DEFIANCE POEMS

The Summary History Of Sir William Wallace

Sir William Wallace of Ellerslie,
I'm told he went to the High School in Dundee,
For to learn to read and write,
And after that he learned to fight,
.....

William Topaz Mcgonagall

The Eagle And The Dove

SHADE of Caractacus, if spirits love
The cause they fought for in their earthly home
To see the Eagle ruffled by the Dove
May soothe thy memory of the chains of Rome.
.....

William Wordsworth

Absalom And Achitophel

In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin;
When man, on many, multipli'd his kind,
Ere one to one was cursedly confin'd:
.....

John Dryden

Endymion: Book Iii

There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
.....

John Keats

To Arms!

World! to arms!
Do you shrink?
What! shrink when the hoofs of the Cossack are crushing
The bosom of mother, the tonsure of priest,
.....

Alfred Austin

Suppose

Suppose, my dear, that you were I
And by your side your sweetheart sate;
Suppose you noticed by and by
The distance ‘twixt you were too great;
.....

Eugene Field

California Prodigal

FOR DAVID P?B

The eye follows, the land
Slips upward, creases down, forms
.....

Maya Angelou

Sassoon's Public Statement Of Defiance

'I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects witch actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

.....

Siegfried Sassoon

No Greater Love

My motherland was pleading again for mercy,
the British were cruel and bloodthirsty,
they ordered to choose the road of compliance,
I selected the path of painful defiance.
.....

Sharletl Alvares

The Song Of The Camp-fire

Heed me, feed me, I am hungry, I am red-tongued with desire;
Boughs of balsam, slabs of cedar, gummy fagots of the pine,
Heap them on me, let me hug them to my eager heart of fire,
Roaring, soaring up to heaven as a symbol and a sign.
.....

Robert Service

The King Of Ys

Wild across the Breton country,
Fabled centuries ago,
Riding from the black sea border,
Came the squadrons of the snow.
.....

Bliss Carman

To A Friend

“You damn me with faint praise.”


Yes, faint was my applause and cold my praise,
.....

Joseph Rodman Drake

Hiawatha's Fishing

Forth upon the Gitche Gumee,
On the shining Big-Sea-Water,
With his fishing-line of cedar,
Of the twisted bark of cedar,
.....

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

How Jack Made The Giants Uncommonly Sore

Of all the ill-fated
Boys ever created
Young Jack was the wretchedest lad:
An emphatic, erratic,
.....

Guy Wetmore Carryl

To Television

Not a "window on the world"
But as we call you,
A box a tube

.....

Robert Pinsky

The Battle Of Hastings

I'll tell of the Battle of Hastings,
As happened in days long gone by,
When Duke William became King of England,
And 'Arold got shot in the eye.
.....

Marriott Edgar

Night

The night is young yet; an enchanted night
In early summer: calm and darkly bright.

I love the Night, and every little breeze
.....

Victor James Daley

The Dream Of Man

To the eye and the ear of the Dreamer
This Dream out of darkness flew,
Through the horn or the ivory portal,
But he wist not which of the two.
.....

William Watson

Champlain

Would that with the bold Champlain,
And his comrades staunch and true,
I had crossed the stormy main,
Golden visions to pursue:
.....

Arthur Weir

The Allies

August 14th, 1914

Into the brazen, burnished sky, the cry hurls itself. The zigzagging cry
of hoarse throats, it floats against the hard winds, and binds the head
.....

Amy Lowell

Defiance

“Conquer the gloomy night of thy sorrow, for the morning greets
thee with laughter.
Rise and clothe thyself with noble pride,
Break loose from the tyranny of grief.
.....

Emma Lazarus

Early Adieux

Adieu to kindred hearts and home,
To pleasure, joy, and mirth,
A fitter foot than mine to roam
Could scarcely tread the earth;
.....

Adam Lindsay Gordon

The Beam

The dead white on the fields' dead white
Turned the peace to misery.
Tall bony trees their wild arms thrust
Into the cold breast of the night.
.....

John Freeman

At The Foresters

The shadows of the gaslit wings
Come softly crawling down our way;
Before the curtain someone sings,
The music sounds from far away;
.....

Arthur Symons

Israel

When by Jabbok the patriarch waited
To learn on the morrow his doom,
And his dubious spirit debated
In darkness and silence and gloom,
.....

John Hay

Enniskillen

Oh my heart beat high with joy elate,
When Danny rode in the Huntersâ?? Plate
On Enniskillen, the raking grey-
A mighty jumper, with power to stay!
.....

Alice Guerin Crist

The Candle And The Flame

Thy hands are like cool herbs that bring
Balm to men's hearts, upon them laid;
Thy lovely-petalled lips are made
As any blossom of the spring.
.....

George Sylvester Viereck

Epistle To Augusta

I.
My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
.....

George Gordon Byron

The Flying Dutchman

Unyielding in the pride of his defiance,
Afloat with none to serve or to command,
Lord of himself at last, and all by Science,
He seeks the Vanished Land.
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Lonely God

So Eden was deserted, and at eve
Into the quiet place God came to grieve.
His face was sad, His hands hung slackly down
Along his robe; too sorrowful to frown
.....

James Stephens

Elegy On Newstead Abbey

'It is the voice of years that are gone!
they roll before me with all their deeds.'~OSSIAN


.....

George Gordon Byron

Ode On The Departed Regency Bill

DAUGHTER of Chaos' doting years,
Nurse of ten thousand hopes and fears,
Whether thy airy, insubstantial shade
(The rights of sepulture now duly paid)
.....

Robert Burns

Dion

. See Plutarch.
Serene, and fitted to embrace,
Where'er he turned, a swan-like grace
Of haughtiness without pretence,
.....

William Wordsworth

Nemesis

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.....

Henry Lawson

The Iliad: Book 08

Now when Morning, clad in her robe of saffron, had begun to suffuse
light over the earth, Jove called the gods in council on the topmost
crest of serrated Olympus. Then he spoke and all the other gods gave
ear. “Hear me,” said he, “gods and goddesses, that I may speak even as
.....

Homer

Israel.

When by Jabbok the patriarch waited
To learn on the morrow his doom,
And his dubious spirit debated
In darkness and silence and gloom,
.....

John Milton Hay

Pauline Part I

To the memory of my devoted wife dead and gone yet always with me I dedicate

PAULINE

.....

Hanford Lennox Gordon

Battered Bob

HE WAS working on a station in the Western when I knew him,
And he came from Conongamo, up the old surveyorsâ?? track,
And the fellows all admitted that no man in Vic. could â??do him,â??
Since heâ??d smothered Stonewall Menzie, also Anderson, the black.
.....

Edward George Dyson

Laughter And Death

THERE is no laughter in the natural world
Of beast or fish or bird, though no sad doubt
Of their futurity to them unfurled
Has dared to check the mirth-compelling shout.
.....

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Captain Craig Iii

I found the old man sitting in his bed,
Propped up and uncomplaining. On a chair
Beside him was a dreary bowl of broth,
A magazine, some glasses, and a pipe.
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

At A Vacation Exercise In The Colledge, Part Latin, Part English. The Latin Speeches Ended, The Eng

Hail native Language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish tripps,
Half unpronounc't, slide through my infant-lipps,
.....

John Milton

Flower-de-luce: Palingenesis

I lay upon the headland-height, and listened
To the incessant sobbing of the sea
In caverns under me,
And watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glistened,
.....

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

At A Vatican Exercise (excerpt)

The Latin speeches ended, the English thus began
Hail native language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips,
.....

John Milton

Sing Of The Banner At Day-break

POET.

O A new song, a free song,
Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,
.....

Walt Whitman

A Song For Soldiers

WHAT song is best for the soldiers?
Take no heed of the words, nor choose yon the style of the story;
Let it burst out from the heart like a spring from the womb of a mountain,
Natural, clear, resistless, leaping its way to the levels;
.....

John Boyle O'reilly

Battle Of Corruna

The tide of fate rolls on!--heart-pierced and pale,
The gallant soldier lies, nor aught avail,
The shield, the sword, the spirit of the brave,
From rapine's armed hand thy vales to save,
.....

William Lisle Bowles

For A Canberra Tablet

Once on this historic site
Wild men of a dusky shade,
In defiance of all right,
Broke the laws that good men made.
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Farewell And Defiance To Love

Love and thy vain employs, away
From this too oft deluded breast!
No longer will I court thy stay,
To be my bosom's teazing guest.
.....

John Clare

Hiawatha's Fishing

Forth upon the Gitche Gumee,
On the shining Big-Sea-Water,
With his fishing-line of cedar,
Of the twisted bark of cedar,
.....

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The First Black Flag

JOB. Hast thou ne'er heard men say
That, in the Black Wood, 'twixt Cologne and Spire,
Upon a rock flanked by the towering mountains,
A castle stands, renowned among all castles?
.....

Victor Marie Hugo