Famous Creeds Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Creeds poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous creeds poems. These examples illustrate what a famous creeds poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Milosz, Czeslaw
...g was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,
I, for unknown reasons,
Surrounded by the books
Of prophets and theologians,
Of philosophers, poets,
Searched for an answer,
Scowling, grimacing,
Waking up at night, muttering at dawn.
What oppressed me so much
Was a bit shameful.
Talking of it aloud
Would show neither tact nor prudence.
It might even seem an outrage
Against...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...slaves and horrify foreign despots,
Not to build for that which builds for mankind,
Not to balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the sexes,
Not to justify science, nor the march of equality,
Nor to feed the arrogant blood of the brawn beloved of time.
I swear I am for those that have never been master’d!
For men and women whose tempers have never been master’d,
For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.
I swear I am for those who walk abre...Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
...ith sin,
And dimmed the light of heaven with doubt,
And built their temple walls to shut thee in,
And framed their iron creeds to shut thee out.
But not for thee the closing of the door,
O Spirit unconfined!
Thy ways are free
As is the wandering wind,
And thou hast wooed thy children, to restore
Their fellowship with thee,
In peace of soul and simpleness of mind.
IV
Joyful the heart that, when the flood rolled by,
Leaped up to see the rainbow in the sky;
And glad t...Read more of this...
by
Brontë, Emily
...ighty, ever-present Deity!
Life--that in me has rest,
As I--undying Life--have power in Thee!
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as wither'd weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchor'd on
The steadfast rock of immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, diss...Read more of this...
by
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...make thine own.
All old grey histories hiding thy clear features,
O secret spirit and sovereign, all men's tales,
Creeds woven of men thy children and thy creatures,
They have woven for vestures of thee and for veils.
Thine hands, without election or exemption,
Feed all men fainting from false peace or strife,
O thou, the resurrection and redemption,
The godhead and the manhood and the life.
Thy wings shadow the waters; thine eyes lighten
The horror of the hol...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...," quoth Malcolm, "from confusion,
You've dwelt already in delusion;
As sceptics, of all fools the chief,
Hold faith in creeds of unbelief.
I come to draw thy veil aside
Of error, prejudice and pride.
Fools love deception, but the wise
Prefer sad truths to pleasing lies.
For know, those hopes can ne'er succeed,
That trust on Britain's breaking reed.
For weak'ning long from bad to worse,
By cureless atrophy of purse,
She feels at length with trembling heart,
He...Read more of this...
by
Naidu, Sarojini
...of a poet's fame;
Beneath whose sway concordant dwell
The peoples whom your laws embrace,
In brotherhood of diverse creeds,
And harmony of diverse race:
The votaries of the Prophet's faith,
Of whom you are the crown and chief
And they, who bear on Vedic brows
Their mystic symbols of belief;
And they, who worshipping the sun,
Fled o'er the old Iranian sea;
And they, who bow to Him who trod
The midnight waves of Galilee.
Sweet, sumptuous fables of Baghdad
The...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...spell,
Cast crowns for rosaries away,
An empire for a cell;
A strict accountant of his beads,
A subtle disputant on creeds,
His dotage trifled well:
Yet better had he neither known
A bigot's shrine, nor despot's throne.
IX
But thou -- from thy reluctant hand
The thunderbolt is wrung --
Too late thou leav'st the high command
To which thy weakness clung;
All Evil Spirit as thou art,
It is enough to grieve the heart
To see thine own unstrung;
To think that G...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...-harlots be prudent! let them dance on, while seeming lasts!
(O
seeming! seeming! seeming!)
Let the preachers recite creeds! let them still teach only what they have been taught!
Let insanity still have charge of sanity!
Let books take the place of trees, animals, rivers, clouds!
Let the daub’d portraits of heroes supersede heroes!
Let the manhood of man never take steps after itself!
Let it take steps after eunuchs, and after consumptive and genteel persons!
Let the ...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...To a stone seat beside a spring,
O'er which the columned wood did frame
A roofless temple, like the fane
Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain,
Man's early race once knelt beneath
The overhanging deity.
O'er this fair fountain hung the sky,
Now spangled with rare stars. The snake,
The pale snake, that with eager breath
Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake,
Is beaming with many a mingled hue,
Shed from yon dome's eternal blue,
When he floats on that dark and lu...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ch’d
from;
The scent of these arm-pits, aroma finer than prayer;
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
If I worship one thing more than another, it shall be the spread of my own body,
or any part of it.
Translucent mould of me, it shall be you!
Shaded ledges and rests, it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter, it shall be you.
Whatever goes to the tilth of me, it shall be you!
You my rich blood! Your milky stream, pale str...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...brigands,
Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing,
The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,
The list of all executive deeds and words, just or unjust,
The power of personality, just or unjust.
4
Muscle and pluck forever!
What invigorates life, invigorates death,
And the dead advance as much as the living advance,
And the future is no more uncertain than the present,
And the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as th...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...
Unswerv’d by all the passing errors, perturbations of the surface;
You vital, universal, deathless germs, beneath all creeds, arts, statutes,
literatures,
Here build your homes for good—establish here—These areas entire, Lands of the Western
Shore,
We pledge, we dedicate to you.
For man of you—your characteristic Race,
Here may be hardy, sweet, gigantic grow—here tower, proportionate to Nature,
Here climb the vast, pure spaces, unconfined, uncheck’d by wall or ro...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...their parents the
same,
I, now thirty-six years old, in perfect health, begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
(Retiring back a while, sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,)
I harbor, for good or bad—I permit to speak, at every hazard,
Nature now without check, with original energy.
5Take my leaves, America! take them, South, and take them, North!
Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring;
Sur...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...he Invention, wake and pry and guess,
Till thy deft mind invents me Happiness.'
"And I beheld high scaffoldings of creeds
Crumbling from round Religion's perfect Fane:
And a vast noise of rights, wrongs, powers, needs,
-- Cries of new Faiths that called `This Way is plain,'
-- Grindings of upper against lower greeds --
-- Fond sighs for old things, shouts for new, -- did reign
Below that stream of golden fire that broke,
Mottled with red, above the seas of smoke.
"H...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...I weigh as one who dreads dissent,
And fears a doubt as wrong.
But still my human hands are weak
To hold your iron creeds:
Against the words ye bid me speak
My heart within me pleads.
Who fathoms the Eternal Thought?
Who talks of scheme and plan?
The Lord is God! He needeth not
The poor device of man.
I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground
Ye tread with boldness shod;
I dare not fix with mete and bound
The love and power of God.
Ye praise His justice; ev...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...my daily food,
And in thy temples found a goodlier feast
Than this starved age can give me, spite of all
Its new-found creeds so sceptical and so dogmatical.
Here not Cephissos, not Ilissos flows,
The woods of white Colonos are not here,
On our bleak hills the olive never blows,
No simple priest conducts his lowing steer
Up the steep marble way, nor through the town
Do laughing maidens bear to thee the crocus-flowered gown.
Yet tarry! for the boy who loved thee bes...Read more of this...
by
Du Bois, W. E. B.
...h the theft of their thieving
And murder and mocking of men;
Down with their barter of women
And laying and lying of creeds;
Down with their cheating of childhood
And drunken orgies of war,—
down
down
deep down,
Till the devil's strength be shorn,
Till some dim, darker David, a-hoeing of his corn,
And married maiden, mother of God,
Bid the black Christ be born!
Then shall our burden be manhood,
Be it yellow or black or white;
And poverty and justice and sorrow,...Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...e, but not, like thee, in hope.
Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we,
Light half-believers of our casual creeds,
Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed,
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,
Whose vague resolves never have been fulfilled;
For whom each year we see
Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new;
Who hesitate and falter life away,
And lose tomorrow the ground won today—
Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?
Yes, we await it!—but it stil...Read more of this...
by
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...r, and her eyes
Opened as sudden suns in heaven might rise,
And her soul caught from his the faith to save;
Faith above creeds, faith beyond records, born
Of the pure, naked, fruitful, awful morn.
For in the daybreak now that night was dead
The light, the shadow, the delight, the pain,
The purpose and the passion of those twain,
Seemed gathered on that third prophetic head,
And all their crowns were as one crown, and one
His face with her face in the living sun.
For...Read more of this...
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