10 Best Famous Tribulations Poems

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

• All Famous Tribulations Poems

 O SING a new song to the Lord,
 Make, all and every one,
A joyful noise, even for the King
 His restoration.


The sons of Belial in the land
 Did set their heads together;
Come, let us sweep them off, said they,
 Like an o’erflowing river.


They set their heads together, I say,
 They set their heads together;
On right, on left, on every hand,
 We saw none to deliver.


Thou madest strong two chosen ones
 To quell the Wicked’s pride;
That Young Man, great in Issachar,
 The burden-bearing tribe.


And him, among the Princes chief
 In our Jerusalem,
The judge that’s mighty in thy law,
 The man that fears thy name.


Yet they, even they, with all their strength,
 Began to faint and fail:
Even as two howling, ravenous wolves
 To dogs do turn their tail.


Th’ ungodly o’er the just prevail’d,
 For so thou hadst appointed;
That thou might’st greater glory give
 Unto thine own anointed.


And now thou hast restored our State,
 Pity our Kirk also;
For she by tribulations
 Is now brought very low.


Consume that high-place, Patronage,
 From off thy holy hill;
And in thy fury burn the book—
 Even of that man M’Gill. 1


Now hear our prayer, accept our song,
 And fight thy chosen’s battle:
We seek but little, Lord, from thee,
 Thou kens we get as little.


 Note 1. Dr. William M’Gill of Ayr, whose “Practical Essay on the Death of Jesus Christ” led to a charge of heresy against him. Burns took up his cause in “The Kirk of Scotland’s Alarm” (p. 351).—Lang. [back]

 To tribulations of mankind
Dame Nature is indifferent;
To human sorrow she is blind,
And deaf to human discontent.
Mid fear and fratricidal fray,
Mid woe and tyranny of toil,
She goes her unregarding way
 Of sky and sun and soil. 

In leaf and blade, in bud and bloom
Exultantly her gladness glows,
And careless of Man's dreary doom
Around the palm she wreathes the rose;
Creating beauty everywhere,
With happy bird in holy song . . .
Please God, let us be unaware
 Like her of wrath and wrong.

Let us too be indifferent,
And in her hands our fate resign;
Aye, though the world with rage is rent
Let us be placid as the pine.
For if we turn from greed and guile
Maybe Dame Nature will relent,
And bless us with her lovely smile
 Of comfort and content.

 The harbingers are come. See, see their mark;
White is their colour; and behold my head.
 -- George Herbert

Long gone the smoke-and-pepper childhood smell
Of the smoldering immolation of the year,
Leaf-strewn in scattered grandeur where it fell,
Golden and poxed with frost, tarnished and sere.

And I myself have whitened in the weathers
Of heaped-up Januaries as they bequeath
The annual rings and wrongs that wring my withers,
Sober my thoughts, and undermine my teeth.

The dramatis personae of our lives
Dwindle and wizen; familiar boyhood shames,
The tribulations one somehow survives,
Rise smokily from propitiatory flames

Of our forgetfulness until we find
It becomes strangely easy to forgive
Even ourselves with this clouding of the mind,
This cinerous blur and smudge in which we live.

A turn, a glide, a quarter turn and bow,
The stately dance advances; these are airs
Bone-deep and numbing as I should know by now,
Diminishing the cast, like musical chairs.

 Unpenitent, I grieve to state,
Two good men stood by heaven's gate,
Saint Peter coming to await.
The stopped the Keeper of the Keys,
Saying: "What suppliants are these,
Who wait me not on bended knees?

"To get my heavenly Okay
A man should have been used to pray,
Or suffered in some grievous way."

"Oh I have suffered," cried the first.
"Of wives I had the wicked worst,
Who made my life a plague accurst.

"Such martyrdom no tongue can tell;
In mercy's name it is not well
To doom me to another hell."

Saint Peter said: "I comprehend;
But tribulations have their end.
The gate is open, - go my friend."

Then said the second: "What of me?
More I deserve to pass than he,
For I've been wedded twice, you see."

Saint Peter looked at him a while,
And then he answered with a smile:
"Your application I will file.

"Yet twice in double yoke you've driven . . .
Though sinners with our Saints we leaven,
We don't take IMBECILES in heaven."