Best History Poems

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
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The night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark,
And the walls have been steep.
...

One heavy day I ran away from the grim face of society and the dizzying clamor of the city and directed my weary step to the spacious alley. I pursued the beckoning course of the rivulet and the musical sounds of the birds until I reached a lonely spot where the flowing branches of the trees prevented the sun from the touching the earth.

I stood there, and it was entertaining to my soul - my thirsty soul who had seen naught but the mirage of life instead of its sweetness.
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I wish I could take a quiet corner in the heart of my baby's very
own world.
I know it has stars that talk to him, and a sky that stoops
down to his face to amuse him with its silly clouds and rainbows.
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'My teacher wasn't half as nice as yours seems to be.
His name was Mister Unsworth and he taught us history.
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I said unto myself, if I were dead,
What would befall these children? What would be
Their fate, who now are looking up to me
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Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?
Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,
in that gray vault. The sea. The sea
has locked them up. The sea is History.
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i am accused of tending to the past
as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
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Density of the room
Filled with gloom
Ahead, nothing emerges
The four walls
...

History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had--
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes.
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Bottomless pits. There's on in Castleton,
and stout upholders of our law and order
one day thought its depth worth wagering on
and borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder
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Canonised when dead, cannonaded when in life,
Lofty your thoughts that savour of content
But loftier the craftmanship
More congruent in symmetry
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Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
...

Little maidens, when you look
On this little story-book,
Reading with attentive eye
Its enticing history,
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The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,
Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
...

The white woman across the aisle from me says 'Look,
look at all the history, that house
on the hill there is over two hundred years old, '
as she points out the window past me
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There is a section in my library for death
and another for Irish history,
a few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan,
and in the center a row of imperturbable reference books,
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I Am the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
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For Lucy, who called them "ghost houses."


Someone was always leaving
...

I WAS looking a long while for a clue to the history of the past for
myself, and for these chants--and now I have found it;
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither
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When I fall asleep, and even during sleep,
I hear, quite distinctly, voices speaking
Whole phrases, commonplace and trivial,
...

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Beauty is what by clarity of vision
more we learn greater we know truth
as we read history as mirrored by facts
yet time seems paradox in hand by realty....
...

My young son asks me: Must I learn mathematics?
What is the use, I feel like saying. That two pieces
Of bread are more than one's about all you'll end up with.
My young son asks me: Must I learn French?
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day day day or history should I call you?
To you future is alien, only present is the ink that fills your pen
Your pen that has never licked the same letters upon the book of time.
On the pages of seconds you carve universes silent whisper
...

Barada, oh father of all rivers
Oh, horse that races the days
Be, in our sad history, a prophet
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Here in my heart I am Helen;
I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Stael;
I'm Salome, moon of the East.
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History may have legend stories and the proof
We can’t discount theory and remain aloof
It may not sound well with changing scene
Never heard warrior fighting without head and seen
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The poor
The homeless
The mother
The father
...

So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
Like a deceivèd husband; so love's face
May still seem love to me, though altered new,
Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place.
...

496

As far from pity, as complaint—
As cool to speech—as stone—
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My friend, I think the sunset knows our names.
Old leaves are whispering them to windowpanes.
A Jew's harp wind plays the elusive dusk.
Blueness comes in like a compelling tide.
...

Across the millstream below the bridge
Seven blue swallows divide the air
In shapes invisible and evanescent,
Kaleidoscopic beyond the mind’s
...

Three streams that set out
before history
the stream of love
the stream of dreams
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153

Dust is the only Secret—
Death, the only One
...

I came across engraved broken piece of marble stone which revealed life achievement of a person as under: -

Name : - God 'son
Birth place
...

The moment of Obama’s inauguration
Was a fluke of fate written for the nation

It was a moment to be cherished
...

We've nothing vast to offer you, no deserts
Except the waste of thought
Forming from mind erosion;
No canyons where the pterodactyl's wing
...

PEOPLE’S ATTORNEY, servant of the Right!
Pleader for all shades of the solar ray,
Complexions dusky, yellow, red, or white;
Who, in thy country’s and thy time’s despite,
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How weird is world history,
mottled with battles and tragedy...
millions died with senseless fury!
...

No notice, events occur….ESP in sleep….two life has come… outlander....not human shape….but lively silhouette…..two hands…..left and right…they talk to knock each other….

Right: hi, You say something excellent idiotic!
...

Here, the Mississippi carved its mud-dark path,
a graveyard for skeletons of sunken riverboats.
...

Invented themes neat and nifty.
Shone as a star from five to fifty.

Enigma rolled in a twisted quiz.
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Just a drop of tear,
Appears to be a fathomless ocean
If it hangs from a mournful eye
Of someone special,
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If Anthony hadn't loved
Cleopatra
in that last second,
maybe he would have
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I have been all men known to history,
Wondering at the world and at time passing;
I have seen evil, and the light blessing
Innocent love under a spring sky.
...

History Maker ~ Fossilized Custodian
History Breaker ~ Reckless Bohemian
History Reformer ~ Abortive Artisan
History Seeker ~ Obsessive Varifocalian
...

At noon in the desert a panting lizard
waited for history, its elbows tense,
watching the curve of a particular road
...

grow in the mind,
their rhymes chiming endlessly
with the sound of feet walking
or rain falling or being taken up
...

two banks of the Thames
shares history and culture
past meets the present
...

There are two types of people:
Those who play golf,
And those who recognize it
for the idiotic malpractice that it is,
...

soul smooches by the grace of embrace
relics of mankind yet being baffled by blue
where history fails to accord all portraits
mystically redounding in whispers of tonight
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No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
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Searching the pile of corpses the victors found four Frenchmen still breathing. Three had scarcely a spark of life . . . the fourth seemed likely to survive and they reserved him for future torments.

- Parkman's History
...

Monuments raised on sweats of the labourers ~
to glorify the pride of the Kings.
It is not the story of exploitation of labourers ~
And history repeats time and again.
...

My thankfulness for the sacred text
you have engraved on my obelisk

The hieroglyphics carved means so much
...

Life gets annihilated, history rewrites,
War grasps nature with its caliginous veil
Human race cries in intense pain,
Green goes dry as icebergs melt,
...

Is it worth bringing a child into the world, mother?
Terror has taken over our lives, lamented my daughter…
Her question haunted me, and I pondered a while.
Life is so precious, yet so ephemeral and fragile.
...

Snow-covered mountains,
ancient monuments,
a north wind that nods to us,
a thought that flows,
...

Bharati Nayak evokes a whole world of natural consciousness, nature's appraisals and emotional bonds in her poems, nurturing each with unique personal care. The love for words, their strangely satiating pleasures and pains are transitions between her thoughts and her beautiful expressions. I found different layers and dimensions in each poem. Her very first poem 'I' tells about her conviction to remain etched in time's history with her poignant verses for generations to come, long after she is gone. If one has read the story or seen Satyajit Ray's 'Pather Panchali' can relate well to her poem 'A letter to Appu with love from Durga' where she beautifully narrates the bond between siblings, and Durga's soulful reminiscing. 'Oh Life'is a conversation of the poet with life, her observation and sensitivity impressed me very much. She begets her verses from fire and from ashes, unmoved by detractors or believers, confident of her perception and evocation.
Poems of immense depth, soft melody, spontaneous flow and personal style makes Bharati's collection 'Words Are Such Perfect Traitors' a must read for all those who love poetry.
Nandita Samanta
Poet, Author, Artist, Reviewer
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Love alone triumphs
Over the History, centuries old
Not the lovers, nor the beloved
Galleries of memories get lost,
...

After all the Shakespeare, the book
of poems they type is the saddest
in history.
...

So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
Like a deceived husband; so love's face
May still seem love to me, though altered new;
...

THIS dust was once the Man,
Gentle, plain, just and resolute--under whose cautious hand,
Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,
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Remember how unimportant
they seemed, growing loosely
in the open fields we crossed
on the way to school. We
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My soul its secret hath, my life too hath its mystery,
A love eternal in a moment's space conceived;
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'I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree'

A single leaf makes its own history.
Attached to the bough from which it
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There's art history, and there's the history of art.
Art history, you can learn anywhere these days;
the history of art's some other, thrilling thing, a life-blood
pumping its heart intensely as if it were a matter
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He was Troy...her toy boy
and she was his queen Helen.

'Is this the face that munched a thousand chips? '
...

ROME! what a scroll of History thine has been
In the first days thy sword republican
Ruled the whole world for many an age's span:
Then of thy peoples thou wert crownèd Queen,
Till in thy streets the bearded Goth was seen;
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.....Let them live....

............SEXUALLY MOLEST
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mystic quest awes as inspired tomorrow
myth redounds to wonder over desire
sweet breeze slowly baffles thirst
hope awakens own quantum universe
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I fell asleep to the voice of an angel last night
She brought comfort to my soul and made life a delight
Her syllables had been formed in heaven's blessed light
For it was from God's history that she did recite
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As history is made in the American elections
The world watches with disbelief and fascination.
Some one asked me, is it good for our nation?
Rejoice, people are overcoming racial discrimination.
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O Lord, our refuge and strength
When it's 'in God we trust'
The foe has struck your firstborn
With a great infamous thrust
...

594

The Battle fought between the Soul
And No Man—is the One
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(PHILADELPHIA, 1794)

NOTE.—The following imaginary dialogue between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, which is not based upon any specific incident in American history, may be supposed to have occurred a few months previous to Hamilton’s retirement from Washington’s Cabinet in 1795 and a few years before the political ingenuities of Burr—who has been characterized, without much exaggeration, as the inventor of American politics—began to be conspicuously formidable to the Federalists. These activities on the part of Burr resulted, as the reader will remember, in the Burr-Jefferson tie for the Presidency in 1800, and finally in the Burr-Hamilton duel at Weehawken in 1804.
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Oh what a mighty pen that scribbles
Yet blazes the glory of distinction
it rains in blue by the knowledge
sprucing soul onto golden horizon
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eras in history cannot be argued
they have endured their time and their history
and start meeting a brand new era
with the name of the result of that brand new era
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What is it you remember? - the summer mornings
Down by the river at Richmond with a girl,
And as you kissed, clumsy in bathing costumes,
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So much Hate!
At Hell's gates,
How can we renew
The Faith,
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(to Sumit Chakrabarty)
India is not just India, even from before I was born,
India has been my history.
My history, carved into two by daggers of animosity and hatred, running breathlessly towards uncertain possibilities,
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Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,
Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,
Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height,
And four lives paid for what the seven had won.
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Oh thou degenerate child of the great and glorious mother,
Who with the Romans' strong might couplest the Tyrians' deceit!
But those ever governed with vigor the earth they had conquered,--
These instructed the world that they with cunning had won.
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Last night, a great lute-player
as full of enthusiasm for the power of music
and its history of the human heart
as far as history recedes, as I remember him
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While History's Muse the memorial was keeping
Of all that the dark hand of Destiny weaves,
Beside her the Genius of Erin stood weeping,
For hers was the story that blotted the leaves.
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Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,
Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,
Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height,
And four lives paid for what the seven had won.
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The last petal fell from the flower
A chapter closed
A year came to an end
Year 2021, we say you good-bye
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There was a young person whose history
Was always considered a mystery.
She sate in a ditch,
Although no one knew which,
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'Henry the Eight had five wifes and a headmistress! '

'Churchill is that dog that can't sing and sells insurance on the telly! '
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Through the flood we shall rise and float
On tenterhooks of tomorrow(s)
We shall abide beyond the gallows
Of each daybreak, ours to calculate
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My beloved father, the last time we met
in company with your confidant and friend Abu,
we spoke of many things.
Most importantly the history I'd lost in the
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Let fair or foul my mistress be,
Or low, or tall, she pleaseth me;
Or let her walk, or stand, or sit,
The posture her's, I'm pleased with it;
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History of Old Rome by Theodor Mommsen.
Let's begin from its origins.
The mortgages did notexist.
The wife had her husband and did not belong to the State.
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I don't Know if history repeats itself
But I do know that you don't.
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I traced the Circus whose gray stones incline
Where Rome and dim Etruria interjoin,
Till came a child who showed an ancient coin
That bore the image of a Constantine.
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The graveyard silent by day
And garrulous at night
Is but my beloved land
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I am all that is taken for granted
the essence of beauty and destruction
the fall of autumn leaves
lay dormant in winter and bloom in spring
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