Famous Beliefs Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Old Chimaeras. Old Recipts

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 THE old Chimaeras, old receipts
For making "happy land,"
The old political beliefs
Swam close before my hand.

The grand old communistic myths
In a middle state of grace,
Quite dead, but not yet gone to Hell,
And walking for a space,

Quite dead, and looking it, and yet
All eagerness to show
The Social-Contract forgeries
By Chatterton - Rousseau -

A hundred such as these I tried,
And hundreds after that,
I...Read more of this...

the watchers

by Rg Gregory
 against their beliefs a blue spot came slowly
out of the green

nobody expected such a thing to occur
on a thursday

the watchers switched over from their electronic
eye to their notes

the evidence undeniably placed thursday as the day
of the pink circle

they recorded having seen another pink circle
in a strange light

which had (explainably) created the illusion of
being a blue spot

(blue from green on...Read more of this...

The Waiting

by Belinda Subraman
 Silence has no zen today.
Ambient freeway noise
from ? mile away,
the occasional Friday nighter
coming home 2:00 a.m. Saturday, 
the appliances with two-tone hums,
the bumping and grinding
of an old swamp cooler,
a distant train,
forces what has been pushed back
to break through.

My father needs O 2
all the time now. 
His innocence 
in countering the surgeons’ truth
with his wishes and beliefs
stabs me in the...Read more of this...

Between Hurricanes

by Belinda Subraman
 As we slide into the 3rd world we have created,
running from hurricanes,
with our SS# indelibly inked on our arms
storms swell and swallow our control.

I am flooded with life review,
the beliefs of my youth.
I reach for my first Bible
which has survived every move.
I am mystified by Revelation’s
hallucinations again.

I would like to clutch an answer close,
bury myself in a father’s love
but...Read more of this...

People

by Jean Toomer
 To those fixed on white,
White is white,
To those fixed on black,
It is the same,
And red is red,
Yellow, yellow-
Surely there are such sights
In the many colored world,
Or in the mind.
The strange thing is that
These people never see themselves
Or you, or me.

Are they not in their minds?
Are we not in the world?
This is a curious blindness
For those that are color blind.
What...Read more of this...

Robert Southey Burke

by Edgar Lee Masters
  I spent my money trying to elect you Mayor
A. D. Blood.
I lavished my admiration upon you,
You were to my mind the almost perfect man.
You devoured my personality,
And the idealism of my youth,
And the strength of a high-souled fealty.
And all my hopes for the world,
And all my beliefs in Truth,
Were smelted up in the blinding heat
Of my devotion to...Read more of this...

I never hear that one is dead

by Emily Dickinson
 I never hear that one is dead
Without the chance of Life
Afresh annihilating me
That mightiest Belief,

Too mighty for the Daily mind
That tilling its abyss,
Had Madness, had it once or twice
The yawning Consciousness,

Beliefs are Bandaged, like the Tongue
When Terror were it told
In any Tone commensurate
Would strike us instant Dead

I do not know the man so bold
He dare in lonely Place
That awful...Read more of this...

A Valentines Song

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 MOTLEY I count the only wear
That suits, in this mixed world, the truly wise,
Who boldly smile upon despair
And shake their bells in Grandam Grundy's eyes.
Singers should sing with such a goodly cheer
That the bare listening should make strong like wine,
At this unruly time of year,
The Feast of Valentine.

We do not now parade our "oughts"
And "shoulds" and motives and beliefs...Read more of this...

Her sweet Weight on my Heart a Night

by Emily Dickinson
 Her sweet Weight on my Heart a Night
Had scarcely deigned to lie --
When, stirring, for Belief's delight,
My Bride had slipped away --

If 'twas a Dream -- made solid -- just
The Heaven to confirm --
Or if Myself were dreamed of Her --
The power to presume --

With Him remain -- who unto Me --
Gave -- even as to All --
A Fiction...Read more of this...

Allegiances

by William Stafford
 It is time for all the heroes to go home
if they have any, time for all of us common ones
to locate ourselves by the real things
we live by.

Far to the north, or indeed in any direction,
strange mountains and creatures have always lurked-
elves, goblins, trolls, and spiders:-we
encounter them in dread and wonder,

But once we have tasted far streams, touched the...Read more of this...

Jefferson Howard

by Edgar Lee Masters
 My valiant fight! For I call it valiant,
With my father's beliefs from old Virginia:
Hating slavery, but no less war.
I, full of spirit, audacity, courage
Thrown into life here in Spoon River,
With its dominant forces drawn from New England,
Republicans, Calvinists, merchants, bankers,
Hating me, yet fearing my arm.
With wife and children heavy to carry --
Yet fruits of my very zest of life.
Stealing...Read more of this...

Progress

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Let there be many windows to your soul, 
That all the glory of the universe 
May beautify it. Not the narrow pane 
Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays 
That shine from countless sources. Tear away 
The blinds of superstition; let the light 
Pour through fair windows broad as truth itself 
And high as God. 
Why should...Read more of this...

Poem (Faithful to your commands o consciousness)

by Delmore Schwartz
 Poem Faithful to your commands, o consciousness, o 

Beating wings, I studied

the roses and the muses of reality,

the deceptions and the deceptive elation of the redness of the growing morning,

and all the greened and thomed variety of the vines of error, which begin by promising

Everything and more than everything, and then suddenly,

At the height of noon seem to rise...Read more of this...

Eurolove

by Spike Milligan
 I cannot 
and I will not 
No, I cannot love you less 
Like the flower to the butterfly 
The corsage to the dress 

She turns my love to dust 
my destination empty 
my beliefs scattered: Diaspora! 

Who set this course - and why? 
Now my wings beat - 
without purpose 
Yet they speed......Read more of this...

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