Famous Adoration Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Adoration poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous adoration poems. These examples illustrate what a famous adoration poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Why Do Birds Sing?

by Robert William Service
 Let poets piece prismatic words,
Give me the jewelled joy of birds!

What ecstasy moves them to sing?
Is it the lyric glee of Spring,
The dewy rapture of the rose?
Is it the worship born in those
Who are of Nature's self a part,
The adoration of the heart?

Is it the mating mood in them
That makes each crystal note a gem?
Oh mocking bird and nightingale,
Oh...Read more of this...

Divine Visitation

by George William Russell
 THE HEAVENS lay hold on us: the starry rays
Fondle with flickering fingers brow and eyes:
A new enchantment lights the ancient skies.
What is it looks between us gaze on gaze;
Does the wild spirit of the endless days
Chase through my heart some lure that ever flies?
Only I know the vast within me cries
Finding in thee the ending of all ways.
Ah, but...Read more of this...

Hymn to Love

by Lascelles Abercrombie
 We are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee,
As théou, Léove, were the déep thought
And we the speech of the thought; yea, spoken are we,
Thy fires of thought out-spoken: 

But burn’d not through us thy imagining
Like fiérce méood in a séong céaught,
We were as clamour’d words a fool may fling,
Loose words, of meaning broken. 

For what...Read more of this...

Adoration

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Oh, straight, white road that runs to meet,
            Across green fields, the blue green sea,
   You knew the little weary feet
            Of my child bride that was to be!

   Her people...Read more of this...

As One Who Having Wandered All Night Long

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 AS one who having wandered all night long
In a perplexed forest, comes at length
In the first hours, about the matin song,
And when the sun uprises in his strength,
To the fringed margin of the wood, and sees,
Gazing afar before him, many a mile
Of falling country, many fields and trees,
And cities and bright streams and far-off Ocean's smile:

I, O Melampus, halting,...Read more of this...

Prayer of Columbus

by Walt Whitman
 A BATTER’D, wreck’d old man, 
Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home, 
Pent by the sea, and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months, 
Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken’d, and nigh to death, 
I take my way along the island’s edge,
Venting a heavy heart. 

I am too full of woe! 
Haply, I may not live another day;...Read more of this...

Religion XXVI

by Kahlil Gibran
 And an old priest said, "Speak to us of Religion." 

And he said: 

Have I spoken this day of aught else? 

Is not religion all deeds and all reflection, 

And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?...Read more of this...

Ulysses

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me,...Read more of this...

The Iron Age

by George William Russell
 HOW came this pigmy rabble spun,
After the gods and kings of old,
Upon a tapestry begun
With threads of silver and of gold?
In heaven began the heroic tale
What meaner destinies prevail!


They wove about the antique brow
A circlet of the heavenly air.
To whom is due such reverence now,
The thought “What deity is there”?
We choose the chieftains of our race
From hucksters in the...Read more of this...

Apostroph

by Walt Whitman
 O MATER! O fils! 
O brood continental! 
O flowers of the prairies! 
O space boundless! O hum of mighty products! 
O you teeming cities! O so invincible, turbulent, proud!
O race of the future! O women! 
O fathers! O you men of passion and the storm! 
O native power only! O beauty! 
O yourself! O God! O divine average! 
O...Read more of this...

Nuns Of The Perpetual Adoration

by Ernest Dowson
 Calm, sad, secure; behind high convent walls,
 These watch the sacred lamp, these watch and pray:
And it is one with them when evening falls,
 And one with them the cold return of day.

These heed not time; their nights and days they make
 Into a long returning rosary,
Whereon their lives are threaded for Christ's sake;
 Meekness and vigilance and chastity.

A...Read more of this...

Modern Love XXXI: This Golden Head

by George Meredith
 This golden head has wit in it. I live 
Again, and a far higher life, near her. 
Some women like a young philosopher; 
Perchance because he is diminutive. 
For woman's manly god must not exceed 
Proportions of the natural nursing size. 
Great poets and great sages draw no prize 
With women: but the little lap-dog breed, 
Who can be...Read more of this...

Go Plant a Tree

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 God, what a joy it is to plant a tree, 
And from the sallow earth to watch it rise, 
Lifting its emerald branches to the skies 
In silent adoration; and to see 
Its strength and glory waxing with each spring. 
Yes, 'tis a goodly, and a gladsome thing 
To plant a tree. 

Nature has many marvels; but a tree...Read more of this...

Emblems of Love

by Lascelles Abercrombie
She

ONLY to be twin elements of joy
In this extravagance of Being, Love,
Were our divided natures shaped in twain;
And to this hour the whole world must consent.
Is it not very marvellous, our lives
Can only come to this out of a long
Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?

He

Shall life do more than God? for hath not God
Striven with himself,...Read more of this...

Vegetation

by Kathleen Raine
 O never harm the dreaming world, 
the world of green, the world of leaves, 
but let its million palms unfold 
the adoration of the trees.

It is a love in darkness wrought
obedient to the unseen sun,
longer than memory, a thought
deeper than the graves of time.

The turning spindles of the cells
weave a slow forest over space,
the dance of love, creation,
out of...Read more of this...

Song at Sunset

by Walt Whitman
 SPLENDOR of ended day, floating and filling me! 
Hour prophetic—hour resuming the past! 
Inflating my throat—you, divine average! 
You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing. 

Open mouth of my Soul, uttering gladness,
Eyes of my Soul, seeing perfection, 
Natural life of me, faithfully praising things; 
Corroborating forever the triumph of things. 

Illustrious every one! 
Illustrious what...Read more of this...

The Old And The New Masters

by Randall Jarrell
 About suffering, about adoration, the old masters 
Disagree. When someone suffers, no one else eats 
Or walks or opens the window--no one breathes 
As the sufferers watch the sufferer. 
In St. Sebastian Mourned by St. Irene
The flame of one torch is the only light. 
All the eyes except the maidservant's (she weeps 
And covers them with a cloth) are...Read more of this...

Ariste

by Robert Southey
 Let ancient stories round the painter's art, 
Who stole from many a maid his Venus' charms, 
Till warm devotion fired each gazer's heart 
And every bosom bounded with alarms. 
He culled the beauties of his native isle, 
From some the blush of beauty's vermeil dyes, 
From some the lovely look, the winning smile, 
From some the languid lustre of...Read more of this...

Honors - Part I

by Jean Ingelow
A Scholar is musing on his want of success.)

To strive—and fail. Yes, I did strive and fail;
  I set mine eyes upon a certain night
To find a certain star—and could not hail
      With them its deep-set light.
Fool that I was! I will rehearse my fault:
  I, wingless, thought myself on high to lift
Among...Read more of this...

The Bliss Of Absence

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 DRINK, oh youth, joy's purest ray
From thy loved one's eyes all day,

And her image paint at night!
Better rule no lover knows,
Yet true rapture greater grows,

When far sever'd from her sight.

Powers eternal, distance, time,
Like the might of stars sublime,

Gently rock the blood to rest,
O'er my senses softness steals,
Yet my bosom lighter feels,

And I daily am more blest.

Though I can forget...Read more of this...

Obstacles

by Barry Tebb
 A thousand visits to the supermarket

A thousand acts of sexual intimacy

Spread over forty years.

Your essence was quite other

A smile of absolute connection

Repeated a thousand times.

Your daily visits to the outside lavatory

While I stood talking outside,

An intimacy I have sought

With no other.

My greatest fear is that you might

Have changed beyond recognition,

Submerged in trivia and the

Minutiae of the quotidian.

At ten my...Read more of this...

Kinship

by George William Russell
 IN summer time, with high imaginings
Of proud Crusaders and of Paynim kings,
The children crowned themselves with famous names,
And fought there, building up their merry games,
Their mimic war, from old majestic things.


There was no bitter hate then in the fight,
For ancient law ruled victory and flight,
And, victory and defeat alike forgot,
They slept together in the selfsame cot,
With arms about each...Read more of this...

The Red Lacquer Music-Stand

by Amy Lowell
 A music-stand of crimson lacquer, long since brought
In some fast clipper-ship from China, quaintly wrought
With bossed and carven flowers and fruits in blackening gold,
The slender shaft all twined about and thickly scrolled
With vine leaves and young twisted tendrils, whirling, curling,
Flinging their new shoots over the four wings, and swirling
Out on the three wide feet in golden lumps and streams;
Petals...Read more of this...

The Traveller And The Farm~maiden

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 HE.

CANST thou give, oh fair and matchless maiden,

'Neath the shadow of the lindens yonder,--

Where I'd fain one moment cease to wander,--
Food and drink to one so heavy laden?

SHE.

Wouldst thou find refreshment, traveller weary,

Bread, ripe fruit and cream to meet thy wishes,--

None but Nature's plain and homely dishes,--
Near the spring may soothe thy wanderings dreary.

HE.

Dreams of old acquaintance now pass...Read more of this...

A Call of the Sidhe

by George William Russell
 TARRY thou yet, late lingerer in the twilight’s glory:
Gay are the hills with song: earth’s faery children leave
More dim abodes to roam the primrose-hearted eve,
Opening their glimmering lips to breathe some wondrous story.
Hush, not a whisper! Let your heart alone go dreaming.
Dream unto dream may pass: deep in the heart alone
Murmurs the Mighty One his solemn undertone.
Canst thou not...Read more of this...

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