Famous Grace Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Lovers Complaint

...applied
Love to myself and to no love beside.

'But, woe is me! too early I attended
A youthful suit--it was to gain my grace--
Of one by nature's outwards so commended,
That maidens' eyes stuck over all his face:
Love lack'd a dwelling, and made him her place;
And when in his fair parts she did abide,
She was new lodged and newly deified.

'His browny locks did hang in crooked curls;
And every light occasion of the wind
Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls.
What's sweet ...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William


As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario's Shores

...reer than all that has ever been before?
If you would be freer than all that has been before, come listen to me. 

Fear grace—Fear elegance, civilization, delicatesse, 
Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey-juice; 
Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature, 
Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men.

Ages, precedents, have long been accumulating undirected materials, 
America brings builders, and brings its own styles. 

The immortal poets...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Beowulf (Modern English)

...you with every good, as he has done thus far!” (ll. 942b-56)

Beowulf replied to him, the son of Ecgtheow:
“By many graces, we have performed a courageous work
by fighting, recklessly risking the unknowable strength.
I would have wished the more greatly that you might
have seen him yourself, the fiend in his fittings,
wearied and frightened. I thought to fetter him
forthwith with tight bonds on his death-bed
so that he lay here, struggling for life in my hand-grip,
...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

How Do I Love Thee?

...thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

Humanitad

...ate,
Wanderers in drear exile, and dispossessed
Of what should be our own, we can but feed on wild unrest.

Somehow the grace, the bloom of things has flown,
And of all men we are most wretched who
Must live each other's lives and not our own
For very pity's sake and then undo
All that we lived for - it was otherwise
When soul and body seemed to blend in mystic symphonies.

But we have left those gentle haunts to pass
With weary feet to the new Calvary,
Where we behold, as on...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar


Inferno (English)

...cause of all 
 Delectable things that may to man befall?" 

 I answered, "Art thou then that Virgil, he 
 From whom all grace of measured speech in me 
 Derived? O glorious and far-guiding star! 
 Now may the love-led studious hours and long 
 In which I learnt how rich thy wonders are, 
 Master and Author mine of Light and Song, 
 Befriend me now, who knew thy voice, that few 
 Yet hearken. All the name my work hath won 
 Is thine of right, from whom I learned. To thee, 
 Ab...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Lara

...ive!" exclaims the impatient heir, 
And sighs for sables which he must not wear. 
A hundred scutcheons deck with gloomy grace 
The Laras' last and longest dwelling-place; 
But one is absent from the mouldering file, 
That now were welcome to that Gothic pile. 

IV. 

He comes at last in sudden loneliness, 
And whence they know not, why they need not guess; 
They more might marvel, when the greeting's o'er, 
Not that he came, but came not long before: 
No train is his beyond a...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Love

...he Ruin wild and hoary.   She listen'd with a flitting Blush,  With downcast Eyes and modest Grace;  For well she knew, I could not choose    But gaze upon her Face.   I told her of the Knight, that wore  Upon his Shield a burning Brand;  And that for ten long Years he woo'd    The Lady of the Land.   I told her, how he pin'd: and, ah! ...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

On the Pulse of Morning

...as than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

...Read more of this...
by Angelou, Maya

She Walks in Beauty

...er light 
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies. 

One shade the more, one ray the less, 
Had half impaired the nameless grace 
Which waves in every raven tress, 
Or softly lightens o'er her face; 
Where thoughts serenely sweet express, 
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. 

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, 
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, 
The smiles that win, the tints that glow, 
But tell of days in goodness spent, 
A mind at peace with all below, 
A h...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Ballad of the White Horse

....

Up through an empty house of stars,
Being what heart you are,
Up the inhuman steeps of space
As on a staircase go in grace,
Carrying the firelight on your face
Beyond the loneliest star.

Take these; in memory of the hour 
We strayed a space from home
And saw the smoke-hued hamlets, quaint
With Westland king and Westland saint,
And watched the western glory faint
Along the road to Frome.




BOOK I THE VISION OF THE KING


Before the gods that made the gods
Had seen their ...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Growth of Love

...in play can do the thing they would,
Having an instinct throned in reason's place,
--And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtless hardihood--
These are the best: yet be there workmen good
Who lose in earnestness control of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood. 
Me whom thou sawest of late strive with the pains
Of one who spends his strength to rule his nerve,
--Even as a painter breathlessly who sta...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour

The Hunting Of The Snark

...cond.

THE BELLMAN'S SPEECH.


The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies--
 Such a carriage, such ease and such grace!
Such solemnity, too! One could see he was wise,
 The moment one looked in his face!

He had bought a large map representing the sea,
 Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
 A map they could all understand.

"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,
 Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Knights Tale

...usly:
"The freshe beauty slay'th me suddenly
Of her that roameth yonder in the place.
And but* I have her mercy and her grace, *unless
That I may see her at the leaste way,
I am but dead; there is no more to say."
This Palamon, when he these wordes heard,
Dispiteously* he looked, and answer'd: *angrily
"Whether say'st thou this in earnest or in play?"
"Nay," quoth Arcite, "in earnest, by my fay*. *faith
God help me so, *me lust full ill to play*." *I am in no humour
This Pala...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Lady of the Lake

...ider of its way,
     A little skiff shot to the bay,
     That round the promontory steep
     Led its deep line in graceful sweep,
     Eddying, in almost viewless wave,
     The weeping willow twig to rave,
     And kiss, with whispering sound and slow,
     The beach of pebbles bright as snow.
      The boat had touched this silver strand
     Just as the Hunter left his stand,
     And stood concealed amid the brake,
     To view this Lady of the Lake.
      ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Triumph of Life

...om every firmest limb & fairest face
The strength & freshness fell like dust, & left
The action & the shape without the grace
"Of life; the marble brow of youth was cleft
With care, and in the eyes where once hope shone
Desire like a lioness bereft
"Of its last cub, glared ere it died; each one
Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly
These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown
"In Autumn evening from a popular tree--
Each, like himself & like each other were,
At first...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The Vision of Judgment

...ay; but does he wear his head? 
Because the last we saw here had a tussle, 
And ne'er would have got into heaven's good graces, 
Had he not flung his head in all our faces. 

XIX 

'He was, if I remember, king of France; 
That head of his, which could not keep a crown 
On earth, yet ventured in my face to advance 
A claim to those of martyrs — like my own: 
If I had had my sword, as I had once 
When I cut ears off, I had cut him down; 
But having but my keys, and not my brand...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The White Cliffs

...en the sun shines, it is as if the face 
Of some proud man relaxed his haughty stare, 
And smiled upon us with a sudden grace, 
Flattering because its coming is so rare. 

VII 
The English are frosty 
When you're no kith or kin 
Of theirs, but how they alter 
When once they take you in! 
The kindest, the truest, 
The best friends ever known, 
It's hard to remember 
How they froze you to a bone. 
They showed me all London, 
Johnnie and his friends; 
They took me to the country...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

When You are Old

...ad, and dream of the soft look 
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; 

How many loved your moments of glad grace, 
And loved your beauty with love false or true; 
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, 
And loved the sorrows of your changing face. 

And bending down beside the glowing bars, 
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled 
And paced upon the mountains overhead, 
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. ...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

White Flock

..., you see?"

I wanted to give her a dove
That is whiter than all the rest
But the bird herself flew above
After my graceful guest.

Looking at her I was silent,
I loved her alone
And like gates into her country
In the sky stood the dawn.



x x x

I have ceased and desisted from smiling
The frosty wind chills lips - say so long
To one hope of which will be lesser,
Instead there will be one more song.
And this song, without my volition,
I will give out f...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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