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Subject - Story Telling

Here is a collection of some well known ballads or story poems. Most are somewhat long, but are quite satisfying to memorize and easier than you might think. Paul Revere's Ride and Casey at the Bat are two well known classics. We have noted a couple by Robert Service, but he has a great number of poems that fit the subject of Story Telling.

Poetry is a puppet-show, where riders of skyrockets and divers of sea fathoms gossip about the sith sense and the fourth dimension. - Carl Sandburg

How They Brought The Good News From Ghent To Aix by Robert Browning
a valorous ride saves Aix from an unknown fate
Lord Ullin's Daughter by Thomas Campbell
a woman and her lover flee her father's wrath
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
a young man defeats a fearsome beast
The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll
an unlikely cadre team-up in search of the elusive snark
The Leak in the Dike by Phoebe Cary
a boy's heroic deed saves Holland from the encroachment of the sea
The Face on the Barroom Floor by Hugh Antoine D'Arcy
a vagabond sketches the face that drove him mad
The Loss of the Birkenhead by Sir Francis Doyle
Agincourt by Michael Drayton
King Henry and his company defeat the French, though outnumbered 10 to 1
The Yarn of the 'Nancy Bell' by W.S. Gilbert
rather on the gross side
John Burns of Gettysburg by Bret Harte
Jim Bludso of the Prairie Belle by John Hay
The Green Eye of the Yellow God by J. Milton Hayes
beware the vengance of the little yellow god
The Eve of St. Agnes by John Keats
a gothic tale of thwarted young love
La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats
a knight waits on a cold hill-side for the aparition that has seduced him
Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling
this regimental water boy is a better man that most
Edgehill Fight by Rudyard Kipling
the English Civil War pits neighbor against neighbor
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat by Edward Lear
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat
The Wreck of the Hesperus by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
best be cautious, not proud, in dealing with the sea
Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
the inspired telling of one of America most memorable historic events

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere
A Visit From St. Nicholas by Clement C. Moore
'Twas the night before Christmas
The Defence of Guenevere by William Morris
Guenevere defends herself and Lancelot before King Arthur's court
The King of Denmark's Ride by Caroline Norton
The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
Bess must warn her lover before the redcoats shoot him down
The Man from Snowy River by Andrew Barton Paterson
an unassuming mountain horseman rounds-up a wayward herd of wild bush horses
Mulga Bill's Bicycle by Andrew Barton Paterson
Mugla Bill claims to be able to ride anything, but can he?
The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
an eerie tale of an anguished man haunted by the memory of his lost love
The Shooting of Dan McGrew by Robert W. Service
a stranger gives dangerous Dan his just desserts
The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who toil for gold.
The Lifeboat by George R. Sims
We launched the boat in the tempest, though death was the goal in view
And never a one but doubted if the craft could live it through;
Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
perhaps the best known verse on war

Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Casey at the Bat by Ernest L. Thayer
the big game depends on Casey
The Song of Wandering Aengus by William Butler Yeats