Absolutely badass old poems

[Matt_Cramer]

If you’re looking for badass poetry with a Biblical theme, one of my favorites is Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic. I sometimes wonder why hymnals tend to file it under “God and Country” when it seems more fitting for “End Times”. Take this one out of its historical context, and it sounds like the battle of Armageddon is going down…

Here’s the full version.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

    (Chorus)
    Glory, glory, hallelujah!
    Glory, glory, hallelujah!
    Glory, glory, hallelujah!
    His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

    (Chorus)

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal";
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.

    (Chorus)

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

    (Chorus)

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

    (Chorus)

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.

[Chefguy]

@Oedipus

YES. I am looking for Old Testament badassery. Wrath and might of the lord, swords cutting like hot knifes through butter with the Angel of Death overlooking…all of it hahaha

And…not looking to derail this but full disclosure, I’m actually looking to get a tattoo…but instead of “oh my god flower and life and butterflies” I really just want to get something seriously badass ala the OP which is a tattoo Pam Poovey from Archer has on her whole back.

Well, there’s always:

Say “what” again! Say! “what”! again! I dare you! I double-dare you, motherfucker! Say “what” one more goddamn time!

or:

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

Pure poetry.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Oedipus

Hey guys! I’m doing a little personal project and I’m looking for some badass old poems to use. I was started on this by a Lord Byron poem and was looking for things similar to it.

Speaking of Byron, how about some post-apocalyptic badassery:

Darkness

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum’d,
And men were gather’d round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other’s face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain’d;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish’d with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil’d;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look’d up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds shriek’d
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d
And twin’d themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour’d,
Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish’d men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur’d their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer’d not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak’d up,
And shivering scrap’d with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other’s aspects—saw, and shriek’d, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr’d within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp’d
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir’d before;
The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

[Damfino]

@TubaDiva

This was my great-grandmother’s favorite poem of all time. She could recite it in full all her life.

William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis

16 Thanatopsis - Collection at Bartleby.com

TO HIM who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language;

@Kropotkin

Kipling pulled strings to get his son John into the army after he had been twice rejected as medically unfit. John was killed shortly after being sent to the front, his body never found. After the war, Kipling wrote,

“If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.”

My Boy Jack

“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
*Not this tide. *
“When d’you think that
He’ll come back?”

• Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.*

"Has anyone else had word of him ? "

• Not this tide,
  For what is sunk will hardly swim,
  Not with this wind blowing, and this tide .*

“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”

• None this tide,
  Nor any tide,
  Except he did not shame his kind–
  Not even with the wind blowing, and that tide.
  Then hold your head up all the more,
  This tide,
  And every tide;
  Because he was the son you bore,
  And gave to that wind blowing and that tide *

[Damfino]

@Malacandra

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses:

… Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I hope ** Malacandra ** will forgive me for prefacing his excerpt from "Ulysses "

My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and fought with me -
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads - you and I are old;
Old age has yet his honour and his toil
Death closes all, but something ere the end,
Some noble note of work may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices.

Come, my friends …

[Matt_Cramer]

If you’re looking for badass poetry with a Biblical theme, one of my favorites is Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic. I sometimes wonder why hymnals tend to file it under “God and Country” when it seems more fitting for “End Times”. Take this one out of its historical context, and it sounds like the battle of Armageddon is going down…

Here’s the full version.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

    (Chorus)
    Glory, glory, hallelujah!
    Glory, glory, hallelujah!
    Glory, glory, hallelujah!
    His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

    (Chorus)

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal";
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.

    (Chorus)

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

    (Chorus)

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

    (Chorus)

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.

[MonkeyMensch]

And for sheer alliterative bad-assery:

An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,
Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade;
Cossack commanders cannonading come,
Dealing destruction’s devastating doom;
Every endeavor engineers essay
For fame, for fortune, forming furious fray!
Gaunt gunners grapple, giving gashes good;
Heaves high his head, heroic hardihood;
Ibraham, Islam, Ismail, imps in ill,
Jostle John, Jarovlitz, Jem, Joe, Jack, Jill;
Kick kindling Kutosoff, kings’ kinsmen kill,
Labor low levels loftiest, longest lines;
Men marched 'mid moles, 'mid mounds, 'mid murd’rous mines.
Now nightfall’s near, now needful nature nods,
Opposed, opposing, overcoming odds.
Poor peasants, partly purchased, partly pressed,
Quite quaking, Quarter! quarter! quickly quest.
Reason returns, recalls redundant rage,
Saves sinking soldiers, softens seigniors sage.
Truce, Turkey, truce! truce, treach’rous Tartar train!
Unwise, unjust, unmerciful Ukraine!
Vanish, vile vengeance! vanish, victory vain!
Wisdom wails war–wails warring words. What were
Xerxes, Xantippe, Ximenes, Xavier?
Yet Yassy’s youth, ye yield your youthful yest,
Zealously, Zarius, zealously zeal’s zest.

Attributed to various authors.

[Das_Glasperlenspiel]

Martial music, rather than poetry, but the lyrics work equally as a poem. There are many versions, but I like this one.

The Songs of Wales, (ed. Brinley Richards, 1873).
In this version the words are by John Oxenford.

Men of Harlech, march to glory, Victory is hov’ring o’er ye,
Bright eyed freedom stands before ye, Hear ye not her call?
At your sloth she seems to wonder, Rend the sluggish bonds asunder,
Let the war cry’s deaf’ning thunder, Ev’ry foe appal.

Echoes loudly waking, Hill and valley shaking;
'Till the sound spreads wide around, The Saxon’s courage breaking;
Your foes on ev’ry side assailing, Forward press with heart unfailing,
Till invaders learn with quailing, Cambria ne’er can yield.

Thou who noble Cambria wrongest, Know that freedom’s cause is strongest
Freedom’s courage lasts the longest, Ending but with death!
Freedom countless hosts can scatter, Freedom stoutest mail can shatter,
Freedom thickest walls can batter, Fate is in her breath.

See they now are flying! Dead are heaped with dying!
Over might has triumphed right, Our land to foes denying;
Upon their soil we never sought them, Love of conquest hither brought them,
But this lesson we have taught them, Cambria ne’er can yield.

[Damfino]

What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield.

John Milton, “Paradise Lost”

[burpo_the_wonder_mutt]

@swampspruce

BTW, I can’t read The Raven anymore without it being Homer Simpson’s voice in my head. Stupid Halloween Specials…

“Why you little…” “Uh-oh” “Come back here, you little raven!”

[Dendarii_Dame]

Are Ye Truly Free? by William Brown
AIR — Martyrs

Men! whose boast it is that ye
Come of fathers brave and free;
If there breathe on earth a slave,
Are ye truly free and brave?
Are ye not base slaves indeed,
Men unworthy to be freed,
If ye do not feel the chain,
When it works a brother's pain?

Women! who shall one day bear
Sons to breathe God's bounteous air,
If ye hear without a blush,
Deeds to make the roused blood rush
Like red lava through your veins,
For your sisters now in chains;
Answer! are ye fit to be
Mothers of the brave and free?

Is true freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake,
And, with leathern hearts forget
That we owe mankind a debt?
No! true freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear,
And with hand and heart to be
Earnest to make others free.

They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves, who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than, in silence, shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves, who dare not be
In the right with two or three.

Read this in high school. Awesome stuff. Also, James Russell Lowell’s “Once to Every Man and Nation”, another (when written) anti-slavery lyric.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side…

[Amateur_Barbarian]

While this has run to blood, guts, courage and battle, I think Dorothy Parker has at least one entry…

There’s little in giving or taking
There’s little in water or wine
This living, this living, this living
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top
For art is a form of catharsis
And love is a permanent flop
And work is the province of cattle
And rest’s for a clam in a shell
So I’m thinking of throwing the battle…
Would you kindly direct me to hell?

[Clementine]

Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets & alarm my Thirteen Angels!
Loud howls the eternal Wolf! the eternal Lion lashes his tail!
America is darkned; and my punishing Demons terrified
Crouch howling before their caverns deep like skins dry’d in the wind
They cannot smite the wheat, nor quench the fatness of the earth.
They cannot smite with sorrows, nor subdue the plow and spade.
They cannot wall the city, nor moat round the castle of princes.
They cannot bring the stubbed oak to overgrow the hills.
For terrible men stand on the shores, & in their robes I see
Children take shelter from the lightnings, there stands Washington
And Paine and Warren with their foreheads reard toward the east
But clouds obscure my aged sight. A vision from afar!
Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets & alarm my thirteen Angels:
Ah vision from afar! Ah rebel form that rent the ancient
Heavens! Eternal Viper self-renew’d, rolling in clouds
I see thee in thick clouds and darkness on America’s shore.
Writhing in pangs of abhorred birth; red flames the crest rebellious
And eyes of death; the harlot womb oft opened in vain
Heaves in enormous circles, now the times are return’d upon thee,
Devourer of thy parent, now thy unutterable torment renews.
Sound! sound! my loud war trumpets & alarm my thirteen Angels.
Ah terrible birth! a young one bursting! where is the weeping mouth?
And where the mothers milk? instead those ever-hissing jaws
And parched lips drop with fresh gore; now roll thou in the clouds
Thy mother lays her length outstretch’d upon the shore beneath.
Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets & alarm my thirteen Angels!
Loud howls the eternal Wolf: the eternal Lion lashes his tail!

[Dendarii_Dame]

“Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes

“Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair…”

[Knowed_Out]

Scottish version of The Three Ravens, entitled Twa Corbies. Author unknown, old ballad.

As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies making a mane;
The tane unto the t’other say,
‘Where sall we gang and dine to-day?’
‘In behint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.
‘His hound is to the hunting gane,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady’s ta’en another mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet.
‘Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I’ll pike out his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair
We’ll theek our nest when it grows bare.
‘Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sall ken where he is gane;
Oer his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

Fire and Ice
By Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

[Malacandra]

@Damfino

I hope ** Malacandra ** will forgive me for prefacing his excerpt from "Ulysses "

My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and fought with me -
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads - you and I are old;
Old age has yet his honour and his toil
Death closes all, but something ere the end,
Some noble note of work may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices.

Come, my friends …

Forgiven.

Then there’s this:
*There’s a breathless hush in the Close tonight -
Ten to make, and the match to win -
A bumping pitch, and a blinding light,
An hour to play, and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote:
“Play up! play up! and play the game!”

The sand of the desert is sodden red, -
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; -
The Gatling’s jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England’s far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of schoolboy rallies the ranks,
“Play up! play up! and play the game!” *

[Malthus]

How about the concluding lines from An Irish Airman Foresees His Death?

I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

[robert_columbia]

Tennyson’s Idylls of the King gets rather violent at times, but does it in a very poetic way.

@Tennyson

…
Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight
Like this last, dim, weird battle of the west.
A deathwhite mist slept over sand and sea:
Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew
Down with his blood, till all his heart was cold
With formless fear; and even on Arthur fell
Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought.
For friend and foe were shadows in the mist,
And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew;
And some had visions out of golden youth,
And some beheld the faces of old ghosts
Look in upon the battle; and in the mist
Was many a noble deed, many a base,
And chance and craft and strength in single fights,
And ever and anon with host to host
Shocks, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn,
Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands, the crash
Of battleaxes on shattered helms, and shrieks
After the Christ, of those who falling down
Looked up for heaven, and only saw the mist;
And shouts of heathen and the traitor knights,
Oaths, insults, filth, and monstrous blasphemies,
Sweat, writhings, anguish, labouring of the lungs
In that close mist, and cryings for the light,
Moans of the dying, and voices of the dead.
…

The poem also has a rather dim view of humanity in general. Thematically it seems to emphasize that

Human virtue is rare if not nonexistent. Even the best people lie, steal, cheat on their spouses, and would betray even their best friend for a little fame or wealth.

[Shodan]

@septimus

How about “Invictus”?

I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Timothy McVeigh’s last words on earth, if I am not mistaken.

Regards,
Shodan