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Best Famous Shriven Poems

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

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Written by Dorothy Parker | Create an image from this poem

Plea

 Secrets, you said, would hold us two apart;
You'd have me know of you your least transgression,
And so the intimate places of your heart,
Kneeling, you bared to me, as in confession.
Softly you told of loves that went before-
Of clinging arms, of kisses gladly given;
Luxuriously clean of heart once more,
You rose up, then, and stood before me, shriven.

When this, my day of happiness, is through,
And love, that bloomed so fair, turns brown and brittle,
There is a thing that I shall ask of you-
I, who have given so much, and asked so little.
Some day, when there's another in my stead,
Again you'll feel the need of absolution,
And you will go to her, and bow your head,
And offer her your past, as contribution.

When with your list of loves you overcome her,
For Heaven's sake, keep this one secret from her!


Written by Robert Penn Warren | Create an image from this poem

San Francisco Night Windows

 So hangs the hour like fruit fullblown and sweet,
Our strict and desperate avatar,
Despite that antique westward gulls lament
Over enormous waters which retreat
Weary unto the white and sensual star.
Accept these images for what they are-- 
Out of the past a fragile element
Of substance into accident.
I would speak honestly and of a full heart; 
I would speak surely for the tale is short,
And the soul's remorseless catalogue
Assumes its quick and piteous sum.
Think you, hungry is the city in the fog
Where now the darkened piles resume
Their framed and frozen prayer
Articulate and shafted in the stone
Against the void and absolute air.
If so the frantic breath could be forgiven,
And the deep blood subdued before it is gone 
In a savage paternoster to the stone,
Then might we all be shriven.
Written by Stanley Kunitz | Create an image from this poem

Single Vision

 Before I am completely shriven
I shall reject my inch of heaven.

Cancel my eyes, and, standing, sink
Into my deepest self; there drink

Memory down. The banner of
My blood, unfurled, will not be love,

Only the pity and the pride
Of it, pinned to my open side.

When I have utterly refined
The composition of my mind,

Shaped language of my marrow till
Its forms are instant to my will,

Suffered the leaf of my heart to fall
Under the wind, and, stripping all

The tender blanket from my bone,
Rise like a skeleton in the sun,

I shall have risen to disown
The good mortality I won.

Drectly risen with the stain
Of life upon my crested brain,

Which I shall shake against my ghost
To frighten him, when I am lost.

Gladly as any poison, yield
My halved conscience, brightly peeled;

Infect him, since we live but once,
With the unused evil in my bones.

I'll shed the tear of souls, the true
Sweat, Blake's intellectual dew,

Before I am resigned to slip
A dusty finger on my lip.
Written by Amy Lowell | Create an image from this poem

In a Castle

 I
Over the yawning chimney hangs the fog. Drip 
-- hiss -- drip -- hiss --
fall the raindrops on the oaken log which burns, and steams,
and smokes the ceiling beams. Drip -- hiss -- the rain 
never stops.

The wide, state bed shivers beneath its velvet coverlet. Above, 
dim,
in the smoke, a tarnished coronet gleams dully. Overhead 
hammers and chinks
the rain. Fearfully wails the wind down distant corridors, 
and there comes
the swish and sigh of rushes lifted off the floors. The 
arras blows sidewise
out from the wall, and then falls back again.

It is my lady's key, confided with much nice cunning, whisperingly.
He enters on a sob of wind, which gutters the candles almost to 
swaling.
The fire flutters and drops. Drip -- hiss -- the rain 
never stops.
He shuts the door. The rushes fall again to stillness 
along the floor.
Outside, the wind goes wailing.

The velvet coverlet of the wide bed is smooth and cold. Above,
in the firelight, winks the coronet of tarnished gold. The 
knight shivers
in his coat of fur, and holds out his hands to the withering flame.
She is always the same, a sweet coquette. He will wait 
for her.
How the log hisses and drips! How warm 
and satisfying will be her lips!

It is wide and cold, the state bed; but when her head lies under 
the coronet,
and her eyes are full and wet with love, and when she holds out 
her arms,
and the velvet counterpane half slips from her, and alarms
her trembling modesty, how eagerly he will leap to cover her, and 
blot himself
beneath the quilt, making her laugh and tremble.
Is it guilt to free a lady from her palsied lord, 
absent and fighting,
terribly abhorred?

He stirs a booted heel and kicks a rolling coal. His 
spur clinks
on the hearth. Overhead, the rain hammers and chinks. She 
is so pure
and whole. Only because he has her soul will she resign 
herself to him,
for where the soul has gone, the body must be given as a sign. He 
takes her
by the divine right of the only lover. He has sworn to 
fight her lord,
and wed her after. Should he be overborne, she will die 
adoring him, forlorn,
shriven by her great love.
Above, the coronet winks in the darkness. Drip 
-- hiss -- fall the raindrops.
The arras blows out from the wall, and a door bangs in a far-off 
hall.

The candles swale. In the gale the moat below plunges 
and spatters.
Will the lady lose courage and not come?
The rain claps on a loosened rafter.
Is that laughter?

The room is filled with lisps and whispers. Something 
mutters.
One candle drowns and the other gutters. Is that the 
rain
which pads and patters, is it the wind through the winding entries
which chatters?
The state bed is very cold and he is alone. How 
far from the wall
the arras is blown!

Christ's Death! It is no storm which makes these little 
chuckling sounds.
By the Great Wounds of Holy Jesus, it is his dear lady, kissing 
and
clasping someone! Through the sobbing storm he hears 
her love take form
and flutter out in words. They prick into his ears and 
stun his desire,
which lies within him, hard and dead, like frozen fire. And 
the little noise
never stops.
Drip -- hiss -- the rain drops.

He tears down the arras from before an inner chamber's bolted door.

II
The state bed shivers in the watery dawn. Drip 
-- hiss -- fall the raindrops.
For the storm never stops.
On the velvet coverlet lie two bodies, stripped 
and fair in the cold,
grey air. Drip -- hiss -- fall the blood-drops, for the 
bleeding never stops.
The bodies lie quietly. At each side of the bed, on the 
floor, is a head.
A man's on this side, a woman's on that, and the red blood oozes 
along
the rush mat.
A wisp of paper is twisted carefully into the strands 
of the dead man's hair.
It says, "My Lord: Your wife's paramour has paid with 
his life
for the high favour."
Through the lady's silver fillet is wound another 
paper. It reads,
"Most noble Lord: Your wife's misdeeds are as a double-stranded
necklace of beads. But I have engaged that, on your return,
she shall welcome you here. She will not spurn your love 
as before,
you have still the best part of her. Her blood was red, 
her body white,
they will both be here for your delight. The soul inside 
was a lump of dirt,
I have rid you of that with a spurt of my sword point. Good 
luck
to your pleasure. She will be quite complaisant, my friend, 
I wager."
The end was a splashed flourish of ink.
Hark! In the passage is heard the clink 
of armour, the tread of a heavy man.
The door bursts open and standing there, his thin hair wavering
in the glare of steely daylight, is my Lord of Clair.

Over the yawning chimney hangs the fog. Drip -- hiss 
-- drip -- hiss --
fall the raindrops. Overhead hammers and chinks the rain 
which never stops.
The velvet coverlet is sodden and wet, yet the 
roof beams are tight.
Overhead, the coronet gleams with its blackened gold, winking and 
blinking.
Among the rushes three corpses are growing cold.

III
In the castle church you may see them stand,
Two sumptuous tombs on either hand
Of the choir, my Lord's and my Lady's, grand
In sculptured filigrees. And where the transepts of the 
church expand,
A crusader, come from the Holy Land,
Lies with crossed legs and embroidered band.
The page's name became a brand
For shame. He was buried in crawling sand,
After having been burnt by royal command.
Written by Emily Dickinson | Create an image from this poem

Through the strait pass of suffering --

 Through the strait pass of suffering --
The Martyrs -- even -- trod.
Their feet -- upon Temptations --
Their faces -- upon God --

A stately -- shriven -- Company --
Convulsion -- playing round --
Harmless -- as streaks of Meteor --
Upon a Planet's Bond --

Their faith -- the everlasting troth --
Their Expectation -- fair --
The Needle -- to the North Degree --
Wades -- so -- thro' polar Air!


Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

Repentance

 "If you repent," the Parson said,"
Your sins will be forgiven.
Aye, even on your dying bed
You're not too late for heaven." 

That's just my cup of tea, I thought,
Though for my sins I sorrow;
Since salvation is easy bought
I will repent . . . to-morrow. 

To-morrow and to-morrow went,
But though my youth was flying,
I was reluctant to repent,
having no fear of dying. 

'Tis plain, I mused, the more I sin,
(To Satan's jubilation)
When I repent the more I'll win
Celestial approbation. 

So still I sin, and though I fail
To get snow-whitely shriven,
My timing's good: I home to hail
The last bus up to heaven.
Written by Emily Dickinson | Create an image from this poem

The waters chased him as he fled

 The waters chased him as he fled,
Not daring look behind --
A billow whispered in his Ear,
"Come home with me, my friend --
My parlor is of shriven glass,
My pantry has a fish
For every palate in the Year" --
To this revolting bliss
The object floating at his side
Made no distinct reply.
Written by Paul Laurence Dunbar | Create an image from this poem

Alexander Crummell—dead

Back to the breast of thy mother,
Child of the earth!
E'en her caress can not smother
What thou hast done.
Follow the trail of the westering sun
Over the earth.
Thy light and his were as one—
Sun, in thy worth.
Unto a nation whose sky was as night,
Camest thou, holily, bearing thy light:
And the dawn came,
In it thy fame
Flashed up in a flame.
Back to the breast of thy mother—
To rest.
Long hast thou striven;
Dared where the hills by the lightning of heaven were riven;
Go now, pure shriven.
Who shall come after thee, out of the clay—
Learned one and leader to show us the way?
Who shall rise up when the world gives the test?
Think thou no more of this—
Rest!

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry