Famous Devoted Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Distance From The Sea

...iahship and eschatology,
Are like the mist rising at nightfall, and come,
Perhaps to even less. Grave supernaturalists, devoted worshippers
Experience the ecstasy (such as it is), but not
Our ecstasy. It was our making. Yet sometimes
When the torrent of that time
Comes pouring back, I wonder at our courage
And our enterprise. It was as though the world
Had been one darkening, abandoned hall
Where rows of unlit candles stood; and we
Not out of love, so much, or hope, or even w...Read more of this...
by Kees, Weldon


As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario's Shores

...th, sun, animals—I have despised riches, 
I have given alms to every one that ask’d, stood up for the stupid and crazy, devoted
 my
 income and labor to others,
I have hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence toward the
 people,
 taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown, 
I have gone freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the
 mothers
 of families, 
I have read these leaves to myself in the open air—I have tried ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Ash Wednesday

...ones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Endymion: Book III

...oy! Why, I have shed
An urn of tears, as though thou wert cold dead;
And now I find thee living, I will pour
From these devoted eyes their silver store,
Until exhausted of the latest drop,
So it will pleasure thee, and force thee stop
Here, that I too may live: but if beyond
Such cool and sorrowful offerings, thou art fond
Of soothing warmth, of dalliance supreme;
If thou art ripe to taste a long love dream;
If smiles, if dimples, tongues for ardour mute,
Hang in thy vision l...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Lara

...rgot! 

XVII. 

Beneath a lime, remoter from the scene, 
Where but for him that strife had never been, 
A breathing but devoted warrior lay: 
'Twas Lara bleeding fast from life away. 
His follower once, and now his only guide, 
Kneels Kaled watchful o'er his welling side, 
And with his scarf would stanch the tides that rush 
With each convulsion in a blacker gush; 
And then, as his faint breathing waxes low, 
In feebler, not less fatal tricklings flow: 
He scarce can speak, b...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)


Paradise Lost: Book 05

...ruise and break 
Thy disobedience. Well thou didst advise; 
Yet not for thy advice or threats I fly 
These wicked tents devoted, lest the wrath 
Impendent, raging into sudden flame, 
Distinguish not: For soon expect to feel 
His thunder on thy head, devouring fire. 
Then who created thee lamenting learn, 
When who can uncreate thee thou shalt know. 
So spake the Seraph Abdiel, faithful found 
Among the faithless, faithful only he; 
Among innumerable false, unmoved, 
Unshaken,...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Rosalind and Helen: a Modern Eclogue

...his was he who died at last,
When weeks and months and years had passed,
Through which I firmly did fulfil
My duties, a devoted wife,
With the stern step of vanquished will 
Walking beneath the night of life,
Whose hours extinguished, like slow rain
Falling forever, pain by pain,
The very hope of death's dear rest;
Which, since the heart within my breast
Of natural life was dispossessed,
Its strange sustainer there had been.

When flowers were dead, and grass was green
Upon m...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Ruins of Rome by Bellay

...Abysses open rive, 
That ye may understand my shreiking yell. 
Thrice having seen under the heavens' vail 
Your tomb's devoted compass over all, 
Thrice unto you with loud voice I appeal, 
And for your antique fury here do call, 
The whiles that I with sacred horror sing, 
Your glory, fairest of all earthly thing. 


2 

Great Babylon her haughty walls will praise, 
And sharpèd steeples high shot up in air; 
Greece will the old Ephesian buildings blaze; 
And Nylus' nurslings...Read more of this...
by Spenser, Edmund

That One

...Oh days devoted to the useless burden
of putting out of mind the biography
of a minor poet of the Southem Hemisphere,
to whom the fates or perhaps the stars have given
a body which will leave behind no child,
and blindness, which is semi-darkness and jail,
and old age, which is the dawn of death,
and fame, which absolutely nobody deserves,
and the practice of weavin...Read more of this...
by Borges, Jorge Luis

The Bride Of Corinth

...
Through my mother's sick-bed phantasy.

Cured, she made this oath:

'Youth and nature both

Shall henceforth to Heav'n devoted be.'


"From the house, so silent now, are driven

All the gods who reign'd supreme of yore;
One Invisible now rules in heaven,

On the cross a Saviour they adore.

Victims slay they here,

Neither lamb nor steer,
But the altars reek with human gore."

And he lists, and ev'ry word he weighs,

While his eager soul drinks in each sound:
"Can it be that...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

The Female Vagrant

...affliction reap,  That we the mercy of the waves should rue.  We readied the western world, a poor, devoted crew.   Oh I dreadful price of being to resign  All that is dear in being! better far  In Want's most lonely cave till death to pine,  Unseen, unheard, unwatched by any star;  Or in the streets and walks where proud men are,  Better our dying bodies to obtrude,  Than ...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

The General Prologue

...y, I n'ot* how men him call. *know not

A CLERK there was of Oxenford* also, *Oxford
That unto logic hadde long y-go*. *devoted himself
As leane was his horse as is a rake,
And he was not right fat, I undertake;
But looked hollow*, and thereto soberly**. *thin; **poorly
Full threadbare was his *overest courtepy*, *uppermost short cloak*
For he had gotten him yet no benefice,
Ne was not worldly, to have an office.
For him was lever* have at his bed's head *rather
Twenty bookes...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Giaour

...her bosom's stream
To still her famished nestlings' scream,
Nor mourns a life to them transferred,
Should rend her rash devoted breast,
And find them flown her empty nest.
The keenest pangs the wretched find
Are rapture to the dreary void,
The leafless desert of the mind,
The waste of feelings unemployed.
Who would be doomed to gaze upon
A sky without a cloud or sun?
Less hideous far the tempest's roar
Than ne'er to brave the billows more -
Thrown, when the war of winds is o'...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Lady of the Lake

...verge of life
     Blessed him who stayed the civil strife;
     And mothers held their babes on high,
     The self-devoted Chief to spy,
     Triumphant over wrongs and ire,
     To whom the prattlers owed a sire.
     Even the rough soldier's heart was moved;
     As if behind some bier beloved,
     With trailing arms and drooping head,
     The Douglas up the hill he led,
     And at the Castle's battled verge,
     With sighs resigned his honoured charge.
  ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Seasons: Winter

...then'd Air,
Long Groans are heard, shrill Sounds, and distant Sighs,
That, murmur'd by the Demon of the Night,
Warn the devoted Wretch of Woe, and Death!
Wild Uproar lords it wide: the Clouds commixt, 
With Stars, swift-gliding, sweep along the Sky.
All Nature reels. -- But hark! the Almighty speaks:
Instant, the chidden Storm begins to pant,
And dies, at once, into a noiseless Calm.

AS yet, 'tis Midnight's Reign; the weary Clouds, 
Slow-meeting, mingle into solid Gloom:
Now...Read more of this...
by Thomson, James

The Siege of Corinth

...se dust around him slumber'd; 
Their phalanx marshall'd on the plain, 
Whose bulwarks were not then in vain. 
They fell devoted, but undying; 
The very gale their names seem'd sighing: 
The waters murmur'd of their name; 
The woods were peopled with their fame; 
The silent pillar, lone and gray, 
Claim'd kindred with their sacred clay; 
Their spirits wrapt the dusky mountain, 
Their memory sparkled o'er the mountain, 
The meanest rill, the mightiest river, 
Roll'd mingling wi...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Triumph Of Eternity

...s,And now too near, and now too distant, shines;To wretched man and earth's devoted soilDispensing sad variety of toil.Oh! happy are the blessed souls that singLoud hallelujahs in eternal ring!Thrice happy he, who late, at last shall findA lot in the celestial climes assign'd!He, led by grace, the auspi...Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

The Triumph Of Fame

...the foe retiredBefore their Heaven-directed march, amazed,When on the self-devoted men they gazed,Till they provoked their fate. And Curtius nigh,As when to heaven he cast his upward eye,And all on fire with glory's opening charms,Plunged to the Shades below with clanging arms,Lævinus, Mummius, with Flaminius show'd,...Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

The White Cliffs

...hem now and then 
That other countries breed other men. 
From all of which you will think me rather 
Unjust. I am. Your devoted Father. 

XXVI 
I read, and saw my home with sudden yearning— 
The small white wooden house, the grass-green door, 
My father's study with the fire burning, 
And books piled on the floor. 
I saw the moon-faced clock that told the hours, 
The crimson Turkey carpet, worn and frayed, 
The heavy dishes—gold with birds and flowers— 
Fruits of the China tr...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

To M.L.S

...eyes-
Of all who owe thee most- whose gratitude
Nearest resembles worship- oh, remember
The truest- the most fervently devoted,
And think that these weak lines are written by him-
By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think
His spirit is communing with an angel's....Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan

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