10 Best Famous Sainthood Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Sainthood poems. This is a select list of the best famous Sainthood poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Sainthood poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of sainthood poems.

• All Famous Sainthood Poems

 "Am I, at bottom, that fervent little Spanish Catholic child who chastised herself for loving toys, who forbade herself the enjoyment of sweet foods, who practiced silence, who humiliated her pride, who adored symbols, statues, burning candles, incense, the caress of nuns, organ music, for whom Communion was a great event? I was so exalted by the idea of eating Jesus's flesh and drinking His blood that I couldn't swallow the host well, and I dreaded harming the it. I visualized Christ descending into my heart so realistically (I was a realist then!) that I could see Him walking down the stairs and entering the room of my heart like a sacred Visitor. That state of this room was a subject of great preoccupation for me. . . At the ages of nine, ten, eleven, I believe I approximated sainthood. And then, at sixteen, resentful of controls, disillusioned with a God who had not granted my prayers (the return of my father), who performed no miracles, who left me fatherless in a strange country, I rejected all Catholicism with exaggeration. Goodness, virtue, charity, submission, stifled me. I took up the words of Lawrence: "They stress only pain, sacrifice, suffering and death. They do not dwell enough on the resurrection, on joy and life in the present." Today I feel my past like an unbearable weight, I feel that it interferes with my present life, that it must be the cause for this withdrawal, this closing of doors. . . I am embalmed because a nun leaned over me, enveloped me in her veils, kissed me. The chill curse of Christianity. I do not confess any more, I have no remorse, yet am I doing penance for my enjoyments? Nobody knows what a magnificent prey I was for Christian legends, because of my compassion and my tenderness for human beings. Today it divides me from enjoyment in life." 
p. 70-71 

"As June walked towards me from the darkness of the garden into the light of the door, I saw for the first time the most beautiful woman on earth. A startling white face, burning dark eyes, a face so alive I felt it would consume itself before my eyes. Years ago I tried to imagine true beauty; I created in my mind an image of just such a woman. I had never seen her until last night. Yet I knew long ago the phosphorescent color of her skin, her huntress profile, the evenness of her teeth. She is bizarre, fantastic, nervous, like someone in a high fever. Her beauty drowned me. As I sat before her, I felt I would do anything she asked of me. Henry suddenly faded. She was color and brilliance and strangeness. By the end of the evening I had extricated myself from her power. She killed my admiration by her talk. Her talk. The enormous ego, false, weak, posturing. She lacks the courage of her personality, which is sensual, heavy with experience. Her role alone preoccupies her. She invents dramas in which she always stars. I am sure she creates genuine dramas, genuine chaos and whirlpools of feelings, but I feel that her share in it is a pose. That night, in spite of my response to her, she sought to be whatever she felt I wanted her to be. She is an actress every moment. I cannot grasp the core of June. Everything Henry has said about her is true." 

I wanted to run out and kiss her fanatastic beauty and say: 'June, you have killed my sincerity too. I will never know again who I am, what I am, what I love, what I want. Your beauty has drowned me, the core of me. You carry away with you a part of me reflected in you. When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your existance. You are the woman I want to be. I see in you that part of me which is you. I feel compassion for your childlike pride, for your trembling unsureness, your dramatization of events, your enhancing of the loves given to you. I surrender my sincerity because if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madnesses"

 I never asked you to be perfect—did I?— 
Though often I’ve called you sweet, in the invasion 
Of mastering love. I never prayed that you 
Might stand, unsoiled, angelic and inhuman, 
Pointing the way toward Sainthood like a sign-post. 

Oh yes, I know the way to heaven was easy. 
We found the little kingdom of our passion 
That all can share who walk the road of lovers. 
In wild and secret happiness we stumbled; 
And gods and demons clamoured in our senses.

But I’ve grown thoughtful now. And you have lost 
Your early-morning freshness of surprise 
At being so utterly mine: you’ve learned to fear 
The gloomy, stricken places in my soul, 
And the occasional ghosts that haunt my gaze. 

You made me glad; and I can still return 
To you, the haven of my lonely pride: 
But I am sworn to murder those illusions 
That blossom from desire with desperate beauty: 
And there shall be no falsehood in our failure;
Since, if we loved like beasts, the thing is done, 
And I’ll not hide it, though our heaven be hell. 

You dream long liturgies of our devotion. 
Yet, in my heart, I dread our love’s destruction. 
But, should you grow to hate me, I would ask
No mercy of your mood: I’d have you stand 
And look me in the eyes, and laugh, and smite me. 

Then I should know, at least, that truth endured, 
Though love had died of wounds. And you could leave me 
Unvanquished in my atmosphere of devils.

Where is the pious doer? & I the estray’d one, where?
Behold how far the distance, from his safe home to here!

Dark is the stony desert, trackless & vast & dim,
Where is hope’s guiding lantern? Where is faith’s star so fair?

My heart fled from the cloister, & chant of monkish hymn,
What can avail me sainthood, fasting & punctual prayer?

What is the truth shall light me to heav’n’s strait thoroughfare?
Whither, O heart, thus hastest? Arrest thee & beware!

See what a lone adventure is thine unending quest!
Fraught with what deadly danger! Set with what unseen snare!

Say not, O friend, to Hafez, ‘Quiet thee now & rest!’
Calm & content, what are they? Patience & peace, O where?

Once before I've heard this
anguished cry

A long-drawn note of many-lettered woe,
The great open beak straining 
against the roar of raging surf;

Head, thrown back, taut
against the distant sails

Anger flickering in eyes flecked with amber,
rolling in lonely knowledge,
this bond servant of the sea,
tied by its giant wingspan 
to the torturous flight of sainthood

Martyred
in its terrible existence
murdered
by the yellow fog of banality

Victim 
to the squalor of urban beachfronts , 
snuffed out in the face of its own metaphor
screaming curses unto heaven,
proud to the very last;

''Once before'', I said,
''I've heard this cry''. 


(from ''Burnt Offerings'', 1996)