Famous Guardian Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Guardian poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous guardian poems. These examples illustrate what a famous guardian poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Robert William Service
When looking back I dimly see
The trails my feet have trod,
Some hand divine, it seems to me,
Has pulled the strings with God;
Some angel form has lifeward leaned
When hope for me was past;
Some love sublime has intervened
To save me at the last.
For look you! I was born a fool,
Damnation was my fate;
My lot to drivel and to drool,
Egregious and frutrate.
But...Read more of this...
by
Eamon Grennan
She's stopped in her southern tracks
Brought haply to this hard knock
When she shoots from the tall spruce
And snaps her neck on the glass.
From the fall grass I gather her
And give her to my silent children
Who give her a decent burial
Under the dogwood in the garden.
They lay their gifs in the grave:
Matches, a clothes-peg, a coin;
Fire paper for her, sprinkle...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
Where a river roars in rapids
And doves in maples fret,
Where peace has decked the pastures
Our guardian angels met.
Long they had sought each other
In God's mysterious name,
Had climbed the solemn chaos tides
Alone, with hope aflame:
Amid the demon deeps had wound
By many a fearful way.
As they beheld each other
Their shout made glad the day.
No need of purse delayed them,
No hand of...Read more of this...
by
Robert Seymour Bridges
The south-wind strengthens to a gale,
Across the moon the clouds fly fast,
The house is smitten as with a flail,
The chimney shudders to the blast.
On such a night, when Air has loosed
Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,
Old terrors then of god or ghost
Creep from their caves to life again;
And Reason kens he herits in
A haunted house. Tenants unknown
Assert their...Read more of this...
by
Jorie Graham
Shall I move the flowers again?
Shall I put them further to the left
into the light?
Win that fix it, will that arrange the
thing?
Yellow sky.
Faint cricket in the dried-out bush.
As I approach, my footfall in the leaves
drowns out the cricket-chirping I was
coming close to hear
Yellow sky with black leaves rearranging it.
Wind rearranging the black leaves in it.
But anyway I am...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Bowers
The angel of self-discipline, her guardian
Since she first knew and had to go away
From home that spring to have her child with strangers,
Sustained her, till the vanished boy next door
And her ordeal seemed fiction, and the true
Her mother’s firm insistence she was the mother
And the neighbors’ acquiescence. So she taught school,
Walking a mile each way to ride the street...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
The gold-hoarder walked in his palace park and with him walked his troubles. And over his head hovered worries as a vulture hovers over a carcass, until he reached a beautiful lake surrounded by magnificent marble statuary.
He sat there pondering the water which poured from the mouths of the statues like thoughts flowing freely from a lover's imagination,...Read more of this...
by
Geoffrey Hill
King of the perennial holly-groves, the riven sandstone: overlord of the
M5: architect of the historic rampart and ditch, the citadel at
Tamworth, the summer hermitage in Holy Cross: guardian of the Welsh
Bridge and the Iron Bridge: contractor to the desirable new estates:
saltmaster: money-changer: commissioner for oaths: martyrologist: the
friend of Charlemagne.
'I liked that,' said Offa, 'sing it again.'...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
I love all sights of earth and skies,
From flowers that glow to stars that shine;
The comet and the penny show,
All curious things, above, below,
Hold each in turn my wandering eyes:
I claim the Christian Pagan's line,
Humani nihil, -- even so, --
And is not human life divine?
When soft the western breezes blow,
And...Read more of this...
by
Jorie Graham
All this was written on the next day's list.
On which the busyness unfurled its cursive roots,
pale but effective,
and the long stem of the necessary, the sum of events,
built-up its tiniest cathedral...
(Or is it the sum of what takes place? )
If I lean down, to whisper, to them,
down into their gravitational field, there where they head busily on
into the woods,...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[Goethe says of this ode, that it is the only
one remaining out of several strange hymns and dithyrambs composed
by him at a period of great unhappiness, when the love-affair between
him and Frederica had been broken off by him. He used to sing them
while wandering wildly about the country. This particular one was
caused by his...Read more of this...
by
Li Po
Amongst the grandeur of Hua Shan
I climb to the Flower Peak,
and fancy I see fairies and immortals
carrying lotus in their
sacred white hands, robes flowing
they fly filling the sky with colour
as they rise to the palace of heaven,
inviting me to go to the cloud stage
and see Wei Shu-ching, guardian angel
of Hua Shan; so dreamily I go with them
riding to the...Read more of this...
by
Samuel Johnson
LONG-EXPECTED one and twenty
Ling'ring year at last has flown,
Pomp and pleasure, pride and plenty
Great Sir John, are all your own.
Loosen'd from the minor's tether,
Free to mortgage or to sell,
Wild as wind, and light as feather
Bid the slaves of thrift farewell.
Call the Bettys, Kates, and Jenneys
Ev'ry name that laughs at care,...Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pope
Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos;
Sedjuvat, hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis.
(Martial, Epigrams 12.84)
What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things,
I sing--This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due:
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,
If she inspire, and he approve my lays.
Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel
A...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Life's fount is wine, Khizir its guardian,
I, like Elias, find it where I can,
'Tis sustenance for heart and spirit too,
Allah himself calls wine «a boon to man.»...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
THE HOUSE
The cornerstone in Truth is laid,
The guardian walls of Honour made,
The roof of Faith is built above,
The fire upon the hearth is Love:
Though rains descend and loud winds call,
This happy house shall never fall.
THE DOORSTEAD
The lintel low enough to keep out pomp and pride:
The threshold high enough to turn deceit aside:
The doorband strong enough from robbers to defend:
This...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
How fares it with the happy dead?
For here the man is more and more;
But he forgets the days before
God shut the doorways of his head.
The days have vanish'd, tone and tint,
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense
Gives out at times (he knows not whence)
A little flash, a mystic hint;
And in the long harmonious years
(If Death so taste Lethean springs),
May some...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
A PICTURE AT FANO.
I.
Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve
Shall find performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.
II.
Then I shall feel thee step one step,...Read more of this...
by
Philip Freneau
WHERE the pheasant roosts at night,
Lonely, drowsy, out of sight,
Where the evening breezes sigh
Solitary, there stray I.
Close along the shaded stream,
Source of many a youthful dream,
Where branchy cedars dim the day
There I muse, and there I stray.
Yet, what can please amid this bower,
That charmed the eye for many an hour!
The budding leaf is lost to me,
And dead the bloom...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("J'aime le carillon dans tes cités antiques.")
{XVIII., August, 1837.}
Within thy cities of the olden time
Dearly I love to list the ringing chime,
Thou faithful guardian of domestic worth,
Noble old Flanders! where the rigid North
A flush of rich meridian glow doth feel,
Caught from reflected suns of...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
AFRICA
I will sing you a song of Los. the Eternal Prophet:
He sung it to four harps at the tables of Eternity.
In heart-formed Africa.
Urizen faded! Ariston shudderd!
And thus the Song began
Adam stood in the garden of Eden:
And Noah on the mountains of Ararat;
They saw Urizen give his Laws to the Nations
By...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The offices of Christ. From several scriptures.
Join all the glorious names
Of wisdom, love, and power,
That ever mortals knew,
That angels ever bore:
All are too mean to speak his worth,
Too mean to set my Savior forth.
But O what gentle terms,
What condescending ways,
Doth our Redeemer use
To teach his heav'nly grace!
Mine eyes with joy and wonder see
What forms of love he bears for...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
Soft-scented in the air for yards around;
Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!
Just like a fragile bell of silver rime,
It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief
In the young pregnant year...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
THINE be the volumes, Jessy fair,
And with them take the Poet’s prayer,
That Fate may, in her fairest page,
With ev’ry kindliest, best presage
Of future bliss, enroll thy name:
With native worth and spotless fame,
And wakeful caution, still aware
Of ill—but chief, Man’s felon snare;
All blameless joys on earth we find,
And all the treasures of the mind—
These be thy guardian and reward;
So prays...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
WHOSE 1 is that noble, dauntless brow?
And whose that eye of fire?
And whose that generous princely mien,
E’en rooted foes admire?
Stranger! to justly show that brow,
And mark that eye of fire,
Would take His hand, whose vernal tints
His other works admire.
Bright as a cloudless summer sun,
With stately port he moves;
His guardian Seraph eyes with awe
The...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Guardian poems.