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Famous Hunter Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Hunter poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous hunter poems. These examples illustrate what a famous hunter poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...all pass inglorious away: [3] 
But this shall be my exultation still 
My chiefest merit and my only joy, 
That when the hunter on some western hill, 
Or furzy glade shall see my grassy tomb, 
And know the stream which mourns unheeded by, 
He for a moment shall repress his step, 
And say, There lies a Son of Nassau-Hall....Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry



...shepherd lads at play.

But often from the thorny labyrinth
And tangled branches of the circling wood
The stealthy hunter sees young Hyacinth
Hurling the polished disk, and draws his hood
Over his guilty gaze, and creeps away,
Nor dares to wind his horn, or - else at the first break of day

The Dryads come and throw the leathern ball
Along the reedy shore, and circumvent
Some goat-eared Pan to be their seneschal
For fear of bold Poseidon's ravishment,
And loose their gir...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...ath lay.


LI.
Mile following mile, against the leaning skies
Far off they see a dull dark cloud arise.
The hunter's instinct in each heart is stirred, 
Beholding there in one stupendous herd
A hundred thousand buffaloes. Oh great
Unwieldy proof of Nature's cruder state, 
Rough remnant of a prehistoric day, 
Thou, with the red man, too, must shortly pass away.



LII.
Upon those spreading plains is there not room
For man and bison, that he seals its do...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...skips through the copses singing,
And his shadow dances along,
And I know not which I should follow,
Shadow or song!

O Hunter, snare me his shadow!
O Nightingale, catch me his strain!
Else moonstruck with music and madness
I track him in vain!...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...ide from that quiet heaven of hers, and tempt
The Trojan, while his neatherds were abroad
Nor her that o'er her wounded hunter wept
Her deity false in human-amorous tears; 
Nor whom her beardless apple-arbiter
Decided fairest. Rather, O ye Gods,
Poet-like, as the great Sicilian called
Calliope to grace his golden verse -- 
Ay, and this Kypris also -- did I take
That popular name of thine to shadow forth
The all-generating powers and genial heat
Of Nature, when she strikes...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord



...the morn
With the long clear note of the hunting-horn
Echoing up from the valley,
Over the mountain side,--
Rally, you hunters, rally,
Rally, and ride!

Drink of the magical potion music has mixed with her wine,
Full of the madness of motion, joyful, exultant, divine!
Leave all your troubles behind you,
Ride where they never can find you,
Into the gladness of morn,
With the long, clear note of the hunting-horn,
Swiftly o'er hillock and hollow,
Sweeping along with the wind,--...Read more of this...
by Dyke, Henry Van
...
And the homeless nomad wandered
Laying waste the fertile plain.
Menacing with spear and arrow
In the woods the hunter strayed ...
Woe to all poor wreteches stranded
On those cruel and hostile shores!

From the peak of high Olympus
Came the mother Ceres down,
Seeeking in those savage regions
Her lost daughter Prosperine.
But the Goddess found no refuge,
Found no kindly welcome there,
And no temple bearing witness
To the worship of the gods.<...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...om his aery tour, 
Two birds of gayest plume before him drove; 
Down from a hill the beast that reigns in woods, 
First hunter then, pursued a gentle brace, 
Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind; 
Direct to the eastern gate was bent their flight. 
Adam observed, and with his eye the chase 
Pursuing, not unmoved, to Eve thus spake. 
O Eve, some further change awaits us nigh, 
Which Heaven, by these mute signs in Nature, shows 
Forerunners of his purpose; or to wa...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...chs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great-grandsons around
 them;
In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after their
 day’s sport; 
The city sleeps, and the country sleeps; 
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time; 
The old husband sleeps by his wife, and the young husband sleeps by his wife; 
And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them;
And such as it is to be of these, more or less, I a...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...ought but the secret of your joy and your pain, 

And I hunted only your larger selves that walk the sky. 

But the hunter was also the hunted: 

For many of my arrows left my bow only to seek my own breast. 

And the flier was also the creeper; 

For when my wings were spread in the sun their shadow upon the earth was a turtle. 

And I the believer was also the doubter; 

For often have I put my finger in my own wound that I might have the greater belief in you a...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil
...re painted 
With the brightest streaks of crimson, 
And whose voice awoke the village, 
Called the deer, and called the hunter.
Lonely in the sky was Wabun; 
Though the birds sang gayly to him, 
Though the wild-flowers of the meadow 
Filled the air with odors for him; 
Though the forests and the rivers 
Sang and shouted at his coming, 
Still his heart was sad within him, 
For he was alone in heaven.
But one morning, gazing earthward, 
While the village still was sleep...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ls on along the vale.   And now, perhaps, he's hunting sheep,  A fierce and dreadful hunter he!  Yon valley, that's so trim and green,  In five months' time, should he be seen,  A desart wilderness will be.   Perhaps, with head and heels on fire,  And like the very soul of evil,  He's galloping away, away,  And so he'll gallop on for aye,...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...t time and place y-set,
This Arcite and this Palamon be met.
Then change gan the colour of their face;
Right as the hunter in the regne* of Thrace *kingdom
That standeth at a gappe with a spear
When hunted is the lion or the bear,
And heareth him come rushing in the greves*, *groves
And breaking both the boughes and the leaves,
Thinketh, "Here comes my mortal enemy,
Withoute fail, he must be dead or I;
For either I must slay him at the gap;
Or he must slay me, if that me ...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...he lake,
     Between the precipice and brake,
     O'er stock and rock their race they take.
     VIII.

     The Hunter marked that mountain high,
     The lone lake's western boundary,
     And deemed the stag must turn to bay,
     Where that huge rampart barred the way;
     Already glorying in the prize,
     Measured his antlers with his eyes;
     For the death-wound and death-halloo
     Mustered his breath, his whinyard drew:—
     But thundering as he ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...hate and one by love, 
Drained of her force, again she sat, and spake 
To Tristram, as he knelt before her, saying, 
`O hunter, and O blower of the horn, 
Harper, and thou hast been a rover too, 
For, ere I mated with my shambling king, 
Ye twain had fallen out about the bride 
Of one--his name is out of me--the prize, 
If prize she were--(what marvel--she could see)-- 
Thine, friend; and ever since my craven seeks 
To wreck thee villainously: but, O Sir Knight, 
What dame or...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...s the storm;
Fix'd in unfinish'd furrow furrow rests the plough:
Rings not the high wood with enliven'd shouts
Of early hunter: all is silence drear;
And deeptest saness wraps the face of things.
Thro' Pope's soft song tho' all the Graces breathe,
And happiest art adorn his Attic page;
Yet does my mind with sweeter transport glow,
As at the root of mossy trunk reclin'd,
In magic Spenser's wildly-warbled song
I see deserted Una wander wide
Thro' wasteful solitudes, and lur...Read more of this...
by Warton, Thomas
...line -
And so perchance in sooth did mine:
But yet I forced it on to cheer
Those relics of a home so dear.
He was a hunter of the hills,
Had follow'd there the deer and wolf;
To him this dungeon was a gulf,
And fetter'd feet the worst of ills. 

VI
Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls:
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow:
Thus much the fathom-line was sent
From Chillon's snow-white battlement,
Which round about the wave inthrals:
A double dunge...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...I.
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light. 

II.
Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry." 

III.
And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted -- "Open then the Door!
You ...Read more of this...
by Khayyam, Omar
...ghs. 

"O yesterday, you know, the fair 
Was holden at the town; 
Her father left his good arm-chair, 
And rode his hunter down. 

"And with him Albert came on his. 
I look'd at him with joy: 
As cowslip unto oxlip is, 
So seems she to the boy. 

"An hour had past---and, sitting straight 
Within the low-wheel'd chaise, 
Her mother trundled to the gate 
Behind the dappled grays. 

"But as for her, she stay'd at home, 
And on the roof she went, 
And down the...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...are you shot, remember? 
Which ran round screaming like a baby?
Only mine is shivering in papery winter corn,
While the hunter (as it might be, you) stomps his Hush 
Puppies through dead brush. Everything's quiet.
She's waited - how long? - ages: stoking pebbly embers
Under the evening samovar, filling 
The Chinese teapot, sending coils of Lapsang Suchong
Floating to the ceiling in the shadows, tracing O and E 
In the window's black reflection, one finger 
Tendrilling...Read more of this...
by Padel, Ruth

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry