Title Poet Year Written Collection Body
Song of Marion’s Men William Cullen Bryant 1814 English

OUR 1 band is few, but true and tried,
  Our leader frank and bold;
The British soldier trembles
  When Marion’s name is told.
Our fortress is the good greenwood,
  Our tent the cypress-tree;
We know the forest round us,
  As seamen know...

Song of One Eleven Years in Prison George Canning 1790 English

  WHENE’ER with haggard eyes I view
    This dungeon that I ’m rotting in,
  I think of those companions true
    Who studied with me at the U-
                niversity of Gottingen,
                niversity of Gottingen.

  [Weeps and pulls out...

Song of the Brook Alfred, Lord Tennyson English

From “The Brook: an Idyl”
I COME from haunts of coot and hern:
  I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
  To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
  Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,...

Song of the Chattahoochee Sidney Lanier 1862 English

  out of the hills of Habersham,
  Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a...

Song of the Chattahoochee Sidney Lanier 1862 English

  OUT of the hills of Habersham,
  Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a...

Song of the Desert English

 Beneath the cloud-topp’d mountain,

     Beside the craggy bluff,

Where every dint of nature

     Is rude and wild enough;

Upon the verdant meadow,

     Upon the sunburnt plain,

Upon the sandy hillock;...

Song of the Elfin Steersman George Hill English

One elf, I trow, is diving now
  For the small pearl; and one,
The honey-bee for his bag he
  Goes chasing in the sun;
And one, the knave, has pilfered from
  The nautilus his boat,
And takes his idle pastime where
  The water-lilies float...

Song of the Emigrants in Bermuda Andrew Marvell 1641 English

Where the remote Bermudas ride
In the ocean’s bosom unespied,
From a small boat that rowed along
The listening winds received this song:
“What should we do but sing His praise
That led us through the watery maze
Where he the huge sea monsters...

Song of the Future English

'Tis strange that in a land so strong

So strong and bold in mighty youth,

We have no poet's voice of truth

To sing for us a wondrous song.


Our chiefest singer yet has sung

In wild, sweet notes a passing strain,...

Song of the Greek Poet Lord Byron English

From “Don Juan,” Canto III.
THE ISLES of Greece, the isles of Greece!
  Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
  Where Delos rose, and Phœbus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet;
But all, except their sun, is...

Song of the Greeks Thomas Campbell 1797 English

[1821]
  AGAIN to the battle, Achaians!
  Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance;
Our land,—the first garden of Liberty’s-tree,—
Has been, and shall yet be, the land of the free;
  For the cross of our faith is replanted,
  The pale dying crescent is...

Song of the Milkmaid Alfred, Lord Tennyson English

From “Queen Mary”
SHAME upon you, Robin,
        Shame upon you now!
Kiss me would you? with my hands
        Milking the cow?
        Daisies grow again,
        Kingcups blow again,
And you came and kissed me milking the cow.

...

Song of the Palm Tracy Robinson English

I
wild is its nature, as it were a token,
    Born of the sunshine, and the stars, and sea;
Grand as a passion felt but never spoken,
    Lonely and proud and free.

For when the Maker set its crown of beauty,
    And for its home ordained the...

Song of the River Charles Kingsley 1839 English

Clear and cool, clear and cool,
By laughing shallow and dreaming pool;
Cool and clear, cool and clear,
By shining shingle and foaming weir;
Under the crag where the ouzel sings,
And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings,
Undefiled for the...

Song of the Silent Land Johann Gaudenz von Salis-Seewis 1782 English

Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Das stille Land”

        INTO the Silent Land!
    Ah, who shall lead us thither?
Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather,
And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand.
    Who leads us with a gentle...

Song of the Summer Winds George Darley 1815 English

Up the dale and down the bourne,
  O’er the meadow swift we fly;
Now we sing, and now we mourn,
  Now we whistle, now we sigh.

By the grassy-fringèd river,
  Through the murmuring reeds we sweep;
Mid the lily-leaves we quiver,
  To their...

Song of the Western Men Robert Stephen Hawker 1824 English

   [After the English Revolution of 1688, all bishops were compelled to swear allegiance to William and Mary. Seven of them, adherents of James II., refused and were imprisoned for treason,—the “Non-Jurors.” Trelawney of Cornwall was one.]

A GOOD sword and a trusty hand,
  A...

Song of the Young Highlander Sir Walter Scott 1791 English

Summoned from His Bride by the “Fiery Cross of Roderick Dhu”
From “The Lady of the Lake”

THE HEATH this night must be my bed,
The bracken curtain for my head,
My lullaby the warder’s tread,
  Far, far from love and thee, Mary;
To-morrow eve, more...

Song of Thyrsis Philip Freneau English

The turtle on yon withered bough,
That lately mourned her murdered mate,
Has found another comrade now—
Such changes all await!
Again her drooping plume is drest,
Again she ’s willing to be blest
And takes her lover to her nest.
If nature...

Song on May Morning John Milton 1628 English

Now the bright morning star, day’s harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May! that doth inspire
Mirth and youth and warm desire;...