Famous Belief Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Belief poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous belief poems. These examples illustrate what a famous belief poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert William Service
The man above was a murderer, the man below was a thief;
And I lay there in the bunk between, ailing beyond belief;
A weary armful of skin and bone, wasted with pain and grief.
My feet were froze, and the lifeless toes were purple and green and gray;
The little flesh that clung to my bones, you could punch it in holes...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
For failure I was well equipped
And should have come to grief,
By atavism grimly gripped,
A fool beyond belief.
But lo! the Lord was good to me,
And with a heart to sing,
He gave me to a rare degree
The Gift of Wondering.
I could not play a stalwart part
My shoddy soul to save,
And should have gone with broken heart
...Read more of this...
by
Charles Baudelaire
O muse of my heart, lover of palaces,
Will you bring, when January lets loose its sleet
And its black evenings without solace,
An ember to warm my violet feet?
What will revive your bruised shoulders,
The nocturnal rays that pierce the shutters?
When you cannot feel your palace, just your empty billfold,
How will you harvest the gold...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I tried to think a lonelier Thing
Than any I had seen --
Some Polar Expiation -- An Omen in the Bone
Of Death's tremendous nearness --
I probed Retrieverless things
My Duplicate -- to borrow --
A Haggard Comfort springs
From the belief that Somewhere --
Within the Clutch of Thought --
There dwells one other Creature
Of Heavenly Love -- forgot --
I plucked at our Partition
As One...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
Did you know that Evian spelled backwards is naive?
I myself was unaware of this fact until last Tuesday night
when John Ashbery, Marc Cohen, and Eugene Richie
gave a poetry reading and I introduced them
to an audience that already knew them,
and there were bottles of Evian at the table.
As air to the lungs of a drowning man was
a glass of this...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk--
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.
The men of my own stock,
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wanted to,
They are used to...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
Watch out for power,
for its avalanche can bury you,
snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.
Watch out for hate,
it can open its mouth and you'll fling yourself out
to eat off your leg, an instant leper.
Watch out for friends,
because when you betray them,
as you will,
they will bury their heads in the toilet
and flush themselves away.
Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
I found him in the guard-room at the Base.
From the blind darkness I had heard his crying
And blundered in. With puzzled, patient face
A sergeant watched him; it was no good trying
To stop it; for he howled and beat his chest.
And, all because his brother had gone west,
Raved at the bleeding war; his rampant grief...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
To lose one's faith -- surpass
The loss of an Estate --
Because Estates can be
Replenished -- faith cannot --
Inherited with Life --
Belief -- but once -- can be --
Annihilate a single clause --
And Being's -- Beggary --...Read more of this...
by
Marianne Moore
has not altered;--
a place as kind as it is green,
the greenest place I've never seen.
Every name is a tune.
Denunciations do not affect
the culprit; nor blows, but it
is torture to him to not be spoken to.
They're natural,--
the coat, like Venus'
mantle lined with stars,
buttoned close at the neck,-the sleeves new from disuse.
If in Ireland
they play the harp backward at need,
and gather...Read more of this...
by
William Wordsworth
Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Growth of Man -- like Growth of Nature --
Gravitates within --
Atmosphere, and Sun endorse it --
Bit it stir -- alone --
Each -- its difficult Ideal
Must achieve -- Itself --
Through the solitary prowess
Of a Silent Life --
Effort -- is the sole condition --
Patience of Itself --
Patience of opposing forces --
And intact Belief --
Looking on -- is the Department
Of its Audience...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Three words will I name thee--around and about,
From the lip to the lip, full of meaning, they flee;
But they had not their birth in the being without,
And the heart, not the lip, must their oracle be!
And all worth in the man shall forever be o'er
When in those three words he believes no more.
Man is made free!--Man by birthright is...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
Forever nameless
Forever unknwon
Forever unconceived
Forever unrepresented
yet forever felt in the soul....Read more of this...
by
Eamon Grennan
At her Junior High School graduation,
she sings alone
in front of the lot of us--
her voice soprano, surprising,
almost a woman's. It is
the Our Father in French,
the new language
making her strange, out there,
fully fledged and
ready for anything. Sitting
together -- her separated
mother and father -- we can
hear the racket of traffic
shaking the main streets
of Jersey City as she sings
Deliver us from evil,
and...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Said I to Pain: "You would not dare
Do ill to me."
Said Pain: "Poor fool! Why should I care
Whom you may be?
To clown and king alike I bring
My meed of bane;
Why should you shirk my chastening?"
Said Pain.
Said I to Grief: "No tears have I,
Go on your way."
Said Grief: "Why should I pass you by,
While...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
He strained my faith --
Did he find it supple?
Shook my strong trust --
Did it then -- yield?
Hurled my belief --
But -- did he shatter -- it?
Racked -- with suspense --
Not a nerve failed!
Wrung me -- with Anguish --
But I never doubted him --
'Tho' for what wrong
He did never say --
Stabbed -- while I sued
His sweet forgiveness --
Jesus -- it's...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
I smiled with skeptic mocking where they told me you were dead,
You of the airy laughter and lightly twinkling feet;
"They tell a dream that haunted a chill gray dawn," I said,
"Death could not touch or claim a thing so vivid and so sweet!"
I looked upon you coffined amid your virgin flowers,
But even that white silence could bring me...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Would it be loss or gain
To hapless human-kind
If we could feel no pain
Of body or of mind?
Would it be for our good
If we were calloused so,
And God in mercy should
End all our woe?
I wonder and I doubt:
It is my bright belief
We should be poor without
The gift of grief.
For suffering may be
A blessing, not a bane,
And though we sorrow we
Should...Read more of this...
by
Heather McHugh
We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the Mayor, mulled a couple
matters over. The Italian literati seemed
bewildered by the language of America: they asked us
what does "flat drink" mean? and the mysterious
"cheap date" (no explanation lessened
this one's mystery). Among Italian writers...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
One host of men is pondering upon belief, or on the
faith; others are hovering between doubt and certainty.
But suddenly behind the veil there's one will cry: O
ignorant ones! the way that you seek is neither here
nor there!...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
Never any more,
While I live,
Need I hope to see his face
As before.
Once his love grown chill,
Mine may strive:
Bitterly we re-embrace,
Single still.
II.
Was it something said,
Something done,
Vexed him? was it touch of hand,
Turn of head?
Strange! that very way
Love begun:
I as little understand
Love's decay.
III.
When I sewed or drew,
I recall
How he looked as if I sung,
---Sweetly too.
If I spoke a word,
First of all
Up...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
Swings the way still by hollow and hill,
And all the world's a song;
"She's far," it sings me, "but fair," it rings me,
"Quiet," it laughs, "and strong!"
Oh! spite of the miles and years between us,
Spite of your chosen part,
I do remember; and I go
With laughter in my heart.
So above the little folk that know not,
Out of the white hill-town,
High up...Read more of this...
by
George Meredith
She yields: my Lady in her noblest mood
Has yielded: she, my golden-crownèd rose!
The bride of every sense! more sweet than those
Who breathe the violet breath of maidenhood.
O visage of still music in the sky
Soft moon! I feel thy song, my fairest friend!
True harmony within can apprehend
Dumb harmony without. And hark! 'tis nigh!...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
Grief may have thought it was grief.
Care may have thought it was care.
They were welcome to their belief,
The overimportant pair.
No, it took all the snows that clung
To the low roof over his bed,
Beginning when he was young,
To induce the one snow on his head.
But whenever the roof camme white
The head in the dark below
Was a shade less the color...Read more of this...
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