Famous Expiation Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Expiation poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous expiation poems. These examples illustrate what a famous expiation poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Jackson, Helen Hunt
...e that the catkins fill,
And willow stems grow daily red and bright.
These are days when ancients held a rite
Of expiation for the old year's ill,
And prayer to purify the new year's will:
Fit days, ere yet the spring rains blur the sight,
Ere yet the bounding blood grows hot with haste,
And dreaming thoughts grow heavy with a greed
The ardent summer's joy to have and taste;
Fit days, to give to last year's losses heed,
To recon clear the new life's sterner need...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...r> If I had been alone,
There would have been the joy of being free,
Which in imagination I had won
With unimaginable expiation—
But I was not alone. If you had seen me,
Waiting there for the dark and looking off
Over the gloom of that relentless water,
Which had the stillness of the end of things
That evening on it, I might well have made
For you the picture of the last man left
Where God, in his extinction of the rest,
Had overlooked him and forgotten him. ...Read more of this...
by
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...fering to sell.
Thou hast sealed thine elect to salvation, fast locked with faith for the key;
Make now for thyself expiation, and be thine atonement for thee.
Ah, thou that darkenest heaven--ah, thou that bringest a sword -
By the crimes of thine hands unforgiven they beseech thee to hear them, O Lord.
By the balefires of ages that burn for thine incense, by creed and by rood,
By the famine and passion that yearn and that hunger to find of thee food,
By the child...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...I tried to think a lonelier Thing
Than any I had seen --
Some Polar Expiation -- An Omen in the Bone
Of Death's tremendous nearness --
I probed Retrieverless things
My Duplicate -- to borrow --
A Haggard Comfort springs
From the belief that Somewhere --
Within the Clutch of Thought --
There dwells one other Creature
Of Heavenly Love -- forgot --
I plucked at our Partition
As One should pry the Walls --
Between Himself -- ...Read more of this...
by
Jeffers, Robinson
...eople: -that root was so sweet O dreadful agonist? -
I saw the same pierced feet, that walked in the same crime to
its expiation; I heard the same cry.
A bad mountain to build your world on. Am I another keeper of
the people, that on my own shore,
On the gray rock, by the grooved mass of the ocean, the
sicknesses I left behind me concern me?
Here where the surf has come incredible ways out of the splendid
west, over the deeps
Light nor life sounds forever; here ...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...e Minister of the
Empire, all the house shuddered, and in a nearly unanimous voice shouted:
"The judgment of God! expiation!"}
...Read more of this...
by
Turner Smith, Charlotte
...d with grief,
Views thee with stony eyes, and cannot weep!--
Ah! much I mourn thy sorrows, hapless Queen!
And deem thy expiation made to Heaven
For every fault, to which Prosperity
Betray'd thee, when it plac'd thee on a throne
Where boundless power was thine, and thou wert rais'd
High (as it seem'd) above the envious reach
Of destiny! Whate'er thy errors were,
Be they no more remember'd; tho' the rage
Of Party swell'd them to such crimes, as bade
Compassion stifle every si...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...r known.
Sudden, a fear came o'er his troubled soul,
What more was written on the Future's scroll?
Was this an expiation? It must be, yea!
He turned to God for one enlightening ray.
"Is this the vengeance, Lord of Hosts?" he sighed,
But the first murmur on his parched lips died.
"Is this the vengeance? Must my glory set?"
A pause: his name was called; of flame a jet
Sprang in the darkness;—a Voice answered; "No!
Not yet."
Outside still fell...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...pake of famine, plague
Shrine-shattering earthquake, fire, flood, thunderbolt,
And angers of the Gods for evil done
And expiation lack'd‹no power on Fate
Theirs, or mine own! for when the crowd would roar
For blood, for war, whose issue was their doom,
To cast wise words among the multitude
Was fiinging fruit to lions; nor, in hours
Of civil outbreak, when I knew the twain
Would each waste each, and bring on both the yoke
Of stronger states, was mine the voice to curb
The mad...Read more of this...
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