Patriotic Poems for the 4th of July

Here are 4 great poems in different styles to share with your children and family.

Tell your children that they are going to listen tt 2-4 poems and they are going to be judges and choose which one they like the most.

Letting your children feel like they have a purpose and have a voice is a great way to get them involved in learning.

Good Night

By Carl Sandburg

Many ways to say good night.

Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July

spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.

They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.

Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue

and then go out.

Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar.

Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields to razorback hill.

It is easy to spell good night.

                       Many ways to spell good night.

The New Colossus

By Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Concord Hymn

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world,

The foe long since in silence slept,

Alike the Conqueror silent sleeps,

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

We set to-day a votive stone,

That memory may their deed redeem,

When like our sires our sons are gone.

Spirit! who made those freemen dare

To die, or leave their children free,

Bid time and nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and Thee.

I Hear America Singing

By Walt Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;

Those of mechanics—each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;

The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat—the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench—the hatter singing as he stands;

The wood-cutter’s song—the ploughboy’s, on his way in the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;

The delicious singing of the mother—or of the young wife at work—or of the girl sewing or washing—

Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;

The day what belongs to the day—

At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.