Famous Clergy Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Clergy poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous clergy poems. These examples illustrate what a famous clergy poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Burns, Robert
...aid enough,
And muckle mair than ye can mak to through.
As for your Priesthood, I shall say but little,
Corbies and Clergy are a shot right kittle:
But, under favour o’ your langer beard,
Abuse o’ Magistrates might weel be spar’d;
To liken them to your auld-warld squad,
I must needs say, comparisons are odd.
In Ayr, wag-wits nae mair can hae a handle
To mouth ’a Citizen,’ a term o’ scandal;
Nae mair the Council waddles down the street,
In all the pomp of ignorant conc...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...rophecy that they will observe the Rubrick with regard to days of Fasting and Abstinence.
For I prophecy that the clergy in particular will set a better example.
For I prophecy that they will not dare to imprison a brother or sister for debt.
For I prophecy that hospitality and temperance will revive.
For I prophecy that men will be much stronger in the body.
For I prophecy that the gout, and consumptions will be curable.
For I prophecy tha...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...Good people of high and low degree,
I pray ye all be advised by me,
And don't believe what the clergy doth say,
That by going to the theatre you will be led astray.
No, in the theatre we see vice punished and virtue rewarded,
The villain either hanged or shot, and his career retarded;
Therefore the theatre is useful in every way,
And has no inducement to lead the people astray.
Because therein we see the end of the bad men,
Which must appa...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ly
drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637;
and, by occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted Clergy,
then in their height.
YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dea...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...question;
And when your boasted arguings fail,
Strait leave all reas'ning off, to rail.
"Have not our High-church Clergy made it
Appear from Scriptures, which ye credit,
That right divine from heaven was lent
To kings, that is, the Parliament,
Their subjects to oppress and teaze,
And serve the devil when they please?
Did not they write, and pray, and preach,
And torture all the parts of speech,
About rebellion make a pother,
From one end of the land to th' other?
And ye...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...er fashion
Than the writer or the parson.
I can spare the college-bell,
And the learned lecture well.
Spare the clergy and libraries,
Institutes and dictionaries,
For the hardy English root
Thrives here unvalued underfoot.
Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
Squandering your unquoted mirth,
Which keeps the ground and never soars,
While Jake retorts and Reuben roars,
Tough and screaming as birch-bark,
Goes like bullet to its mark,
While the solid curse and jeer
Never ...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...fluxes are wasting my mother.
Why has the Lord afflicted me?
The Saints are helpless for all I offer--
So are the clergy I used to fee.
Henceforward I keep my cash in my coffer,
Because the Lord has afflicted me.
Material
I run eight hundred hens to the acre
They die by dozens mysteriously. . . .
I am more than doubtful concerning my Maker,
Why has the Lord afflicted me?
What a return for all my endeavour--
Not to mention the L. S.Read more of this...
by
Dunbar, William
...blood to buy
And loose you of the fiendis arrest--
And only of his own mercy;
Pro nobis Puer natus est.
All clergy do to him inclyne,
And bow unto that bairn benyng,
And do your observance divyne
To him that is of kingis King:
Encense his altar, read and sing
In holy kirk, with mind degest,
Him honouring attour all thing
Qui nobis Puer natus est.
Celestial foulis in the air,
Sing with your nottis upon hicht,
In firthis and in forrestis fair
...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...ACE printed on them.
Then this group of college- and high-school-trained Com-
munists, along with some Communist clergymen and their
Marxist-taught children, marched to San Francisco from
Sunnyvale, a Communist nerve center about forty miles away.
It took them four days to walk to San Francisco. They
stopped overnight at various towns along the way, and slept
on the lawns of fellow travelers.
They carried with them Communist trout fishing in Ameri-
...Read more of this...
by
Dryden, John
...in,
In all things needful to be known, is plain.
In times o'ergrown with rust and ignorance,
A gainful trade their clergy did advance:
When want of learning kept the laymen low,
And none but priests were authoriz'd to know:
When what small knowledge was, in them did dwell;
And he a God who could but read or spell;
Then Mother Church did mightily prevail:
She parcell'd out the Bible by retail:
But still expounded what she sold or gave;
To keep it in her power to damn and ...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
..., when his med'cines do no good,
Supports their minds with heav'nly food,
At which, however well intended,
He hears the clergy are offended;
And grown so bold behind his back,
To call him hypocrite and quack.
In his own church he keeps a seat;
Says grace before and after meat;
And calls, without affecting airs,
His household twice a day to prayers.
He shuns apothecaries' shops;
And hates to cram the sick with slops:
He scorns to make his art a trade;
Nor bribes my lad...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...lso the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Rutland,
And Mr Balfour and Lord Spencer, all looking very bland.
And the clergy were gathered about the head of the grave,
And the attention of the spectators the Dean did crave;
Then he said, "Man that is born of woman hath a short time to live,
But, Oh, Heavenly Father! do thou our sins forgive."
Then Mrs Gladstone and her two sons knelt down by the grave,
Then the Dean did the Lord's blessing crave,
While Mrs Gladstone a...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ay,
Us needeth not but for to speak of game,
And leave authorities, in Godde's name,
To preaching, and to school eke of clergy.
But if it like unto this company,
I will you of a Sompnour tell a game;
Pardie, ye may well knowe by the name,
That of a Sompnour may no good be said;
I pray that none of you be *evil paid;* *dissatisfied*
A Sompnour is a runner up and down
With mandements* for fornicatioun, *mandates, summonses*
And is y-beat at every towne's end."
Then spak...Read more of this...
by
Sassoon, Siegfried
...ays to sit and ponder. I’d no chance
When young and gay to get the hang of all
This Hell and Heaven: and when the clergy hoick
And holloa from their pulpits, I’m asleep,
However hard I listen; and when they pray
It seems we’re all like children sucking sweets
In school, and wondering whether master sees.
I used to dream of Hell when I was first
Promoted to a huntsman’s job, and scent
Was rotten, and all the foxes disappeared,
And hounds were short of blood; a...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...ree,
Lord Rothschild and Lord Rosebery,
And F.C.G. and Comyn Carr
Two dukes and a dramatic star,
Also a clergy man now dead;
And while the vain world careless sped
Unheeding the heroic name --
The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame
Still sat unconquered in a ring,
Remembering him like anything.
Lord Lilac did not long remain,
Lord Lilac did not some again.
He softly lit a cigarette
And sought some other social set
Where, in some other k...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...liceman robbed a bank
the mayor and all the councillors
fired doughnuts from a tank
the queen embraced the dustman
the clergy showed their knees
librarians in their thousands
begged mercy from the trees
the dog sang in the market
it didn't understand
the panic and predicament
it'd loosed upon the land
its head had always been
a lot where songs were parking
but when it tried to sing
the noise came out like barking
maybe this time the air
crystal-clear since rain
stripped r...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...her in succession or on the anniversaries
of their death; also the masses themselves, which were very
profitable to the clergy.
2. Possessioners: The regular religious orders, who had lands
and fixed revenues; while the friars, by their vows, had to
depend on voluntary contributions, though their need suggested
many modes of evading the prescription.
3. In Chaucer's day the most material notions about the tortures
of hell prevailed, and were made the most of...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
...r
To save the nation every hour?
What scenes of evil he unravels
In satires, libels, lying travels!
Not sparing his own clergy-cloth,
But eats into it, like a moth!"
"His vein, ironically grave,
Exposed the fool and lashed the knave.
To steal a hint was never known,
But what he writ was all his own.
He never thought an honour done him
Because a duke was proud to own him;
Would rather slip aside and choose
To talk with wits in dirty shoes;
Despised the fools with star...Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
...four hundred letters,
Gave a ten-guinea ring
I got back in the end, and met
At numerous cathedral cities
Unknown to the clergy. I believe
I met beautiful twice. She was trying
Both times (so I thought) not to laugh.
Parting, after about five
Rehearsals, was an agreement
That I was too selfish, withdrawn
And easily bored to love.
Well, useful to get that learnt,
In my wallet are still two snaps,
Of bosomy rose with fur gloves on.
Unlucky charms, perhaps.Read more of this...
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