Top 11 Poems Honoring Soldiers
Posted: 2007-05-22 15:50:59
Memorial Day is a day to honor the brave men and women who gave their lives while serving their country. Here are our 11 favorite poems to commemorate the soldiers who have died and those that are fighting today, too.
- O Captain! My Captain!
by Walt Whitman
"O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;"
--Read the full poem
- Ode For Memorial Day
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
"DONE are the toils and the wearisome marches,
Done is the summons of bugle and drum.
Softly and sweetly the sky overarches,
Shelt'ring a land where Rebellion is dumb.
-- Read the full poem
- For The Commemoration Services; Memorial Verses
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"...Which is the dream, the present or the past?
The night of anguish or the joyous morn?
The long, long years with horrors overcast,
Or the sweet promise of the day newborn?"
-- Read the full poem
- Concord Hymn
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"BY the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world."
-- Read the full poem
- On A Soldier's Funeral
by John Galsworthy
"No drums shall roll --
Only a private soldier gone!
The cold light paints no funeral stone --
No bell need toll!"
-- Read the full poem
- Sonnet 30
by William Shakespeare
"WHEN to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:"
-- Read the full poem
- The Soldier's Return
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"O! day thrice lovely! when at length the soldier
Returns home into life; when he becomes
A fellow-man among his fellow-men.
The colours are unfurled, the cavalcade"
-- Read the full poem
- Ode: The Soldier
by Confucius
"My son has gone for a soldier,
For a soldier night and day;
But my son is wise, and may yet return,
When the drums have died away."
-- Read the full poem
- Memorial Day
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
"Flesh is but dust, but worth of soul is gold!
'Tis not the dust we honor, but the brave
And noble spirits that it once did hold.
So kneel we weeping at the grave,"
-- Read the full poem
- Soldiers Of Freedom
by Katharine Lee Bates
"THEY veiled their souls with laughter
And many a mocking pose,
These lads who follow after
Wherever Freedom goes;'"
-- Read the full poem
- The Soldier
by Sophie Jewett
"THE soldier fought his battle silently.
Not his the strife that stays for set of sun;
It seemed this warfare never might be done;
Through glaring day and blinding night fought he."
-- Read the full poem
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