Famous Assurance Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Upon the saying that my VERSES were made by another

by Anne Killigrew
 NExt Heaven my Vows to thee (O Sacred Muse! ) 
I offer'd up, nor didst thou them refuse. 
 O Queen of Verse, said I, if thou'lt inspire, 
And warm my Soul with thy Poetique Fire, 
No Love of Gold shall share with thee my Heart, 
Or yet Ambition in my Brest have Part, 
More Rich, more Noble I...Read more of this...

Hymn 27

by Isaac Watts
 Assurance of heaven.

2 Tim. 4:68,18. 

[Death may dissolve my body now,
And bear my spirit home;
Why do my minutes move so slow,
Nor my salvation come?

With heav'nly weapons I have fought
The battles of the Lord;
Finished my course, and kept the faith,
And wait the sure reward.]

God has laid up in heav'n for me
A crown which cannot fade;
The righteous Judge at that great...Read more of this...

Translations: Dante - Inferno Canto XXVI

by Alan Seeger
 Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and sea 
So spread'st thy pinions that the fame of thee 
Hath reached no less into the depths of Hell. 
So noble were the five I found to dwell 
Therein -- thy sons -- whence shame accrues to me 
And no great praise is thine; but if it be 
That truth unveil in...Read more of this...

Visions of the worlds vanitie

by Edmund Spenser
 One day, whiles that my daylie cares did sleepe,
My spirit, shaking off her earthly prison,
Began to enter into meditation deepe
Of things exceeding reach of common reason;
Such as this age, in which all good is geason,
And all that humble is and meane debaced,
Hath brought forth in her last declining season,
Griefe of good mindes, to see goodnesse disgraced.
On which when as...Read more of this...

Assurance

by Emma Lazarus
 Last night I slept, and when I woke her kiss 
Still floated on my lips. For we had strayed 
Together in my dream, through some dim glade, 
Where the shy moonbeams scarce dared light our bliss. 
The air was dank with dew, between the trees, 
The hidden glow-worms kindled and were spent. 
Cheek pressed to cheek, the cool, the...Read more of this...

A Country Life:to His Brother Mr Thomas Herrick

by Robert Herrick
 Thrice, and above, blest, my soul's half, art thou,
In thy both last and better vow;
Could'st leave the city, for exchange, to see
The country's sweet simplicity;
And it to know and practise, with intent
To grow the sooner innocent;
By studying to know virtue, and to aim
More at her nature than her name;
The last is but the least; the first doth tell
Ways less...Read more of this...

Journey Home

by Rabindranath Tagore
 The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long. 

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my 
voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet. 

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, 
and that training is...Read more of this...

Sonnet LVIII By Her That Is Most Assured To Her Selfe

by Edmund Spenser
 WEake is th'assurance that weake flesh reposeth,
In her owne powre and scorneth others ayde:
that soonest fals when as she most supposeth,
her selfe assurd, and is of nought affrayd.
All flesh is frayle, and all her strength vnstayd,
like a vaine bubble blowen vp with ayre:
deuouring tyme & changeful chance haue prayd,
her glories pride that none may it repayre.
Ne none so rich...Read more of this...

An Ode in Time of Hesitation

by William Vaughn Moody
 After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted ***** regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.


I 

Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made 
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, 
And set here in the city's talk and trade 
To the good memory of...Read more of this...

Gods Funeral

by Thomas Hardy
 I 
I saw a slowly-stepping train --
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar --
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

II 
And by contagious throbs of thought
Or latent knowledge that within me lay
And had already stirred me, I was wrought
To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

III 
The fore-borne shape, to my...Read more of this...

Sonnet XLII

by Edmund Spenser
 THe loue which me so cruelly tormenteth,
So pleasing is in my extreamest paine:
that all the more my sorrow it augmenteth,
the more I loue and doe embrace my bane.
Ne doe I wish (for wishing were but vaine)
to be acquit fro my continuall smart:
but ioy her thrall for euer to remayne,
and yield for pledge my poore captyued hart
The which that it...Read more of this...

Poem 20

by Edmund Spenser
 BVt let stil Silence trew night watches keepe,
That sacred peace may in assurance rayne,
And tymely sleep, when it is tyme to sleepe,
May poure his limbs forth on your pleasant playne,
The whiles an hundred little winged loues,
Like diuers fethered doues,
Shall fly and flutter round about your bed,
And in the secret darke, that none reproues,
Their prety stealthes shal worke, & snares...Read more of this...

Nepenthe

by Henry Van Dyke
 Yes, it was like you to forget, 
And cancel in the welcome of your smile 
My deep arrears of debt,
And with the putting forth of both your hands 
To sweep away the bars my folly set
Between us -- bitter thoughts, and harsh demands, 
And reckless deeds that seemed untrue 
To love, when all the while
My heart was aching through...Read more of this...

The Clinging Vine

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 “Be calm? And was I frantic? 
You’ll have me laughing soon. 
I’m calm as this Atlantic, 
And quiet as the moon; 
I may have spoken faster
Than once, in other days; 
For I’ve no more a master, 
And now—‘Be calm,’ he says. 

“Fear not, fear no commotion,— 
I’ll be as rocks and sand;
The moon and stars and ocean 
Will envy...Read more of this...

Santa Claus in the Bush

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 It chanced out back at the Christmas time, 
When the wheat was ripe and tall, 
A stranger rode to the farmer's gate -- 
A sturdy man and a small. 
"Rin doon, rin doon, my little son Jack, 
And bid the stranger stay; 
And we'll hae a crack for Auld Lang Syne, 
For the morn is Christmas Day." 

"Nay noo,...Read more of this...

Burning Drift-Wood

by John Greenleaf Whittier
Before my drift-wood fire I sit, 
And see, with every waif I burn, 
Old dreams and fancies coloring it, 
And folly's unlaid ghosts return. 

O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft 
The enchanted sea on which they sailed, 
Are these poor fragments only left 
Of vain desires and hopes that failed? 

Did I not watch from them the light...Read more of this...

The Hour Before Dawn

by William Butler Yeats
 A cursing rogue with a merry face,
A bundle of rags upon a crutch,
Stumbled upon that windy place
Called Cruachan, and it was as much
As the one sturdy leg could do
To keep him upright while he cursed.
He had counted, where long years ago
Queen Maeve's nine Maines had been nursed,
A pair of lapwings, one old sheep,
And not a house to the plain's...Read more of this...

From doubt to clear assurance is a breath,

by Omar Khayyam
From doubt to clear assurance is a breath,
A breath from infidelity to faith;
O precious breath! enjoy it while you may,
'Tis all that life can give, and then comes death....Read more of this...

As the Ruin Falls

by C S Lewis
 All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned,...Read more of this...

Old King Cole

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 In Tilbury Town did Old King Cole 
A wise old age anticipate, 
Desiring, with his pipe and bowl, 
No Khan’s extravagant estate. 
No crown annoyed his honest head,
No fiddlers three were called or needed; 
For two disastrous heirs instead 
Made music more than ever three did. 

Bereft of her with whom his life 
Was harmony without a flaw,
He took...Read more of this...

To Oldend Gatherer

by Ben Jonson
LIII. — TO OLDEND GATHERER.    Long-gathering OLDEND, I did fear thee wise, When having pill'd a book which no man buys, Thou wert content the author's name to lose ; But when, in place, thou didst the patron's choose, It was as if thou printed hadst an oath, To give the world assurance thou wert both ; And that, as puritans...Read more of this...

Only a Curl

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 I.
FRIENDS of faces unknown and a land
Unvisited over the sea, 
Who tell me how lonely you stand
With a single gold curl in the hand
Held up to be looked at by me, --


II.
While you ask me to ponder and say
What a father and mother can do, 
With the bright fellow-locks put away
Out of reach, beyond kiss, in the clay
Where the...Read more of this...

Picture Postcard From The Other World

by Philip Levine
 Since I don't know who will be reading 
this or even if it will be read, I must 
invent someone on the other end 
of eternity, a distant cousin laboring 
under the same faint stars I labored 
all those unnumbered years ago. I make you 
like me in everything I can -- a man 
or woman in middle years...Read more of this...

No You Be A Lone Eagle

by Ogden Nash
 I find it very hard to be fair-minded
About people who go around being air-minded.
I just can't see any fun
In soaring up up up into the sun
When the chances are still a fresh cool orchid to a paper geranium
That you'll unsoar down down down onto your (to you) invaluable
cranium.
I know the constant refrain
About how safer up in God's trafficless heaven...Read more of this...

Lord Let Me Live

by Robert William Service
 Lord, let me live, that more and more
 Your wonder world I may adore;
With every dawn to grow and grow
 Alive to graciousness aglow;
And every eve in beauty see
 Reason for rhapsody.

Lord, let me bide, that I may prove
 The buoyant brightness of my love
For sapphire sea and lyric sky
 And buttercup and butterfly;
And glory in the golden thought
...Read more of this...

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