Famous Christ Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Christ poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous christ poems. These examples illustrate what a famous christ poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Now ere I slept, my prayer had been that I might see my way
To do the will of Christ, our Lord and Master, day by day;
And with this prayer upon my lips, I knew not that I dreamed,
But suddenly the world of night a pandemonium seemed.
From forest, and from slaughter house, from bull ring, and from stall,...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Muir
The windless northern surge, the sea-gull's scream,
And Calvin's kirk crowning the barren brae.
I think of Giotto the Tuscan shepherd's dream,
Christ, man and creature in their inner day.
How could our race betray
The Image, and the Incarnate One unmake
Who chose this form and fashion for our sake?
The Word made flesh here is made word again
A word made word in flourish...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The humble enlightened, and carnal reason humbled.
Luke 10:21,22.
There was an hour when Christ rejoiced,
And spoke his joy in words of praise:
"Father, I thank thee, mighty God,
Lord of the earth, and heav'ns, and seas.
"I thank thy sovereign power and love
That crowns my doctrine with success,
And makes the babes in knowledge learn
The heights, and breadths, and lengths of grace.
"But all...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
With eyes that are narrowed to pierce
To the awful horizons of land,
Through the blaze of hot days, and the fierce
White heat-waves that flow on the sand;
Through the Never Land westward and nor'ward,
Bronzed, bearded, and gaunt on the track,
Low-voiced and hard-knuckled, rides forward
The Christ of the Outer Out-back.
For the cause that will ne'er be relinquished
Despite all the cynics on earth---
In...Read more of this...
by
Jupiter Hammon
Salvation comes by Christ alone,
The only Son of God;
Redemption now to every one,
That love his holy Word.
Dear Jesus, we would fly to Thee,
And leave off every Sin,
Thy tender Mercy well agree;
Salvation from our King.
Salvation comes now from the Lord,
Our victorious King.
His holy Name be well ador'd,
Salvation surely bring.
Dear Jesus, give thy Spirit now,
Thy Grace to every Nation,
That...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Composed, by Special Request, 18th June 1890
Then Pilate, the Roman Governor, took Jesus and scourged Him,
And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and thought it no sin
To put it on His head, while meekly Jesus stands;
They put on Him a purple robe, and smote Him with their hands.
Then Pilate went forth again, and said unto them,
Behold, I...Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
Isn't she lovely, "the Mistress"?
With her wide-apart grey-green eyes,
The droop of her lips and, when she smiles,
Her glance of amused surprise?
How nonchalantly she wears her clothes,
How expensive they are as well!
And the sound of her voice is as soft and deep
As the Christ Church tenor bell.
But why do I call her "the Mistress"
Who know not her way of life?
Because...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
"Christ of the Andes," Christ of Everywhere,
Great lover of the hills, the open air,
And patient lover of impatient men
Who blindly strive and sin and strive again, --
Thou Living Word, larger than any creed,
Thou Love Divine, uttered in human deed, --
Oh, teach the world, warring and wandering still,
Thy way of Peace, the foot...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Christ our wisdom, righteousness, etc.
1 Cor. 1:30.
How heavy is the night
That hangs upon our eyes,
Till Christ with his reviving light
Over our souls arise!
Our guilty spirits dread
To meet the wrath of Heav'n;
But, in his righteousness arrayed,
We see our sins forgiv'n.
Unholy and impure
Are all our thoughts and ways;
His hands infected nature cure
With sanctifying grace.
The powers of hell agree
To hold our...Read more of this...
by
Dame Edith Sitwell
Still falls the Rain---
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss---
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.
Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter's Field, and the sound of the impious feet
On the Tomb:
Still falls the Rain
In the Field of Blood where...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
To Jesus, the crown of my hope,
My soul is in haste to be gone;
O bear me, ye cherubim, up,
And waft me away to His throne!
My Saviour, whom absent I love,
Whom, not having seen I adore;
Whose name is exalted above
All glory, dominion, and power;
Dissolve thou these bonds that detain
My soul from her portion in thee.
Ah! strike off this adamant chain,
And...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
Show me, dear Christ, thy Spouse, so bright and clear.
What! is it She, which on the other shore
Goes richly painted? or which, robbed and tore,
Laments and mourns in Germany and here?
Sleeps she a thousand, then peeps up one year?
Is she self-truth and errs? now new, now outwore?
Doth she, and did she, and shall she evermore
On one, on seven, or...Read more of this...
by
George Herbert
Welcome dear feast of Lent: who loves not thee,
He loves not Temperance, or Authority,
But is compos'd of passion.
The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church says, now:
Give to thy Mother, what thou wouldst allow
To ev'ry Corporation.
The humble soul compos'd of love and fear
Begins at home, and lays the burden there,
When doctrines disagree,
He says, in things...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
THE WHILE my mad brain whirled around
She only looked with eyes elate
Immortal love at me. I found
How deep the glance of love can wound,
How cruel pity is to hate.
I was begirt with hostile spears:
My angel warred in me for you
Whose gentle calmness all too fierce
Made unseen lightnings to pierce
My heart that dripped with ruddy dew.
I know how on the...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
I thought he was dumb, said he was dumb,
Yet I've heard him cry.
First faint scream,
Out of life's unfathomable dawn,
Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon's dawning rim,
Far, far off, far scream.
Tortoise in extremis.
Why were we crucified into sex?
Why were we not left rounded off, and finished in ourselves,
As we began,
As he certainly began, so perfectly alone?
A...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
. . . . . . . .
Hope holds to Christ the mind’s own mirror out
To take His lovely likeness more and more.
It will not well, so she would bring about
An ever brighter burnish than before
And turns to wash it from her welling eyes
And breathes the blots off all with sighs on sighs.
Her glass...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
v.1-5,31
C. M.
Love to enemies from the example of Christ.
God of my mercy and my praise,
Thy glory is my song,
Though sinners speak against thy grace
With a blaspheming tongue.
When in the form of mortal man
Thy Son on earth was found,
With cruel slanders, false and vain,
They compassed him around.
Their miseries his compassion move,
Their peace he still pursued;
They render hatred for his...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
In what torn ship soever I embark,
That ship shall be my emblem of thy Ark;
What sea soever swallow me, that flood
Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood;
Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise
Thy face, yet through that mask I know those eyes,
Which, though they turn away sometimes,
They never will despise.
I sacrifice this Island unto thee,
And all...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
AN ARGUMENT FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF PEACE AND GOODWILL WITH THE JAPANESE PEOPLE
Glossary for the uninstructed and the hasty: Jimmu Tenno, ancestor of all the Japanese Emperors; Nikko, Japan's loveliest shrine; Iyeyasu, her greatest statesman; Bushido, her code of knighthood; The Forty-seven Ronins, her classic heroes; Nogi, her latest hero; Fuji, her most beautiful mountain.
"Now do you know of...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
(For Cecil Chesterton)
At the foot of the Cross on Calvary
Three soldiers sat and diced,
And one of them was the Devil
And he won the Robe of Christ.
When the Devil comes in his proper form
To the chamber where I dwell,
I know him and make the Sign of the Cross
Which drives him back to Hell.
And when he comes like a friendly man
And...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
My wife lost her health,
And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds.
Then that woman, whom the men
Styled Cleopatra, came along.
And we -- we married ones
All broke our vows, myself among the rest.
Years passed and one by one
Death claimed them all in some hideous form,
And I was borne along by dreams
Of God's particular grace for me,
And I began to write,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
NEAR Clapham village, where fields began,
Saint Edward met a beggar man.
It was Christmas morning, the church bells tolled,
The old man trembled for the fierce cold.
Saint Edward cried, “It is monstrous sin
A beggar to lie in rags so thin!
An old gray-beard and the frost so keen:
I shall give him my fur-lined gaberdine.”
He stripped...Read more of this...
by
William Dunbar
RORATE coeli desuper!
Hevins, distil your balmy schouris!
For now is risen the bricht day-ster,
Fro the rose Mary, flour of flouris:
The cleir Sone, quhom no cloud devouris,
Surmounting Phebus in the Est,
Is cumin of his hevinly touris:
Et nobis Puer natus est.
Archangellis, angellis, and dompnationis,
Tronis, potestatis, and marteiris...Read more of this...
by
Richard Crashaw
THY restless feet now cannot go
For us and our eternal good,
As they were ever wont. What though
They swim, alas! in their own flood?
Thy hands to give Thou canst not lift,
Yet will Thy hand still giving be;
It gives, but O, itself's the gift!
It gives tho' bound, tho' bound 'tis free!...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Christ poems.