The book that has been in consistent publication longer than any other book in human history is a book of poetry lasting only thirteen chapters. This book is also the most important book on war ever written, The Art of War attributed to Sun Tzu who made his living as a mercenary general.
When you consider that it was (and still is) a requirement for all Greek men to serve in the military, then all the ancient Greek philosophers (Socrates, Aristotle, etc.) and playwrights (Euripides, Sophocles, etc.) were Warrior Poets. (In fact, Aeschylus' gravestone spends more time talking about his military successes than about his multi-award-winning literary career.)note And probably even less time time about how he was killed by a falling turtle. And since the Greeks fought each other all the time, the image of the "old philosopher" probably means the ones who survived that long were probably pretty good at fighting. To sum up: Socrates probably could have kicked your ass.
Tyrtaios of Sparta had the curious distinction of being a Spartan poet. This is explained by the fact that they are rather grim descriptions of phalanx warfare. The writer knows perfectly well that War Is Hell. He went right through it. He was a Spartan.
Archilochus (c.680BCE-c.645BC) may be the earliest known example. While the details of his life are shrouded in the mythology that the later Greeks built around him, there is strong evidence that he fought in wars (and wrote poetry about doing so), and he was considered in ancient times to be one of the greatest poets in history. Today his poetry is mostly lost; only a few quotations remain. Perhaps the most famous is about the virtues of dropping your shield and running away.
3rd Century Chinese warlord Cao Cao and his son and successor Cao Pi were both considered the greatest poets of their generations, in addition to the warmongering thing.
Julius Caesar, Magnificent Bastard extraordinaire if there ever was one, was not only one of the greatest military geniuses ever but also a great prose writer and poet. Although his surviving prose works are still admired to this day for their clear, energetic style, practically none of his poems survives... however his fellow ancient Romans seem to have been divided over the quality of his poems.
Emperor Marcus Aurelius of Ancient Rome was more famous for his philosophical thoughts than for his warlike enterprises (and not because he had few of those).
In old Ireland, you couldn't be a great warrior unless you played the harp and mastered fidchell, an ancient Irish board game, somewhat similar to chess.
Norsemen got great social recognition for being good skalds as well as warriors. Poetry and berserker-rage were gifts from the Gods. Therefore, a skilled warrior and poet was thought to be favored by Odin. See the mythology entry above.
Medieval
The medieval knights of Europe were expected to be skilled at poetry, chess, and dancing, as well as following a strict code of chivalry. This may have had something to do with the fact that European knights were also nobles — such pastimes were probably taught to all noblemen regardless.
The Medieval German minstrel knights, Minnesänger such as Wolfram von Eschenbach, Tannhäuser or Walther von der Vogelweide, could well be the Trope Namers
Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, as far as we can tell, worked his way up from penniless Provençal minstrel, to man at arms, to knight, to crusader, and finished out his days as a feudal lord somewhere in the neighborhood of Bulgaria. A sample from one of his most famous works: "Handsome warriors and good fencers/ Sieges and catapults and pikes/ And the destruction of walls, new and antique, And the vanquishing of battalions and towers/ I see and hear, and I cannot get/ anything that would avail me in love!" He's got another poem where each of the five stanzas is in a different language. He was by all accounts a pretty impressive dude.
Though more famous as a warrior, King Richard the Lionheart was also a poet; though only two of his poems survive, his routrenge, Ja Nuns Hons Pris is well-known to connoisseurs of medieval music.
Egil Skallagrimsson of Iceland was famous as both a fighter (a berserker in fact) and a poet. He subverts this trope somewhat, in that while he had a caring and sentimental side, he also had a terrible temper and sometimes behaved very rashly.
The 10th-century Iraqi poet Al-Mutanabbi arguably deconstructs this. His (truly great) poetry is full of boasts about his military prowess, although no more so than many others at the time. Particularly well known is the couplet:
I am known to night, and horses, and the desert, // and the sword and the lance, and the paper and the pen.
But one day he finds himself travelling through the desert, and his company is set upon by bandits. Hopelessly outnumbered, Al-Mutanabbi and company turned to flee, but he was stopped by a servant who asked him, "What about those famous lines of yours, 'I am known to night, and horses, etc.'" Determined to make good on his rep, Al-Mutanabbi turned and charged the bandits single-handedly. He was instantly killed.
For that matter however, played straight with ancient Arab tribes of the Quraysh during around 6th century AD in Mecca. While a good bit of them are traders, the most renowned warriors are also poets; in fact, one's prestige during the Quraish era was either on their feats of prowess in combat and/or their poetry. The affinity of poetry in the Middle East is in full effect even today, and while the "warrior" aspect has faded nowadays, it certainly was in full force in ancient times.
Traditional Japanese culture is known for demanding samurai to be good at Ikebana (floral arrangement) and poetry and stuff. The ideal was summed up as "Bun Bu Ryo Do", literally "literary arts, military arts, both ways", or more loosely "The pen and the sword in accord". Samurai were among the most cultured and literate classes in pre-Meiji Japanese culture. The tea ceremony and rock garden also had their roots in Samurai culture.
Miyamoto Musashi is a famous example. Apart from being a swordsman, he painted and sculpted, practiced calligraphy, and studied Zen Buddhism.
Yagyu Jubei, grandfather (Sekishusai), father (Munenori) all fit this trope. They mastered the sword but also took time to write books on the Zen in sword, and Munenori was a politician, even if an Evil Chancellor.
A noticeable aversion of this trope among the samurai was Kato Kiyomasa. Unlike the norm, he disdained the arts and even outlawed participating in Noh drama for the samurai within his domain with the punishment of Seppuku. This may have stemmed from him being a prominent figure during a chaotic conflict in the Sengoku Period. His precepts in general encouraged a spartan attitude and discouraged beautification while samurai were an upper-class category that were likely to display this as upper-classes are apt to. That being said, he didn't go into Dumb Muscle territory and still encouraged reading of non-artistic matters.
One Sikh hymn compares God to every weapon known to the writer.
Early modern
Almost every Spanish poet or writer from the Spanish Golden Age (and the previous period) was equally known as a soldier, duelist or both
Jorge Manrique, one of the best-regarded early poets of Spanish literature, is most famous for his eulogy to his beloved father, Rodrigo Manrique. Both of them were also accomplished military men in the service of The Catholic Monarchs, with Jorge being eventually killed in action in an ambush.
Garcilaso de la Vega, considered the Spanish poet, period, was also a military commander and fought during the Italian Wars. While he was on his deathbed, wounded by a rock during an assault in Le Muy, his king Charles V was so enraged by his imminent death that he had the entire enemy garrison executed.
Francisco de Aldana, poet, general and spymaster, as well as Neo-Platonist philosopher, who died for the king of Portugal in the Battle of Alcácer Quibir (which he had personally deemed a suicide mission and accepted to fight only because his own king Philip II ordered it).
Lope de Vega, who hopefully needs no introduction, also served in the Spanish navy. He became a friend of the renowned Álvaro de Bazán, Marquis of Santa Cruz, and later participated in the Spanish Armada, surviving the ordeal, although also retiring shortly after.
Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, the mestizo descendant of the previous Garcilaso, was an army captain aside from an Inca scholar.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca also served in the Tercios.
Saint Ignatius Loyola, along with the fellow founding members of the Society of Jesus, also known as Jesuits. He starts as a Genius Bruiser, finishes as the leader of a whole league of Badass Preachers.
Francisco de Quevedo, one of Spain's greatest poets and a damn good swordsman. According to a legend, he defeated easily a big name of Spanish fencing, Luis Pacheco de Narváez, in a Single-Stroke Battle.
Bernardino de Rebolledo, Philip IV's ambassador in Denmark, was an avid writer of both poetry and theater, as well as a spymaster and liuetenant that served under both Ambrogio Spinola and Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand. He successfully defended the city of Frankenthalen against the famed Swedish army reformed by Gustavus Adolphus.
Several Spanish conquistadors also had a poetic streak within them. Most notably Alonso de Ercilla who wrote La Araucana, one of the most highly regarded epic poems in the Spanish language. Even Hernán Cortés himself, according to chroniclers, also did some informal poetry.
Most poetry, drama, and music of the Aztecs were written by battle-hardened warriors. On the opposite side of the Mesoamerican wars, Xicohtencatl the Elder, chieftain of the Tlaxcaltecs and later nobleman of the Spanish Empire, was a noted poet as well as a retired warrior.
Luís de Camões was both a soldier of the Portuguese Empire and a poet, being one of the most important names in the Portuguese literature canon, equivalent to Cervantes or Shakespeare to the worlds of Spanish and English literature, respectively. Several of his portraits show him wearing armor and lacking an eye he lost in a battle at Ceuta.
Cyrano De Bergerac. Although perhaps better known for his fictional exploits, such as the play named after him, the real Cyrano was a famous writer, a fearsome duelist in a time when duels had been made illegal, and was so dangerous with a sword that his friends nicknamed him the Devil of Bravery. He also fought alongside d'Artagnan, another tough guy who is better remembered for his life in fiction.
Julie d'Aubigny a.k.a. La Maupin. While her life, like Cyrano and d'Artagnan, was later fictionalised, the reality was impressive enough - trained by her father, a swordsmaster who trained the court pages, and competent by adult standards at the age of 12, she led a torrid life as a famous duellist in a time when, again, such things were illegal (fortunately, the King found her antics hilarious) known for her affairs with men and women alike, and became a famous opera singer as well, being a natural contralto who was nevertheless capable of singing to professional standard as a soprano, and good enough and popular enough that several roles were created specifically for her. She eventually retired to a convent after her last lover died, and lived there for the last two years of her life, dying in 1707 at the age of 33.
Lord Byron, poet and playwright, who took up arms for the cause of Greek independence and died while drilling Alpine troops at Missolonghi.
In the Befreiungskriege, the German "Wars of Liberation" from Napoleon's domination, the poet Theodor Körner left a successful play-writing career in Vienna to join the famous Freikorps of Ludwig von Lützow; he wrote and sang poems for his fellow soldiers, accompanying himself on the guitar. These poems were collected posthumously by his father in the anthology Lyre and Sword and later set to music by Weber, Schubert, and others.
Other poets serving as Volunteers in the Prussian army in the Wars of Liberation included Friedrich von La Motte-Fouqué (creator of, among others, Undine) and Joseph von Eichendorff. Adelbert von Chamisso had been a Prussian officer until 1806.
The Prince-Bishop of Montenegro, Petar II Petrovic Njegos, was his nation's most renowned poet and philosopher — when not indulging in notoriously bloody feuds with the Ottoman Turks. Oh, and he was a monk, nominally at least.
George Washington was famous for simple, yet elegant prose in his speeches, and even wrote a book on etiquette, but this may have more in common with the Cultured Badass.
Alexander Hamilton is most famous as a politician, but he served with distinction in the Continental Army, leading the assault on Redoubt 10 at the Battle of Yorktown. He was also a poet, who published several works from an early age.
Likewise, Hamilton's opponent Thomas Jefferson was an intellectual of renown who, while not a military officer, also saw a bit of combat during The American Revolution and afterward.
Several eighteenth and nineteenth-century military and naval officers. Including King Frederick the Great.
"Several" puts it mildly. Life at sea was dull and many (most) turned to the arts and other intellectual pursuits to pass the time. Naval gazettes included poems written by officers, and officers were known to collect their works and publish. Note: They weren't necessarily inspired, nor even all that good, but, still, there you are.
Frederick the Great besides ruling his country and commanding his army in the field wrote historical and philosophical works, poetry (including a very long didactic treatise about the art of war in verse), opera libretti, and instrumental music (some of which is performed to this day). He also dabbled in architecture.
Ewald Christian von Kleist (1715-1759), one of Frederick's officers, also achieved fame as a poet, but his career in both fields was cut short when he was mortally wounded in the battle of Kunersdorf.
August Neithard von Gneisenau, Blücher's chief of staff at Waterloo, wrote poetry in his youth and also displayed a measure of literary and rhetorical talent in articles such as the ones he wrote to popularize the Prussian army reforms. His first work was a poem in honour of poet, playwright, and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing on the occasion of his death.
Paul Thiébault (1769-1846), the son of a French scholar and pedagogue, grew up in Berlin during the last years of Frederick the Great's reign. He was an amateur poet, playwright, composer, landscaper, author of epistolary romances... and a general, from time to time.
Etienne de Jouy (1764-1846), Thiébault's brother-in-law, began his life as a soldier and retired after the Terror. He wrote several plays and operas that were quite successful in their time and earned him a seat at the Académie Française, but are now largely forgotten.
Elliot Ackerman: Mr. Ackerman attended the prestigious Tufts University, graduating with top honors with a joint degree in literature and history. He then went on to serve in the United States Marine Corps, at first as an infantry officer before becoming a special operations officer. He served with distinction in Iraq and Afghanistan, being wounded in the former during the Second Battle of Fallujah. Ackerman retired after 8 years of service as a Captain and is currently an author based out of Turkey. His debut novel, Green on Blue, has received critical acclaim.
Jason Everman is a musician who played guitar in bands such as Soundgarden and more prominently in Nirvana. The entire warrior poet philosophy motivated him to enlist in the U.S. Army in 1994. He first served in the Rangers before joining Special Forces (aka the Green Berets), serving tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He retired from the Army in 2006 and went on to earn a degree in Philosophy from the highly prestigious Columbia University. Fits the bill quite nicely, huh?
Irishman Joseph Mary Plunkett, executed for rebellion in 1916. He wrote "The Presence of God":
I see His blood upon the rose, // And in the stars the glory of His eyes; // His body gleams amid eternal snows, // His tears fall from the skies. // I see His face in every flower; // The thunder, and the singing of the birds // Are but His voice; and, carven by His power, // Rocks are His written words. // All pathways by His feet are worn; // His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea; // His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn; // His cross is every tree. //
Patton. Anyone remember in the movie? "Through the travail of ages, midst the pomp and toils of war, have I fought and strove and perished, countless times amongst the stars."
Many Irish rebels were also poets, most notably Patrick Pearse and James Stephens.
Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, two of the best-known war poets in history. Both were decorated for heroism; Sassoon was arguably more badass, and certainly luckier (he survived the war and lived to a ripe old age; Owen died so close to the end of it that his mother got the telegram as the armistice bells were ringing).
World War I in particular produced a great deal of war poetry of acclaim. Besides Sassoon and Owen, John McCrae is another of the better-known examples of this lot. He was an artilleryman who had fought in the Second Boer War before serving as a surgeon in World War I. Like Owen, he died on the battlefields of France (though unlike Owen, who was killed in action, McCrae died of pneumonia). His poem "In Flanders Fields" earned him fame while the war was still raging, and is still often read to commemorate Remembrance Day.
On the German side, you had e. g. Hermann Löns, Gorch Fock, and Walter Flex, writers who joined the armed forces in 1914 and who all were killed in action. The school sailing vessel of the German Bundesmarine is named after Gorch Fock, who perished aboard S. M. S. Wiesbaden in the battle of Jutland. Two well-known marching-songs of both World Wars, Wildgänse rauschen durch die Nacht (Wild geese are rushing through the night) and Wir fahren gegen Engeland were written by Flex and Löns, respectively. Another well-known warrior poet was Ernst Jünger, who was awarded a Pour le mérite (better known in America as the "Blue Max"), survived World War I to write In Stahlgewittern (In steel-storms) and other works, served in World War 2 and lived to be 100 years old.
Italy had a few among the soldiers who served on the front, but the most famous is Gabriele D'Annunzio, who, already a famous poet before the war, decided the best way to support the war effort was to go on the frontline and do outrageous things, like leading a charge to Austro-Hungarian trenches while wearing a Badass Cape and armed with a gun for hand and a knife in the mouth, lead three torpedo boats in what was supposed to be the most impenetrable harbour in the world and fire torpedoes at the Austro-Hungarian ships there and leave mocking messages in the attempt to lure the enemy fleet into an ambush, and fly over Vienna and drop leaflets telling the citizens to thank Italy for not dropping bombs while chastising the Austro-Hungarian government for bombing Milan. He's also well known for having been completely crazy.
Benito Mussolini also served during WW1 and was a published poet.
J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis didn't write much about World War I but they served in it and it influenced their writings. The Dead Marshes, for instance, are said to be from memories of the trenches.
Mao Zedong(Mao Tse-tung) is now more known for being the founder/leader/dictator of the People's Republic of China. He also wrote quite a few poems during the period of conflict between the Communists and the Nationalist government. Wikipedia article here. He was also quite good at calligraphy.
Both World Wars had several famous writers which makes sense as they were wars between nations rather then just governments. This continued into the Cold War to some degree.
MI6 was populated by British intellectuals several of whom retired to write, among other things, Spy Fiction.
Tupac Shakur and other gangsta rappers created very influential and popular music, while at the same time engaged in some pretty serious urban violence.
In fact, given Russia's long literary tradition and the Russian people's history of fighting against pretty much every other country, their own government, and even their environment, just for their own survival, Russia can be seen as a Warrior-Poet country.
Winston Churchill: As a soldier, he served with distinction in India, Sudan, and the Second Boer War; he also fought on the front line in World War One despite being a battalion commander. He also led Britain in World War II. As a man of arts and letters, he was a decent amateur painter, an accomplished memoirist, and a good historian, writing the all-encompassing (if a bit dated) History of the English-Speaking Peoples, for which he won a Nobel Prize in Literature. He also was an accomplished wit and a master of oratory (which helped him lead Britain during World War II).
José Martí, Cuban revolutionary, national hero, and one of the most important figures in Latin America literature.
José Hernández, soldier and author of the Argentine national book, El Gaucho Martín Fierro. The title himself is, appropriately enough, something of an example as well.
Muhammad Ali would sometimes write poems before going into the ring. Many of his poems were about boxing, but he also did one that was a protest of the Vietnam War and another about the Attica Prison Riot of 1971.
In a similar vein to the Muhammad Ali example above, '90s British boxer Chris "Simply the Best" Eubank Sr was known for his dandy image and aristocratic, flowery manner of speech that often led to elaborate discussions about culture and philosophy. He is also a connoisseur of poetry (such as being able to recite "If" by Rudyard Kipling by memory, as well as Invictus and Desiderata). He also composed a poem he dubs "The Warrior's Code", a Badass Creed he adopted as his personal philosophy.
John Musgrave and William D. Ehrhart, both veterans of the U.S. Marine Corps who were featured in Ken Burns' PBS documentary The Vietnam War (2017), have both published several volumes of their war-related poetry.
Alan Seeger is a perfect example, though he was a poet that became a warrior instead of vice versa. He was an aspiring poet that traveled Europe, writing of nature's beauty, up until the start of World War I. When the war broke out he headed to France to join the Foreign Legion, taking up arms to defend the country he loved. He died fighting to retake a village from the Germans, though even after being mortally wounded he continued to cheer on his comrades until he succumbed to his injuries. Gamers will most likely remember him by his poem "I Have A Rendezvous With Death" that was featured in the trailer for Gears of War 2
John Gillespie Magee Jr., a US citizen who earned a scholarship to Yale but instead chose to join the Canadian RAF prior to the US entering WWII. He is best known for his poem "High Flight," although he wrote others, and was in the middle of writing one when he died at the age of 19.
Masaharu Homma, the Japanese general who commanded the troops responsible for the Bataan Death March. He was also an amateur playwright and poet.
Scottish clans often had a hereditary bard that accompanied their chief into battle to record the glorious deeds of him and his followers. Parodied in the Discworld by the Gonnagle, the battle-poet of the Nac Mac Feegle. They are called gonnagles for a very good reason...
Ralph Bagnold was not only a great adventurer and special forces soldier but a great scientist and his studies on deserts are still considered a source of information to this day.
The two poems in Audie Murphy's war memoir To Hell and Back were composed by him, although they are attributed to a different character in the book. He wrote poems about his war experiences all his life, but had little interest in publishing them, often discarding or mislaying them when he was done. The Alabama War Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama includes lines from one of his later poems. Also co-wrote lyrics for Country Music songs, mostly about love, loss, and depression in general, rather than about the war in particular.
Fitzroy Maclean, the famous Scottish spy, soldier, swashbuckler, and explorer. He would probably fit this trope more exactly then many as he both fought in war and wrote about it.
Martin van Crevald's The Culture of War is an actual study about this attitude as indicated by the title. Of course he comes from a country where everyone is a warrior.
George Orwell- Fought in the Spanish Civil War, then wrote about it. He also used his experience of CPS censorship to influence the doublethink in 1984 (anarchists in one issue of Daily Worker, Trotskyists in the next)
Joe Hill- he was a radical organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World- wobblies. He is most famous for his prolific songwriting. In fact, 95% of Labor Ballads come from him. At that time labor organizing was a form of combat, with strike breakers, cops and the army often called in to break up strikes.
Anti-fascist action, a group of militant anarchists who fought street battles with neo-Nazis produced many punk ballads.
A number of Russian intellectuals went to battle in World War I and the Russian Civil War carrying copies of Pushkin in their backpacks.
There was once an Israeli poem about how beautiful Mirage fighters were. This sort of thing became kind of over the top after the Six-Day War but was toned down after the Yom Kippur war.
The CD Partisans of Vilna is a collection of poems and songs written by Jewish partisan fighters in WWII. Another one called Yiddish Glory was also released.
Hirsh Glick wrote a song, "Zog nit keyn mol", that became an anthem of the resistance and Holocaust survivors.
Abba Kovner, a partisan leader, published poems about the war afterwards in Israel.
Nordahl Grieg, a literal warrior poet and journalist. He spent time as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War and then served as a soldier in World War II, while writing poems to boost morale in his native country, Norway. To make the claim of the title even more just, Grieg was shot down on a reconnaissance flight over Berlin in December 1943. His final resting place was a mystery for over sixty years.
Duke of Caxias composed a lot of amateur poetry in his spare time.
Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler of the Green Berets. In addition to his military career, he was a singer, a songwriter, an actor, and an author.
Suheil al-Hassan, a Syrian army general who rose to fame on equal parts for being The Ace and The Dreaded during the Syrian Civil War, is known for writing poetry. It is, in fact, one of the few personal details known about an otherwise very secretive man. His soldiers have often used loudspeakers to broadcast his poems during battles.
John Lovell is a US Army Ranger veteran, who now works as a firearms instructor with his own company called the Warrior Poet Society.
British Bangladeshi Rapper Sparkaman sometimes has raps song highlighting difficulties in life, such as his song Two Identities. Outside of music, he is a passionate Muay Thai kickboxer and in even went to a training camp in Thailand as seen in his Music Video for Shine, which is also one of his more somber rap songs.
is well-known to connoisseurs of medieval music.