Honor Among Scamps

    We are the smirched.    Queen Honor is the spotless.
    We slept thro' wars where Honor could not sleep.
    We were faint-hearted.    Honor was full-valiant.
    We kept a silence Honor could not keep.

    Yet this late day we make a song to praise her.
    We, codeless, will yet vindicate her code.
    She who was mighty, walks with us, the beggars.
    The merchants drive her out upon the road.

    She makes a throne of sod beside our campfire.
    We give the maiden-queen our rags and tears.
    A battered, rascal guard have rallied round her,
    To keep her safe until the better years.

Vachel Lindsay

Vachel Lindsay was an American poet known for his innovative performances of his poetry, which combined spoken word with music and theatrics. Born in Springfield, Illinois, Lindsay's work often revolved around American history and culture, reflecting his progressive social views. He played a significant role in the early 20th-century American poetry scene, influencing contemporaries and later poets with his dynamic style and passionate delivery.

Vachel Lindsay

What the Coal-heaver Said

Vachel Lindsay, Simple Poetry

The Perfect Marriage

Vachel Lindsay, Simple Poetry

The Mysterious Cat

Vachel Lindsay, Simple Poetry

The Congo

Vachel Lindsay, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Master of the Dance

A chant to which it is intended a group of children shall dance and improvise pantomime led by their dancing-teacher.


            I

    A master deep-eyed
    Ere his manhood was ripe,
    He sang like a thrush,
    He could play any pipe.
    So dull in the school
    That he scarcely could spell,
    He read but a bit,
    And he figured not well.
    A bare-footed fool,
    Shod only with grace;
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    Round a wind-hardened face;
    He smiled like a girl,
    Or like clear winter skies,
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    Making stars of his eyes.
    In swiftness and poise,
    A proud child of the deer,
    A white fawn he was,
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Vachel Lindsay

Our Privilege

Not ours, where battle smoke upcurls,
And battle dews lie wet,
To meet the charge that treason hurls
By sword and bayonet.

Not ours to guide the fatal scythe
The fleshless Reaper wields;
The harvest moon looks calmly down
Upon our peaceful fields.

The long grass dimples on the hill,
The pines sing by the sea,
And Plenty, from her golden horn,
Is pouring far and free.

O brothers by the farther sea!
Think still our faith is warm;
The same bright flag above us waves
That swathed our baby form.

The same red blood that dyes your fields
Here throbs in patriot pride,
The blood that flowed when Lander fell,
And Bakers crimson tide.

And thus apart our hearts keep time
With every pulse ye feel,
And Mercys rin...

Bret Harte

The Scamps

Of home, name and wealth and ambition bereft,
We are children of fortune and luck:
They deny theres a shred of our characters left,
But they cannot deny us the pluck!
We are vagabond scamps, we are kings over all,
There is little on earth we desire,
We are devils who stand with our backs to the wall,
And who call on the cowards to fire!

There are some of us here who were noble and good,
And who learnt in ingratitudes schools,
They were born of the selfish and misunderstood,
They were soft, they were smoodgers or fools.
With their hands in their pockets to help every friend
In a fix, and they never asked how:
Beware of them you who have money to lend,
For its little youd get from them now.

There are some of us here who were lovers of old,

Henry Lawson

A Woman's Honor: A Song

Love bade me hope, and I obeyed;
Phyllis continued still unkind:
Then you may een despair, he said,
In vain I strive to change her mind.

Honors got in, and keeps her heart,
Durst he but venture once abroad,
In my own right Id take your part,
And show myself the mightier God.

This huffing Honor domineers
In breasts alone where he has place:
But if true generous Love apppears,
The hector dares not show his face.

Let me still languish and complain,
Be most unhumanly denied:
I have some pleasure in my pain,
She can have none with all her pride.

I fall a sacrifice to Love,
She lives a wretch for Honors sake;
Whose tyrant does most cruel prove,
The difference is not hard to make.

Consider real Honor then,
Yo...

John Wilmot

Heroes.

    In rich Virginian woods,
The scarlet creeper reddens over graves,
Among the solemn trees enlooped with vines;
Heroic spirits haunt the solitudes, -
The noble souls of half a million braves,
    Amid the murmurous pines.


    Ah! who is left behind,
Earnest and eloquent, sincere and strong,
To consecrate their memories with words
Not all unmeet? with fitting dirge and song
To chant a requiem purer than the wind,
    And sweeter than the birds?


    Here, though all seems at peace,
The placid, measureless sky serenely fair,
The laughter of the breeze among the leaves,
The bars of sunlight slanting through the trees,
The reckless wild-flowers blooming everywhere,
    The grasses' delicate sheaves, -


    Nathless eac...

Emma Lazarus

An Argument

            I.    The Voice of the Man Impatient with Visions and Utopias

    We find your soft Utopias as white
    As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells,
    O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are
    How human breasts adore alarum bells.
    You house us in a hive of prigs and saints
    Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law.
    I'd rather brood in bloody Elsinore
    Or be Lear's fool, straw-crowned amid the straw.
    Promise us all our share in Agincourt
    Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death,
    That future ant-hills will not be too good
    For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth.
    Promise that through to-morrow's spirit-war
    Man's deathless soul will hack and hew its way,
    Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his...

Vachel Lindsay