Famous Western Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Western poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous western poems. These examples illustrate what a famous western poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...ast,
Or inland town, through ev'ry province wide,
Which rising up like pyramids of fire,
Give light and glory to the western world.
These men we honour, and their names shall last
Sweet in the mouths and memory of men;
Or if vain man unconscious of their worth,
Refuse a tear when in some lonely vale
He sees those faithful laid; each breeze shall sigh,
Each passing gale shall mourn, each tree shall bend
Its heavy head, in sorrow o'er their tombs,
And some sad ...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...ey ring round the same unvary'd Chimes,
With sure Returns of still expected Rhymes.
Where-e'er you find the cooling Western Breeze,
In the next Line, it whispers thro' the Trees;
If Chrystal Streams with pleasing Murmurs creep,
The Reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with Sleep.
Then, at the last, and only Couplet fraught
With some unmeaning Thing they call a Thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the Song,
That like a wounded Snake, drags its slow length along.
Leave...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...es it see behind the apparent custodians, the real custodians, standing, menacing,
silent—the mechanics, Manhattanese, western men, southerners, significant alike in
their
apathy, and in the promptness of their love?
Does it see what finally befalls, and has always finally befallen, each temporizer,
patcher,
outsider, partialist, alarmist, infidel, who has ever ask’d anything of America?
What mocking and scornful negligence?
The track strew’d with the dust of skeletons...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...y the barking of dogs interrupted.
Then rose a sound of dread, such as startles the sleeping encampments
Far in the western prairies or forests that skirt the Nebraska,
When the wild horses affrighted sweep by with the speed of the whirlwind,
Or the loud bellowing herds of buffaloes rush to the river.
Such was the sound that arose on the night, as the herds and the horses
Broke through their folds and fences, and madly rushed o'er the meadows.
Overwhelmed with th...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...reams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night
San Francisco 1955-56...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...I dare say, but I won’t. One of those tongues
I’ll borrow for the nonce. He’ll never miss it.
We mean his Western Majesty, King George.
HAMILTON
I mean the man who rode by on his horse.
I’ll beg of you the meed of your indulgence
If I should say this planet may have done
A deal of weary whirling when at last,
If ever, Time shall aggregate again
A majesty like his that has no name.
BURR
Then you concede his Majesty? That’s good,
And what of ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...r all, in duplicate slender lines,
Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel,
Tying the Eastern to the Western sea,
The road between Europe and Asia.
(Ah Genoese, thy dream! thy dream!
Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave,
The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream!)
5
Passage to India!
Struggles of many a captain—tales of many a sailor dead!
Over my mood, stealing and spreading they come,
Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach’d sky. ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...e Red Mountains of
Madagascar;
I see the Vermont hills, and the long string of Cordilleras;
I see the vast deserts of Western America;
I see the Lybian, Arabian, and Asiatic deserts;
I see huge dreadful Arctic and Antarctic icebergs;
I see the superior oceans and the inferior ones—the Atlantic and Pacific, the sea of
Mexico,
the
Brazilian sea, and the sea of Peru,
The Japan waters, those of Hindostan, the China Sea, and the Gulf of Guinea,
The spread of the Baltic, C...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...of speech—the senses—the body;
Illustrious the passing light! Illustrious the pale reflection on the new moon in the
western
sky!
Illustrious whatever I see, or hear, or touch, to the last.
Good in all,
In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals,
In the annual return of the seasons,
In the hilarity of youth,
In the strength and flush of manhood,
In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age,
In the superb vistas of Death.
Wonderful to depart;
Wonderful to ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...gon—(I love him, though I do not know
him;)
The half-breed straps on his light boots to complete in the race;
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young—some lean on their rifles,
some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee;
As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his
saddle;
The bugle calls in the ball-room, th...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...rges, towns, lake and canal craft, river craft.
The shapes arise!
Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western Seas, and in many a bay and
by-place,
The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the hackmatack-roots for knees,
The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the workmen busy outside and
inside,
The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze, bolt, line, square,
gouge,
and
bead-plane.
10
The shap...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...strayed a space from home
And saw the smoke-hued hamlets, quaint
With Westland king and Westland saint,
And watched the western glory faint
Along the road to Frome.
BOOK I THE VISION OF THE KING
Before the gods that made the gods
Had seen their sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was cut out of the grass.
Before the gods that made the gods
Had drunk at dawn their fill,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was hoary on the hill.
Age bey...Read more of this...
by
Stevens, Wallace
...e burned
196 In Crispin's mind above a continent.
197 America was always north to him,
198 A northern west or western north, but north,
199 And thereby polar, polar-purple, chilled
200 And lank, rising and slumping from a sea
201 Of hardy foam, receding flatly, spread
202 In endless ledges, glittering, submerged
203 And cold in a boreal mistiness of the moon.
204 The spring came there in clinking pannicles
205 Of half-dissolving frost, the summer c...Read more of this...
by
Goldsmith, Oliver
...heir bowers, and fondly looked their last,
And took a long farewell, and wished in vain
For seats like these beyond the western main;
And, shuddering still to face the distant deep,
Returned and wept, and still returned to weep.
The good old sire, the first prepared to go
To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe;
But for himself, in conscious virtue brave,
He only wished for worlds beyond the grave.
His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears,
The fond companion o...Read more of this...
by
Masefield, John
...louds were straking,
My cut cheek felt the weather breaking;
An orange sunset waned and thinned
Foretelling rain and western wind,
And while I watched I heard distinct
The metals on the railway clinked.
The blood-edged clouds were all in tatters,
The sky and earth seemed mad as hatters;
they had a death look, wild and odd,
Of something dark foretold by God.
And seeing it so, I felt so shaken
I wouldn't keep the road I'd taken,
But wandered back towards the...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...uch harvest of affliction reap, That we the mercy of the waves should rue. We readied the western world, a poor, devoted crew. Oh I dreadful price of being to resign All that is dear in being! better far In Want's most lonely cave till death to pine, Unseen, unheard, unwatched by any star; Or in the streets and walks where proud men are, Bette...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...er stock and rock their race they take.
VIII.
The Hunter marked that mountain high,
The lone lake's western boundary,
And deemed the stag must turn to bay,
Where that huge rampart barred the way;
Already glorying in the prize,
Measured his antlers with his eyes;
For the death-wound and death-halloo
Mustered his breath, his whinyard drew:—
But thundering as he came prepared,
With ready arm and weapon bared,
...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...(go. winged thought widen his
forehead.)
The fiery limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun
into the western sea.
Wak'd from his eternal sleep, the hoary, element roaring
fled away:
Down rushd beating his wings in vain the jealous king: his
grey brow'd councellors, thunderous warriors, curl'd veterans,
among helms, and shields, and chariots horses, elephants:
banners, castles, slings and rocks,
Falling, rushing, ruining! buried in the ruins, on Urthona'...Read more of this...
by
Thomson, James
...s heard,
Sigh'd in low Whispers, that abstract the Soul,
From outward Sense, far into Worlds remote.
NOW, when the Western Sun withdraws the Day,
And humid Evening, gliding o'er the Sky,
In her chill Progress, checks the straggling Beams,
And robs them of their gather'd, vapoury, Prey,
Where Marshes stagnate, and where Rivers wind,
Cluster the rolling Fogs, and swim along
The dusky-mantled Lawn: then slow descend,
Once more to mingle with their Watry Friends.
The v...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...r>
309. From St. Augustine's Confessions again. The
collocation
of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism,
as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.
V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
In the first part of Part V three themes are employed:
the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous
(see Miss Weston's book) and the present decay of eastern Europe.
357. This is Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii, the hermit-...Read more of this...
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