Best Epic Poems

YES, write, if you want to, there's nothing like trying;
Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold?
I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying,
If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold.
...

Did the people of Viet Nam
use lanterns of stone?
Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
...

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
...

I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
...

His poems refuse
to mourn his passing, they
detach themselves from
books, magazines, wall hangings
...

Was never form and never face
So sweet to SEYD as only grace
Which did not slumber like a stone,
But hovered gleaming and was gone.
...

Dust in the winds
Shadows walking leaving trails
Eyes cocking navigate scents meddle the streets
Nightingale scans the sounds of thousands voices
...

I THE DARK

In a worldless timeless lightless great emptiness
Four-faced Brahma broods.
...

The arc of my brain reshaped for
The room to fill senses and madness
Acronyms and seduction amalgamated
Boundaries of essence essentials
...

Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn,
reading Ezra Pound,
and wishing that Juan Marichal would hit a hole right through the
Anglo-Saxon tradition in the first Canto
...

The heroic stars spending themselves,
Coining their very flesh into bullets for the lost battle,
They must burn out at length like used candles;
And Mother Night will weep in her triumph, taking home her heroes.
...

The Sacrificing Of The Poor Heroes For The Independence (Epic)
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Either they would be independent or martyred they told
...

Not for the love of women toil we, we of the craft,
Not for the people's praise;
Only because our goddess made us her own and laughed,
Claiming us all our days,
...

Your love taught me to grieve
and I have been in need, for centuries
a woman to make me grieve
...

The patriots are generally seen
In loving country
Loving nation
Thinking bigger of both
...

I

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
a new thing under the Sun?
...

I
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
...

HUMAN SHIELD
the order of the day with every cadre
BATTLE FIELD
brought into the habitant world
...

We women teach our little sons how wrong
And how ignoble blows are; school and church
Support our precepts and inoculate
The growing minds with thoughts of love and peace.
...

A Woman
(International woman's day)

Woman is a strange world,
...

Ramayana the epic poem of India
The story of a noble kingdom
The story of noble couple
The story of truth, sacrifice
...

Ne Rubeam, Pingui donatus Munere
(Horace, Epistles II.i.267)
While you, great patron of mankind, sustain
The balanc'd world, and open all the main;
...

When the investing darkness growls,
And deep reverberates to deep;
When keyhole whines and chimney howls,
And all the roofs and windows weep;
...

I.
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
...

My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.
My heart keeps open house,
My doors are widely swung.
...

My love, once upon a time your poet
launched a great epic in his mind.
Alas, I was not careful, and it struck
your ringing anklets and came to
...

The poet Phernazis is composing
the important part of his epic poem.
How Darius, son of Hystaspes,
assumed the kingdom of the Persians. (From him
...

[A scene from the hindu epic Mahabharatham
where both duryodhan and arjun come to lord
krishna for favors to sopport them in the war
KURUKSHETRA WAR]
...

Let me not play tuneless in today's time,
Some purists sure get praised as Gandhian,
Yet, crass nevertheless is no more crime,
Old values are hailed may be in heaven.
...

Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade,
Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made,
For the god being one day too warm in his wooing,
She took to the tree to escape his pursuing
...

It was midnight as I painted
The voluptuous figure of a long-haired woman,
Calmly lying on her death-bed with closed eyes,
Trying to remember her days of lost love,
...

Is that the only way we can become like Indians, like Rhinoceri,
like Quartz Crystals, like organic farmers, like what we imagine
Adam & Eve to’ve been, caressing each other with trembling limbs
before the Snake of Revolutionary Sex wrapped itself round
...

If you surrender to a rich man, he may give you a mansion,
Delicious foods, nice clothes and physical pleasure;
He may give you a heart as dead as a withered river;
He may love you, too and make you the owner of a vast land.
...

In a crowded lunch, a wireless chat took place
From soil to sky with a cozy crystal-soul.

A long emotional table
...

Jaya Surya

GOLDEN sun of victory, born
In my life's unclouded morn,
...

At break of day the College Portress came:
She brought us Academic silks, in hue
The lilac, with a silken hood to each,
And zoned with gold; and now when these were on,
...

IT is full Winter now: the trees are bare,
Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
The Autumn's gaudy livery whose gold
Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true
To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew
...

This story is from the famous epic Mahabharat and has been retold by many authours in several languages. The Father of Nation, Mahatma Gandhi loved this story for its moral that speaks of faith in the truth, honesty and courage. Some 600 years ago, a famous Tamil Poet Veerakavirayar wrote in Tamil Harichandran Puranam in the Tamil Venba style. He was an Aasu Kavi (Spontaneous Poet) next to Kalamegam of ancient times. It is next to impossible to translate his work in English word by word. He has written more than 1000 verses running to more than 600 pages. I have, however, brought in some of his excellence in about 76 pages in my own simple style for the reading pleasure of the world poetry lovers. The readers are requested to send their comments to my email address: rajaram1931@gmail.com, for which I will be grateful to them. The story goes starting with a prayer song to Gods in the heaven.

Prayer to Lord Ganesh.
...

(dedicated to my all poet friend from India at poemhunter)

Jaya, Jaya, Jaya, Jayahe!
Truth Alone Triumph
...

The town was taken--whether he might yield
Himself or bastion, little matter'd now:
His stubborn valour was no future shield.
Ismail's no more! The Crescent's silver bow
...

The Mighty Mother, and her son who brings
The Smithfield muses to the ear of kings,
I sing. Say you, her instruments the great!
...

[ In MAHABHARATHA a hindu epic KARNA was the eldest son of KUNTIDEVI the mother of the pandavas
KARNA was abondoned since he was illegitimately born before KUNTI got married...KARNA
was born with an ear ring [kundalam] and a shield in his chest [kavasam] with this no body
could have killed KARNA..he was very magnanimous and that was his DHARMA..and that
...

Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun
Up to the people: thither flocked at noon
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half
...

Hail, Muse! et cetera.--We left Juan sleeping,
Pillow'd upon a fair and happy breast,
And watch'd by eyes that never yet knew weeping,
And loved by a young heart, too deeply blest
...

If I were wind, I would reach up to sky,
If I were a bird, I would fly to greet you,
If I were you, I would wait for fortune,
I would pay attention to such a list,
...

The most popular and and the most old dance
Ancient Kalinga Kingdom has gifted to the world,
This is the Danda Nata, the dance festival of people,
In this season of Danda Nata monsoon of music flows
...

Am truly enthralled by your heroic epic, Sir Pope
A bit of feedback, take in the right spirit, I hope.
Let me avoid in good faith to be circumspect.
The epic was inspired, I believe by true incident.
...

When amatory poets sing their loves
In liquid lines mellifluously bland,
And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves,
They little think what mischief is in hand;
...

My Heart Sutra

When you say ' I miss You '
My heart swells with music too,
...

..so here i am amidst the mountains..
..just the mountains and me..
..for its grandeur like a potent wine..
..flows through every rock, every pebble..
...

Difficile est proprie communia dicere
HOR. Epist. ad PisonI
Bob Southey! You're a poet--Poet-laureate,
And representative of all the race;
...

I won the prize essay at school
Here in the village,
And published a novel before I was twenty-five.
I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art;
...

Astonished I'm! No! World is distinct book
of deaths! Book of lives, of a child,
of a woman, of a man, of human.
...

If from great nature's or our own abyss
Of thought we could but snatch a certainty,
Perhaps mankind might find the path they miss--
But then 'twould spoil much good philosophy.
...

O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea,
Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee
When from Torino's track I saw thy face first flash on me.
...

I remembered her back as I was in her lap more,
She unexpectedly crossed the life boat and shore.
From her core of heart, fell pure affection for me
Still I wandered in path playing life I could not see.
...

A time's traveler poet travels and sees
Deep immense beauty in any sequence,
The Danda Nata of this year is explained
In short in my previous poem titled,
...

'I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew!
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers'~Shakespeare
...

There perhaps is a time for
the pedestrian plodding of prose
the great bard once observed
when the mission to be
...

Oh mother!
You were…
A sweater in my winter,
A cooler in my summer,
...

Most of the time he worked, a sort of sleep
with a purpose, so far as I could tell.
How he got from the dark of sleep
to the dark of waking up I'll never know;
...

You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
...

There by the window in the old house
Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley,
My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline,
Day by day did I look in my memory,
...

Eros...
The cherub of love
Drawing back on his bow
And letting fly his
...

Oh! Bury me in books when I am dead,
Fair quarto leaves of ivory and gold,
And silk octavos, bound in brown and red,
That tales of love and chivalry unfold.
...

PEACE
******
PEACE is a disturbing word: a small death,
Yes;I died years ago with this very word,
...

BY MICHING MALLECHO, Esq.

Is it a party in a parlour,
Crammed just as they on earth were crammed,
Some sipping punch-some sipping tea;
...

ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN BLOSSOM.

No more these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover;
...

I.
The morning watch was come; the vessel lay
Her course, and gently made her liquid way;
The cloven billow flashed from off her prow
...

Oft have you seen a swan superbly frowning,
And with proud breast his own white shadow crowning;
He slants his neck beneath the waters bright
So silently, it seems a beam of light
...

Auspicious Reverence! Hush all meaner song,
Ere we the deep preluding strain have poured
To the Great Father, only Rightful King,
...

Scenes of my youth! awake its slumbering fire!
Ye winds of Memory, sweep the silent lyre!
Ray of the past, if yet thou canst appear,
...

Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days
Ignoble themes obtain'd mistaken praise,
When sense and wit with poesy allied,
No fabl'd graces, flourish'd side by side;
...

The stir of leaves, the chilly morning air
Were like delirium; half awake
Jaws clamped; the dawn beyond the Kama glared
...

Where the sea meets the shore and the sand wets the feet
Where rainfall is epic, and has flooded the street
When the wind blows so strongly, it uproots the trees
Nature can bring every day to its' knees
...

LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings
won!
...

[The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River, planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but unfortunately did not live to complete even the first book. The fragment was found among his papers by William Marion Reedy and was for the first time published in Reedy's Mirror of December 18th, 1914.]


Of John Cabanis' wrath and of the strife
...

For every tiny town or place
God made the stars especially;
Babies look up with owlish face
And see them tangled in a tree;
...

The beloved asked who told you this
Art thou God to decide the fate
Calling the episodes as the final
Did not the love tell you of the thought
...

Deep blue ocean waves
Crawling at ivory white sandy beach
From a long journey
A thousand miles away
...

why am i doing this? Failure
to keep my work in order so as
to be able to find things
to paint the house
to earn enough money to live on
to reorganize the house so as
to be able to paint the house &
to be able to find things and
earn enough money so as
to be able to put books together
to publish works and books
to have time
to answer mail & phone calls
to wash the windows
to make the kitchen better to work in
to have the money to buy a simple radio
to listen to while working in the kitchen
to know enough to do grownups work in the world
to transcend my attitude
to an enforced poverty
to be able to expect my checks
to arrive on time in the mail
to not always expect that they will not
to forget my mother's attitudes on humility or
to continue
to assume them without suffering
to forget how my mother taunted my father
about money, my sister about i cant say it
failure to forget mother and father enough
to be older, to forget them
to forget my obsessive uncle
to remember them some other way
to remember their bigotry accurately
to cease to dream about lions which always is
to dream about them, I put my hand in the lion's mouth
to assuage its anger, this is not a failure
to notice that's how they were; failure
to repot the plants
to be neat
to create & maintain clear surfaces
to let a couch or a chair be a place for sitting down
and not a table
to let a table be a place for eating & not a desk
to listen to more popular music
to learn the lyrics
to not need money so as
to be able to write all the time
to not have to pay rent, con ed or telephone bills
to forget parents' and uncle's early deaths so as
to be free of expecting care; failure
to love objects
to find them valuable in any way; failure
to preserve objects
to buy them and
to now let them fall by the wayside; failure
to think of poems as objects
to think of the body as an object; failure
to believe; failure
to know nothing; failure
to know everything; failure
to remember how to spell failure; failure
to believe the dictionary & that there is anything
to teach; failure
to teach properly; failure
to believe in teaching
to just think that everybody knows everything
which is not my failure; I know everyone does; failure
to see not everyone believes this knowing and
to think we cannot last till the success of knowing
to wash all the dishes only takes ten minutes
to write a thousand poems in an hour
to do an epic, open the unwashed window
to let in you know who and
to spirit thoughts and poems away from concerns
to just let us know, we will
to paint your ceilings & walls for free
...

Winked to the birdcherry, gulped amid tears,
Splashed over carriages' varnish, trees' tremble.
Full moon. The musicians are picking their way
...

A little while ago
I came down to the computer
in the early morning light,
strong as a lumberjack
...

MY POEM TODAY: Tuesday 16 August 2022

a poem?
heavy or light?
...

THE clock has struck noon; ere it thrice tell the hours
We shall meet round the table that blushes with flowers,
...

From the ravages of war
Imminent
The soul of the country has gone
Languishing
...

i am nothing without you,
with you i am everything,

thank you dear beloved
...

Ideas may have direct relation
They are strengthened with relaxation
Not by physical bond or attachment
It has its own movement
...

Old man so young
Old tricks, new belt, old bag o’ nails
New shoes, same feet, now going flat
To me, a young man, so full of heart
...

I

The sister Hours in circles linked,
Daughters of men, of men the mates,
...

A weaver of words in deep quiet reflects
In his mind's prism, many a thought deflects
Within him the rainbow colours of passion rage
He scripts songs of beauty and rhyme on page after page
...

Thousand times I told you
I am a human child
Belongs to the human society
...

Just the other day I had felt like dying. My life was tired and old.
My white shoes were grass stained and reeking of bad poetry.
The mower was being held in contempt by the gas can
and both had just been informed of the higher cost of oil;
...

SAID one who led the spears of swarthy Gad,
To Jesse’s mighty son: “My Lord, O King,
I, halting hard by Gibeon’s bleak-blown hill
...

your presence was for a while,
for a little time being;

but this littleness
...

A Lion in his jaws caught up a child--
Not harming it--and to the woodland, wild
With secret streams and lairs, bore off his prey--
...

Why should my anxious breast repine.
Because my youth is fled?
Days of delight may still be mine;
Affection is not dead.
...

Keen as an eagle whose flight towards the dim empyrean
Fearless of toil or fatigue ever royally wends!
...

Hell on the earth
Tuesday, July 20,2021
10: 26 AM
...

BRIGHT as a morn of spring,
That jubilates along the earth,
With clouds, and winds, and flowers rejoicing,
...