War poems
/ page 136 of 504 /
I Make This In A Warring Absence
© Dylan Thomas
I make a weapon of an ass's skeleton
And walk the warring sands by the dead town.
Cudgel great air, wreck east, and topple sundown,
Storm her sped heart, hang with beheaded veins
Its wringing shell, and let her eyelids fasten.
Destruction, picked by birds, brays through the jaw-bone,
Elegy XV: A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife
© John Donne
I SING no harm, good sooth, to any wight,
To lord or fool, cuckold, beggar, or knight,
A Street Corner
© Robert Fuller Murray
Here, where the thoroughfares meet at an angle
Of ninety degrees (this angle is right),
You may hear the loafers that jest and wrangle
Through the sun-lit day and the lamp-lit night;
Sylvan Musings.In May.
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
COUCHED in cool shadow, girt by billowy swells,
Of foliage, rippling into buds and flowers,
Here I repose o'erfanned by breezy bowers,--
Lulled by a delicate stream whose music wells
Ruth
© Henry Lawson
Are the fields of my fancy less fair through a window thats narrowed and barred?
Are the morning stars dimmed by the glare of the gas-light that flares in the yard?
No! And what does it matter to me if to-morrow I sail from the land?
I am free, as I never was free! I exult in my loneliness grand!
A Second Letter From B. Sawin, Esq.
© James Russell Lowell
I spose you wonder ware I be; I can't tell, fer the soul o' me,
Exacly ware I be myself,--meanin' by thet the holl o' me.
Angelo
© William Watson
Then Angelo bethought him of his vow;
And stepping forward stood before the twain;
And from his girdle plucked a dagger forth;
And spake no word, but pierced his own heart through.
The Song Of Iron
© Lola Ridge
Not yet hast Thou sounded
Thy clangorous music,
Whose strings are under the mountains…
Not yet hast Thou spoken
The blooded, implacable Word…
Invocation
© Madison Julius Cawein
They who were fondly fain
To tell what mother pain
Of Nature makes the rain;
The Faerie Queene, Book I, Canto IV
© Edmund Spenser
To sinfull house of Pride, Duessa
guides the faithfull knight,
Where brothers death to wreak Sansjoy
doth chalenge him to fight.
Jean De Breboeuf
© Virna Sheard
As Jean de Breboeuf told his rosary
At sundown in his cell, there came a call!--
Clear as a bell rung on a ship at sea,
Breaking the beauty of tranquillity--
Down from the heart of Heaven it seemed to fall:
Tear
© Arthur Rimbaud
Far away from birds and herds and village girls,
I was drinking, kneeling down in some heather
Surrounded by soft hazel copses,
In an afternoon mist, warm and green.
Edward, Edward
© Thomas Percy
Why dois your brand sae drap wi' bluid,
Edward, Edward?
Why dois your brand sae drap wi' bluid?
And why sae sad gang ye, O?
The Outlaw
© Charles Kingsley
Oh, I wadna be a yeoman, mither, to follow my father's trade,
To bow my back in miry banks, at pleugh and hoe and spade.
Stinting wife, and bairns, and kye, to fat some courtier lord,-
Let them die o' rent wha like, mither, and I'll die by sword.
The Song Of Hiawatha XXI: The White Man's Foot
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In his lodge beside a river,
Close beside a frozen river,
Echoes Of Spring
© Mathilde Blind
I.
I WALK about in driving snow,
And drizzling rain, splashed o'er and o'er;
No sign that radiant spring e'en now
Stands at the threshold of the door.
The Brus Book XV
© John Barbour
[The Scots win a great battle at Connor]
Quhen thai within has sene sua slayn
