...o spacious
sky over silent mills at Hanford, Savannah River,
Rocky Flats, Pantex, Burlington, Albuquerque
I yell thru Washington, South Carolina, Colorado,
Texas, Iowa, New Mexico,
Where nuclear reactors creat a new Thing under the
Sun, where Rockwell war-plants fabricate this death
stuff trigger in nitrogen baths,
Hanger-Silas Mason assembles the terrified weapon
secret by ten thousands, & where Manzano Moun-
tain boasts to store
its dreadful decay through two hundr...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...at was promulged by the founders, ratified by The States, signed in black and
white
by the Commissioners, and read by Washington at the head of the army,
Remember the purposes of the founders,—Remember Washington;
Remember the copious humanity streaming from every direction toward America;
Remember the hospitality that belongs to nations and men; (Cursed be nation, woman, man,
without hospitality!)
Remember, government is to subserve individuals,
Not any, not the Presi...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ing I help pick up the dead and lay them in rows in a barn.
12
Now of the older war-days, the defeat at Brooklyn,
Washington stands inside the lines—he stands on the intrench’d hills, amid a
crowd of
officers,
His face is cold and damp—he cannot repress the weeping drops,
He lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes—the color is blanch’d from his
cheeks,
He sees the slaughter of the southern braves confided to him by their parents.
The same, at last and at last...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...while speaking yet,
Away he melted in celestial smoke.
Then Satan said to Michael, 'Don't forget
To call George Washington, and John Horne Tooke,
And Franklin;' — but at this time was heard
A cry for room, though not a phantom stirr'd.
LXXXV
At length with jostling, elbowing, and the aid
Of cherubim appointed to that post,
The devil Asmodeus to the circle made
His way, and look'd as if his journey cost
Some trouble. When his burden down he laid,
'Wh...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...Were those ***** colonists who would be free,
Who took our desperate chance, and fought and won
Under a colonist called Washington?
One does not lose one's birthright, it appears.
I had been English then for many years.
X
We went down to Cambridge,
Cambridge in the spring.
In a brick court at twilight
We heard the thrushes sing,
And we went to evening service
In the chapel of the King.
The library of Trinity,
The quadrangle of Clare,
John bought a p...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...America is a photograph taken
late in the afternoon, a photograph of the Benjamin Franklin
statue in San Francisco's Washington Square.
Born 1706--Died 1790, Benjamin Franklin stands on a
pedestal that looks like a house containing stone furniture.
He holds some papers in one hand and his hat in the other.
Then the statue speaks, saying in marble:
PRESENTED BY
H. D. COGSWELL
TO OUR
BOYS AND GIRLS
WHO WILL SOON
TAKE OUR PLACES
AND...Read more of this...
by
Walker, Alice
...ywhere she went.
According to her autobiography
Africans loved this.
In Russia, Minneapolis, London, Washington, D.C.,
Germany, Palestine, Tel Aviv and
Jerusalem
She never combed at all.
There was no point. In those
Places people said, "She looks like
Any other aging grandmother. She looks
Like a troll. Let's sell her cookery
And guns."
"Kreplach your cookery," said Golda.
Only in Africa could she finally
S...Read more of this...
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