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Famous Clerical Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Clerical poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous clerical poems. These examples illustrate what a famous clerical poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Sexton, Anne
...art of the grape
where that smile lies.
It's in the good-bye-bow in the hair
where that smile lies.
It's in the clerical collar of the dress
where that smile lies.
What smile?
The smile of my seventh year,
caught here in the painted photograph.

It's peeling now, age has got it,
a kind of cancer of the background
and also in the assorted features.
It's like a rotten flag
or a vegetable from the refrigerator,
pocked with mold.
I am aging without sound,
...Read more of this...



by Lear, Edward
...ks on the wall; 
He drinks a great deal of marsala, 
But never gets tipsy at all. 

He has many friends, laymen and clerical, 
Old Foss is the name of his cat; 
His body is perfectly spherical, 
He weareth a runcible hat. 

When he walks in waterproof white, 
The children run after him so! 
Calling out, "He's gone out in his night- 
Gown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!" 

He weeps by the side of the ocean, 
He weeps on the top of the hill; 
He purchases pancakes and l...Read more of this...

by Khayyam, Omar
...ion, do not the thorns remain?
If light divine does not reach us, is there not the fire [of
hell]? If we have not the clerical mantle, or that of
the temple, or the pontifical, do not the bells, the church,
and the ephod remain to us?...Read more of this...

by Belloc, Hilaire
...able,
Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;
Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,
Don nervous, Don of crudities;
Don clerical, Don ordinary,
Don self-absorbed and solitary;
Don here-and-there, Don epileptic;
Don puffed and empty, Don dyspeptic;
Don middle-class, Don sycophantic,
Don dull, Don brutish, Don pedantic;
Don hypocritical, Don bad,
Don furtive, Don three-quarters mad;
Don (since a man must make and end),
Don that shall never be my friend.

Don different from ...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...for a tapestry for a Pope: 
it does look like heaven. 
But a skeletal lighthouse standing there 
in black and white clerical dress, 
who lives on his nerves, thinks he knows better. 
He thinks that hell rages below his iron feet, 
that that is why the shallow water is so warm, 
and he knows that heaven is not like this. 
Heaven is not like flying or swimming, 
but has something to do with blackness and a strong glare 
and when it gets dark he will remember somethi...Read more of this...



by Service, Robert William
...'Why did the lady in the lift
 Slap that poor parson's face?'
Said Mother, thinking as she sniffed,
 Of clerical disgrace.

Said Sonny Boy: 'Alas, I know.
 My conscience doth accuse me;
The lady stood upon my toe,
 Yet did not say--"Excuse me!"

'She hurt--and in that crowd confined
 I scarcely could endure it;
So when I pinched her fat behind
 She thought--it was the Curate.'...Read more of this...

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