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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).

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by Dryden, John
...vity
Some royal planet rul'd the southern sky;
Thy longing country's darling and desire;
Their cloudy pillar, and their guardian fire:
Their second Moses, whose extended wand
Divides the seas, and shows the promis'd land:
Whose dawning day, in very distant age,
Has exercis'd the sacred prophet's rage:
The people's pray'r, the glad diviner's theme,
The young men's vision, and the old men's dream!
Thee, Saviour, thee, the nation's vows confess;
And, never satisfi'd with seeing,...Read more of this...



by Byron, George (Lord)
...itude; 
I on Zuleika's slumber broke, 
And as thou knowest that for me 
Soon turns the Haram's grating key, 
Before the guardian slaves awoke 
We to the cypress groves had flown, 
And made earth, main, and heaven our own! 
There linger'd we, beguil'd too long 
With Mejnoun's tale, or Sadi's song, [3] 
Till I, who heard the deep tambour [4] 
Beat thy Divan's approaching hour, 
To thee, and to my duty true, 
Warn'd by the sound, to greet thee flew: 
But there Zuleika wanders ye...Read more of this...

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...he the bodiless dead espy?
And why with hollow voice cries she,
'Off, woman, off! this hour is mine-
Though thou her guardian spirit be,
Off, woman. off! 't is given to me.'

Then Christabel knelt by the lady's side,
And raised to heaven her eyes so blue-
'Alas!' said she, 'this ghastly ride-
Dear lady! it hath wildered you!'
The lady wiped her moist cold brow,
And faintly said, ''T is over now!'
Again the wild-flower wine she drank:
Her fair large eyes '...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...eve
That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,
Would send a glistering guardian, if need were,
To keep my life and honour unassailed. . . .
Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
I did not err: there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night,
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.
I cannot hallo to my brothers, but
Such noise as I can make to be ...Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...ar
And bade her seek the heights, nor faint, nor fail.
She will not fail, she heeds thy stirring cry,
She knows thy guardian spirit will be nigh,
And rising from beneath the chast'ning rod,
She stretches out her bleeding hands to God!...Read more of this...



by Wordsworth, William
...ed to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being. 

                                   Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former hea...Read more of this...

by Bowers, Edgar
...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 car—
First boo...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...s our poor protection  
And Christ himself doth rule. 

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion 25 
By guardian angels led  
Safe from temptation safe from sin's pollution  
She lives whom we call dead  

Day after day we think what she is doing 
In those bright realms of air; 30 
Year after year her tender steps pursuing  
Behold her grown more fair. 

Thus do we walk with her and keep unbroken 
The bond which nature gives  
Thinking that our ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...itude; 
I on Zuleika's slumber broke, 
And as thou knowest that for me 
Soon turns the Haram's grating key, 
Before the guardian slaves awoke 
We to the cypress groves had flown, 
And made earth, main, and heaven our own! 
There linger'd we, beguil'd too long 
With Mejnoun's tale, or Sadi's song, [3] 
Till I, who heard the deep tambour [4] 
Beat thy Divan's approaching hour, 
To thee, and to my duty true, 
Warn'd by the sound, to greet thee flew: 
But there Zuleika wanders ye...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...man
And ordered off. However, no great harm
Came to her. But she looked a trifle wan
When Theodore, her belated guardian,
Emerged. She snuggled up against him, trembling,
Half out of fear, half out of the assembling
Of all the thoughts and needs his playing had given.
Had she enjoyed herself, he wished to know.
"Oh! Theodore, can't you feel that it was Heaven!"
"Heaven! My Lottachen, and was it so?
Gebnitz was in good voice, but all the flow
Of her last ar...Read more of this...

by McKay, Claude
...ound, 
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 at Eastertime; 

And many thought it was a sacred sign, 
And some called it the resurrection flower; 
And I, a pagan, worshiped at its shrine, 
Yielding my heart unto its perfumed power....Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...is law he toiled,
Unspoken hope counselled a wise efficiency.

36
Max Breuck was honour's soul, he knew himself
The guardian of this girl; no more, no less.
As one in charge of guineas on a shelf
Loose in a china teapot, may confess
His need, but may not borrow till his friend
Comes back to give. So Max, in honour, said
No word of love or marriage; but the days
He clipped off on his almanac. The end
Must come! The second year, with feet of lead,
Lagged slowly ...Read more of this...

by Graham, Jorie
...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...Read more of this...

by Graham, Jorie
...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 b...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...flung back, and lips apart,
     Like monument of Grecian art,
     In listening mood, she seemed to stand,
     The guardian Naiad of the strand.
     XVIII.

     And ne'er did Grecian chisel trace
     A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace,
     Of finer form or lovelier face!
     What though the sun, with ardent frown,
     Had slightly tinged her cheek with brown,—
     The sportive toil, which, short and light
     Had dyed her glowing hue so bright,
     Served to...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...ruggle to forget. 

But England's shores are yet in view, 
And England's skies of tender blue 
Are arched above her guardian sea. 
I cannot yet Remembrance flee; 
I must again, then, firmly face 
That task of anguish, to retrace. 
Wedded to home­I home forsake, 
Fearful of change­I changes make; 
Too fond of ease­I plunge in toil; 
Lover of calm­I seek turmoil: 
Nature and hostile Destiny 
Stir in my heart a conflict wild; 
And long and fierce the war will be 
Ere...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...ipper knock'd the Ground,
And the press'd Watch return'd a silver Sound.
Belinda still her downy Pillow prest, 
Her Guardian Sylph prolong'd the balmy Rest. 
'Twas he had summon'd to her silent Bed
The Morning-Dream that hover'd o'er her Head.
A Youth more glitt'ring than a Birth-night Beau,
(That ev'n in Slumber caus'd her Cheek to glow)
Seem'd to her Ear his winning Lips to lay,
And thus in Whispers said, or seem'd to say.

Fairest of Mortals, thou distingui...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...ethereal blue, 
Splitting some planet with its playful tail, 
As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale. 

III 

The guardian seraphs had retired on high, 
Finding their charges past all care below; 
Terrestrial business fill'd nought in the sky 
Save the recording angel's black bureau; 
Who found, indeed, the facts to multiply 
With such rapidity of vice and woe, 
That he had stripp'd off both his wings in quills, 
And yet was in arrear of human ills. 

IV 

His busin...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...mmand 
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand 10 
Poor Ariel sends this silent token 
Of more than ever can be spoken; 
Your guardian spirit Ariel who 
From life to life must still pursue 
Your happiness for thus alone 15 
Can Ariel ever find his own. 
From Prospero's enchanted cell  
As the mighty verses tell  
To the throne of Naples he 
Lit you o'er the trackless sea 20 
Flitting on your prow before  
Like a living meteor. 
When you die the silent Moon 
In her interl...Read more of this...

by Padel, Ruth
...nto calm.
*
"Wasn't it you who slipped through the transparent
Darkness to my bed and whispered love? Aren't you
My guardian angel? Or is this arrant
Seeming, hallucination, thrown 
Up by that fly engineering a novel does
So beguilingly, or poems? Is this mad? 
Are there ways of dreaming I don't know?
Too bad. My soul has made its home
In you. I'm here and bare before you: shy,
In tears. But if I didn't heft my whole self up and hold it there - 
A crack-free m...Read more of this...

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