Famous Heresy Poems by Famous Poets

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

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113. A Dedication to Gavin Hamilton Esq

by Robert Burns
 EXPECT na, sir, in this narration,
A fleechin, fleth’rin Dedication,
To roose you up, an’ ca’ you guid,
An’ sprung o’ great an’ noble bluid,
Because ye’re surnam’d like His Grace—
Perhaps related to the race:
Then, when I’m tir’d-and sae are ye,
Wi’ mony a fulsome, sinfu’ lie,
Set up a face how I stop short,
For fear your modesty be hurt.


 This may do—maun do, sir,...Read more of this...

In a lone waste I saw a debauchee,

by Omar Khayyam
In a lone waste I saw a debauchee,
He had no home, no faith, no heresy,
No God, no truth, no law, no certitude;
Where in this world is man so bold as he?...Read more of this...

Erasmus

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 When he protested, not too solemnly, 
That for a world’s achieving maintenance 
The crust of overdone divinity 
Lacked aliment, they called it recreance; 
And when he chose through his own glass to scan
Sick Europe, and reduced, unyieldingly, 
The monk within the cassock to the man 
Within the monk, they called it heresy. 

And when he made so perilously bold...Read more of this...

Sonnet XLVIII

by Edmund Spenser
 INnocent paper whom too cruell hand,
Did make the matter to auenge her yre:
and ere she could thy cause wel vnderstand,
did sacrifize vnto the greedy fyre.
Well worthy thou to haue found better hyre,
then so bad end for hereticks ordayned:
yet heresy nor treason didst conspire,
but plead thy maisters cause vniustly payned.
Whom all the carelesse of his griefe constrayned
to vtter forth th'anguish...Read more of this...

Living In Sin

by Adrienne Rich
 She had thought the studio would keep itself;
no dust upon the furniture of love.
Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,
the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,
a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat
stalking the picturesque amusing mouse
had risen at his urging.
Not that at five each separate stair would writhe
under the milkman's tramp; that morning light
so coldly...Read more of this...

Jacke-On-Both-Sides

by William Strode
 I hold as fayth
What Rome's Church sayth
Where the King's head,
That flock's misled
Where th' Altar's drest
That People's blest
Who shuns the Masse
Hee's but an Asse
Who Charity preach
They Heav'n soone reach
On Fayth t'rely,
'Tis heresy


What England's Church allows
My Conscience disavowes;
That Church can have no seame;
That holdes the Pope supreme;
There's service scarce divine;
With table, bread and wine;
Hee's Catholique and wise;
Who the Communion flyes;
That Church...Read more of this...

To drink wine and rejoice is my gospel of life. To

by Omar Khayyam
To drink wine and rejoice is my gospel of life. To
be as indifferent to heresy as to religion is my creed. I
asked the bride of the human race [the world] what her
dowry was, and she answered: My dowry consists in the
joy of my heart.
293...Read more of this...

In The Secular Night

by Margaret Atwood
 In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
you remember it from being sixteen,
when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
or so you suspected,
and you had to baby-sit.
You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
and filled up the glass with grapejuice
and ginger ale, and put on Glenn...Read more of this...

On Behalf of Some Irishmen not Followers of Tradition

by George William Russell
 THEY call us aliens, we are told,
Because our wayward visions stray
From that dim banner they unfold,
The dreams of worn-out yesterday.
The sum of all the past is theirs,
The creeds, the deeds, the fame, the name,
Whose death-created glory flares
And dims the spark of living flame.
They weave the necromancer’s spell,
And burst the graves where martyrs slept,
Their ancient story to retell,
Renewing tears the...Read more of this...

What He Thought

by Heather McHugh
 We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the Mayor, mulled a couple
matters over. The Italian literati seemed
bewildered by the language of America: they asked us
what does "flat drink" mean? and the mysterious
"cheap date" (no explanation lessened
this one's mystery). Among Italian writers...Read more of this...

The sweetest Heresy received

by Emily Dickinson
 The sweetest Heresy received
That Man and Woman know --
Each Other's Convert --
Though the Faith accommodate but Two --

The Churches are so frequent --
The Ritual -- so small --
The Grace so unavoidable --
To fail -- is Infidel --...Read more of this...

God Needs Antonio

by George Eliot
 Your soul was lifted by the wings today
Hearing the master of the violin:
You praised him, praised the great Sabastian too
Who made that fine Chaconne; but did you think
Of old Antonio Stradivari? -him
Who a good century and a half ago
Put his true work in that brown instrument
And by the nice adjustment of its frame
Gave it responsive life, continuous
With the master's...Read more of this...

Song of Man XXV

by Kahlil Gibran
 I was here from the moment of the 
Beginning, and here I am still. And 
I shall remain here until the end 
Of the world, for there is no 
Ending to my grief-stricken being. 


I roamed the infinite sky, and 
Soared in the ideal world, and 
Floated through the firmament. But 
Here I am, prisoner of measurement. 


I heard...Read more of this...

259. A New Psalm for the Chapel of Kilmarnock

by Robert Burns
 O SING a new song to the Lord,
 Make, all and every one,
A joyful noise, even for the King
 His restoration.


The sons of Belial in the land
 Did set their heads together;
Come, let us sweep them off, said they,
 Like an o’erflowing river.


They set their heads together, I say,
 They set their heads together;
On right, on left, on every...Read more of this...

Henry Purcell

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell 
 and praises him that, whereas other musicians have 
 given utterance to the moods of man's mind, he has, 
 beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and 
 species of man as created both in him and in all men 
 generally.


Have, fair fallen, O fair,...Read more of this...

280. The Kirk of Scotland's Alarm: A Ballad

by Robert Burns
 ORTHODOX! orthodox, who believe in John Knox,
 Let me sound an alarm to your conscience:
A heretic blast has been blown in the West,
 That what is no sense must be nonsense,
Orthodox! That what is no sense must be nonsense.


Doctor Mac! Doctor Mac, you should streek on a rack,
 To strike evil-doers wi’ terror:
To join Faith and Sense, upon any...Read more of this...

Apple-Pie and Cheese

by Eugene Field
 Full many a sinful notion
Conceived of foreign powers
Has come across the ocean
To harm this land of ours;
And heresies called fashions
Have modesty effaced,
And baleful, morbid passions
Corrupt our native taste.
O tempora! O mores!
What profanations these
That seek to dim the glories
Of apple-pie and cheese!

I'm glad my education
Enables me to stand
Against the vile temptation
Held out on every hand;
Eschewing all the tittles
With vanity replete,
I'm...Read more of this...

Sonnet CVII

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 137] SONNET CVII. Fontana di dolore, albergo d' ira. HE ATTRIBUTES THE WICKEDNESS OF THE COURT OF ROME TO ITS GREAT WEALTH.  Spring of all woe, O den of curssed ire,Scoole of errour, temple of heresye;Thow Pope, I meane, head of hypocrasye,Thow and thie churche, unsaciat of desyre,Read more of this...

89. The Ordination

by Robert Burns
 KILMARNOCK wabsters, fidge an’ claw,
 An’ pour your creeshie nations;
An’ ye wha leather rax an’ draw,
 Of a’ denominations;
Swith to the Ligh Kirk, ane an’ a’
 An’ there tak up your stations;
Then aff to Begbie’s in a raw,
 An’ pour divine libations
 For joy this day.


Curst Common-sense, that imp o’ hell,
 Cam in wi’ Maggie Lauder; 1
But Oliphant 2...Read more of this...

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