Famous Alabama Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Alabama poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous alabama poems. These examples illustrate what a famous alabama poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...barns,
Oats to their bins—the white potato, the buckwheat of Michigan, to theirs;
Gather the cotton in Mississippi or Alabama—dig and hoard the golden, the sweet
potato of
Georgia and the Carolinas,
Clip the wool of California or Pennsylvania,
Cut the flax in the Middle States, or hemp, or tobacco in the Borders,
Pick the pea and the bean, or pull apples from the trees, or bunches of grapes from the
vines,
Or aught that ripens in all These States, or North or South,
...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...Black man running
Thru the ageless sun and shadow
History repeated past all logic
Who is it bides the time and why?
And for how long?...Read more of this...
by
Evans, Mari
...next whisky bar
I tell you we must die
I tell you we must die
I tell you
I tell you
I tell you we must die
Oh, moon of Alabama
We now must say say good-bye
We've lost our good old mamma
And must have whisky
Oh, you know why.
Show me the way to the next pretty girl
Oh, don't ask why, oh, don't ask why
Show me the way to the next pretty girl
Oh don't ask why, oh, don't ask why
For if we don't find the next pretty girl
I tell you we must die
I tell you we must die
I tell y...Read more of this...
by
Brecht, Bertolt
...own feuillage!
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
Mexico!
Always soft-breath’d Cuba!
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
drain’d
by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the eighty-third year of These States—the three and a half millions of
square
miles;
The eig...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ose who lead us know!
'T was only yesterday sick Cuba's cry
Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us, for we die!"
Then Alabama heard,
And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho
Shouted a burning word.
Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred,
And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth,
East, west, and south, and north,
Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young
Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan,
By the unforgotten names of eager boys
Who mi...Read more of this...
by
Moody, William Vaughn
...When I get to be a composer
I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black w...Read more of this...
by
Hughes, Langston
...ilac-scent was in the air, and the Fifth-month grass
was
growing,
Up this sea-shore, in some briers,
Two guests from Alabama—two together,
And their nest, and four light-green eggs, spotted with brown,
And every day the he-bird, to and fro, near at hand,
And every day the she-bird, crouch’d on her nest, silent, with bright eyes,
And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them,
Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.
3
Shine! shine! shin...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ake to your reckless and composite chords—I add to them, and cheerfully
pass them forward.
12As I have walk’d in Alabama my morning walk,
I have seen where the she-bird, the mocking-bird, sat on her nest in the briers,
hatching her brood.
I have seen the he-bird also;
I have paused to hear him, near at hand, inflating his throat, and joyfully
singing.
And while I paused, it came to me that what he really sang for was not there
only,
Nor for his mate, n...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...GOD, a pilot! for the helm is left awry,
And the best sailors in the ship lie there among the dead!"
____
Prattville, Alabama, 1868.
III. How Love Looked for Hell.
"To heal his heart of long-time pain
One day Prince Love for to travel was fain
With Ministers Mind and Sense.
`Now what to thee most strange may be?'
Quoth Mind and Sense. `All things above,
One curious thing I first would see --
Hell,' quoth Love.
"Then Mind rode in and Sense rode ...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...or, The First Steamboat up the Alabama.
You, Dinah! Come and set me whar de ribber-roads does meet.
De Lord, HE made dese black-jack roots to twis' into a seat.
Umph, dar! De Lord have mussy on dis blin' ole ******'s feet.
It 'pear to me dis mornin' I kin smell de fust o' June.
I 'clar', I b'lieve dat mockin'-bird could play de fiddle soon!
Dem yonder town-bells soun...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...Despite the noon sun shimmering on Court Street,
each day I leave my desk, and window-shop,
waste time, and use my whole lunch hour to stroll
the route the marchers took. The walk is blistering--
the kind of heat that might make you recall
Nat Turner skinned and rendered into grease
if you share my cheap liberal guilt for sins
before your time. I h...Read more of this...
by
Hudgins, Andrew
...r no other reason
Except that they needed crews that season.
I can get angry still at the tale
Of their letting the Alabama sail,
And Palmerston being insolent
To Lincoln and Seward over the Trent.
All very long ago, you'll say,
But whenever I go up Boston-way,
I drive through Concord—that neck of the wood,
Where once the embattled farmers stood,
And I think of Revere, and the old South Steeple,
And I say, by heck, we're the only people
Who licked them not only on...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
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