Famous Charity Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Charity poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous charity poems. These examples illustrate what a famous charity poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
George Meredith
I am not of those miserable males
Who sniff at vice and, daring not to snap,
Do therefore hope for heaven. I take the hap
Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails
Propels; but I am helmsman. Am I wrecked,
I know the devil has sufficient weight
To bear: I lay it not on him, or fate.
Besides, he's damned. That man I...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
God with honour hang your head,
Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed
With lissome scions, sweet scions,
Out of hallowed bodies bred.
Each be other's comfort kind:
Déep, déeper than divined,
Divine charity, dear charity,
Fast you ever, fast bind.
Then let the March tread our ears:
I to him turn with tears
Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock,
Déals tríumph and immortal years....Read more of this...
by
Phillis Wheatley
While deep you mourn beneath the cypress-shade
The hand of Death, and your dear daughter laid
In dust, whose absence gives your tears to flow,
And racks your bosom with incessant woe,
Let Recollection take a tender part,
Assuage the raging tortures of your heart,
Still the wild tempest of tumultuous grief,
And pour the heav'nly nectar of relief:
Suspend the sigh, dear Sir, and check the groan,
Divinely...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
The Princess was of ancient line,
Of royal race was she;
Like cameo her face was fine,
With sad serentiy:
Yet bent she toiled with dimming eye,
Her rice and milk to buy.
With lacework that for pity plead,
So out of date it seemed,
She sought to make her daily bread,
As of her past she dreamed:
And though sometimes I heard her...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Gray
Daughter of Jove, relentless Power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour
The Bad affright, afflict the Best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain
The Proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple Tyrants vainly groan
With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.
When first thy Sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, designed,
To thee he gave the heav'nly Birth,
And bade...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Even the charity shops boast of the surveillance
Mr Average is caught on camera a hundred times a day
To provide unending footage for reality TV
But in a decade where will we all be?
Big Brother’s eye will see our every step,
The blink of every eye, the tears we cry....Read more of this...
by
Anonymous
The little, smoky vaporsProduce the drops of rain;These little drops commingle,And form the boundless main.Then, drops compose the fountains;And little grains of sandCompose the mighty mountains,That high above us stand.The little atoms, it is said,Compose the solid earth;Such truths will show, if rightly read,What little things are worth.For, as the sea of drops is made,So it is Heaven’s plan,That atoms...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Before the Altar, bowed, he stands
With empty hands;
Upon it perfumed offerings burn
Wreathing with smoke the sacrificial urn.
Not one of all these has he given,
No flame of his has leapt to Heaven
Firesouled, vermilion-hearted,
Forked, and darted,
Consuming what a few spare pence
Have cheaply bought, to fling from hence
In idly-asked petition.
His sole condition
Love and poverty.
And while the moon
Swings slow across the sky,
Athwart a...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Je suis la Charité.")
{February, 1837.}
"Lo! I am Charity," she cries,
"Who waketh up before the day;
While yet asleep all nature lies,
God bids me rise and go my way."
How fair her glorious features shine,
Whereon the hand of God hath set
An angel's attributes divine,...Read more of this...
by
Anthony Hecht
Samuel Sewall, in a world of wigs,
Flouted opinion in his personal hair;
For foppery he gave not any figs,
But in his right and honor took the air.
Thus in his naked style, though well attired,
He went forth in the city, or paid court
To Madam Winthrop, whom he much admired,
Most godly, but yet liberal with the port.
And all the town admired for...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hood
One more Unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashion'd so slenderly
Young, and so fair!
Look at her garments
Clinging like cerements;
Whilst the wave constantly
Drips from her clothing;
Take her up instantly,
Loving, not loathing.
Touch her not scornfully;
Think of her mournfully,
Gently and...Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
Across the wet November night
The church is bright with candlelight
And waiting Evensong.
A single bell with plaintive strokes
Pleads louder than the stirring oaks
The leafless lanes along.
It calls the hoirboys from their tea
And villagers, the two or three,
Damp down the kitchen fire,
Let out the cat, and up the lane
Go paddling through the gentle rain
Of misty Oxfordshire.
How warm the many candles shine
Of...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Though not for common praise of him,
Nor yet for pride or charity,
Still would I make to Vanderberg
One tribute for his memory:
One honest warrant of a friend
Who found with him that flesh was grass—
Who neither blamed him in defect
Nor marveled how it came to pass;
Or why it ever was that he—
That Vanderberg,...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 124] CANZONE XVI. Italia mia, benchè 'l parlar sia indarno. TO THE PRINCES OF ITALY, EXHORTING THEM TO SET HER FREE. O my own Italy! though words are vainThe mortal wounds to close,Unnumber'd, that thy beauteous bosom stain,Yet may it soothe my painTo sigh forth Tyber's woes,Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
v.16,21,26-31
C. M.
Charity to the poor.
Why do the wealthy wicked boast,
And grow profanely bold?
The meanest portion of the just
Excels the sinner's gold.
The wicked borrows of his friends,
But ne'er designs to pay;
The saint is merciful and lends,
Nor turns the poor away.
His alms with lib'ral heart he gives
Amongst the sons of need;
His mem'ry to long ages lives,
And blessed is his seed.
His...Read more of this...
by
William Cullen Bryant
THOU unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain
And fetters sure and fast
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.
Far in thy realm withdrawn 5
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom
And glorious ages gone
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.
Childhood with all its mirth
Youth Manhood Age...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
Heart of France for a hundred years,
Passionate, sensitive, proud, and strong,
Quick to throb with her hopes and fears,
Fierce to flame with her sense of wrong!
You, who hailed with a morning song
Dream-light gilding a throne of old:
You, who turned when the dream grew cold,
Singing still, to the light that shone
Pure from Liberty's ancient throne,
Over the human throng!
You, who dared in...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square,
And a Spirit came to his bedside and gripped him by the hair --
A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away,
Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky Way:
Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Crane
Charity thou art a lie,
A toy of women,
A pleasure of certain men.
In the presence of justice,
Lo, the walls of the temple
Are visible
Through thy form of sudden shadows....Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
The Fool Errant sat by the highway of life
And his gaze wandered up and his gaze wandered down,
A vigorous youth, but with no wish to walk,
Yet his longing was great for the distant town.
He whistled a little frivolous tune
Which he felt to be pulsing with ecstasy,
For he thought that success always followed desire,
Such a very superlative fool was he.
A...Read more of this...
by
James A Emanuel
Repeatedly, that sturdy stump in me
bears up like stone,
beneath some ritual I see:
the blinding axe
swings up, holds,
that moment of its weightlessness
inscrutable
till I confirm the arm is mine;
I will it, grip,
feel moist the swelling handle,
the shudder rude,
the difference fallen.
Toward that chopping block
I carry in me woodthings—
infectious undergrowth
pretending upwards
through each stem and branch of me—
all so certain of themselves
they practice, like...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Charity and uncharitableness.
Rom. 14:17,19; 1 Cor. 10:32.
Not diff'rent food, or diff'rent dress,
Compose the kingdom of our Lord;
But peace, and joy, and righteousness,
Faith, and obedience to his word.
When weaker Christians we despise,
We do the gospel mighty wrong;
For God, the gracious and the wise,
Receives the feeble with the strong.
Let pride and wrath be banished hence;
Meekness and love our souls pursue;
Nor...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Love and charity.
1 Cor. 13:2-7, 13.
Let Pharisees of high esteem
Their faith and zeal declare,
All their religion is a dream,
If love be wanting there.
Love suffers long with patient eye,
Nor is provoked in haste;
She lets the present injury die,
And long forgets the past.
[Malice and rage, those fires of hell,
She quenches with her tongue;
Hopes and believes, and thinks no ill,
Though she...Read more of this...
by
Tony Harrison
I thought it made me look more 'working class'
(as if a bit of chequered cloth could bridge that gap!)
I did a turn in it before the glass.
My mother said: It suits you, your dad's cap.
(She preferred me to wear suits and part my hair:
You're every bit as good as that lot are!)
All the pension queue came out to stare.
Dad...Read more of this...
by
William Strode
I hold as fayth
What Rome's Church sayth
Where the King's head,
That flock's misled
Where th' Altar's drest
That People's blest
Who shuns the Masse
Hee's but an Asse
Who Charity preach
They Heav'n soone reach
On Fayth t'rely,
'Tis heresy
What England's Church allows
My Conscience disavowes;
That Church can have no seame;
That holdes the Pope supreme;
There's service scarce divine;
With table, bread and wine;
Hee's Catholique and wise;
Who the Communion flyes;
That Church...Read more of this...
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