War poems
/ page 397 of 504 /
To Sir Henry Wotton At His Going Ambassador To Venice
© John Donne
AFTER those reverend papers, whose soul is
Our good and great king's loved hand and fear'd name ;
By which to you he derives much of his,
And, how he may, makes you almost the same,
A Romance In The Rough
© Arthur Patchett Martin
A sturdy fellow, with a sunburnt face,
And thews and sinews of a giant mould;
A genial mind, that harboured nothing base,
A pocket void of gold.
Great-Heart
© Rudyard Kipling
Theodore Roosevelt"The interpreter then called for a man-servant of his, one Great-Heart."--Bunyan's' Pilgrim's Process Concerning brave Captains
Our age hath made known
For all men to honour,
One standeth alone,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
© Rudyard Kipling
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
'eering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
Distant Voices
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
And dusky faces passed and woke
The echoes with the words they spoke
The same old tales as other folk.
A truce to roaming! Never more
I'll leave the home I loved of yore.
But strangers meet me at the door.
The Flight
© Rudyard Kipling
When the grey geese heard the Fool's tread
Too near to where they lay,
They lifted neither voice nor head,
But took themselves away.
The Female of the Species
© Rudyard Kipling
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Myra
© Fulke Greville
I, with whose colours Myra dress'd her head,
I, that ware posies of her own hand-making,
I, that mine own name in the chimneys read
By Myra finely wrought ere I was waking:
Must I look on, in hope time coming may
With change bring back my turn again to play?
Falerina
© Madison Julius Cawein
The night is hung above us, love,
With heavy stars that love us, love,
With clouds that curl in purple and pearl,
And winds that whisper of us, love:
On burly hills and valleys, that lie dimmer,
The amber foot-falls of the moon-sylphs glimmer.
The Botanic Garden( Part III)
© Erasmus Darwin
-HERE her sad Consort, stealing through the gloom
Of
Hangs in mute anguish o'er the scutcheon'd hearse,
Or graves with trembling style the votive verse.
The Deep-Sea Cables
© Rudyard Kipling
The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar --
Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are.
There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep,
Or the great gray level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep.
The Day's Work
© Rudyard Kipling
All the world over, nursing their scars,
Sir the old fighting-men broke in the wars--
Sit the old fighting-men, surly and grim
Mocking the lilt of the conquerors' hymn.
Cuckoo Song
© Rudyard Kipling
(Spring begins in southern England on the 14th April, on which date the Old Woman lets the Cuckoo out of her basket at Heathfield Fair -- locally known as Heffle Cuckoo Fair.)
Tell it to the locked-up trees,
Cuckoo, bring your song here!
Warrant, Act and Summons, please,
Cruisers
© Rudyard Kipling
As our mother the Frigate, bepainted and fine,
Made play for her bully the Ship of the Line;
So we, her bold daughters by iron and fire,
Accost and decoy to our masters' desire.
The Eagle, The Sow, And The Cat
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
Curs'd Sycophants! How wretched is the Fate
Of those, who know you not, till 'tis too late!
A Code of Morals
© Rudyard Kipling
Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.
