Famous Humility Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Humility poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous humility poems. These examples illustrate what a famous humility poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Edgar Lee Masters
Have you seen walking through the village
A man with downcast eyes and haggard face?
That is my husband who, by secret cruelty
never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty;
Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth,
And with broken pride and shameful humility,
I sank into the grave.
But what think you gnaws at my husband's heart?
The face of...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
We have no aspiration vain
For paradise Utopian,
And here in our sun-happy Spain,
Though man exploit his fellow man,
To high constraint we humbly yield,
And turn from politics to toil,
Content to till a kindly field
And bring forth bounty from the soil.
They tell us wars will never cease;
They sy the world is out of joint.
How well we Know! But peace is peace
Even imposed...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE IV. Si è debile il filo a cui s' attene. HE GRIEVES IN ABSENCE FROM LAURA. The thread on which my weary life dependsSo fragile is and weak,If none kind succour lends,Soon 'neath the painful burden will it break;Since doom'd to take my sad farewell of her,In whom begins...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
My virtues in Carara stone
Cut carefully you all my scan;
Beneath I lie, a fetid bone,
The marble worth more than the man.
If on my pure tomb they should grave
My vices,--how the folks would grin!
And say with sympathetic wave:
"Like us he was a man of sin."
And somehow he consoled thereby,
Knowing they may, though Hades bent,
When finally they come to die,
Enjoy a...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Proud of my broken heart, since thou didst break it,
Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,
Proud of my night, since thou with moons dost slake it,
Not to partake thy passion, my humility.
Thou can'st not boast, like Jesus, drunken without companion
Was the strong cup of anguish brewed for the Nazarene
Thou can'st not pierce tradition with the peerless...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
As some rapt gazer on the lowly earth,
Looks up to radiant planets, ranging far,
So I, whose soul doth know thy wondrous worth
Look longing up to thee as to a star.
...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Marvell
Courage my Soul, now learn to wield
The weight of thine immortal Shield.
Close on thy Head thy Helmet bright.
Ballance thy Sword against the Fight.
See where an Army, strong as fair,
With silken Banners spreads the air.
Now, if thou bee'st that thing Divine,
In this day's Combat let it shine:
And shew that Nature wants an Art
To conquer one resolved Heart.
Pleasure
Welcome the Creations Guest,
Lord...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
By what serene malevolence of names
Had you the gift of yours, Theophilus?
Not even a smeared young Cyclops at his games
Would have you long,—and you are one of us.
Told of your deeds I shudder for your dream
And they, no doubt, are few and innocent.
Meanwhile, I marvel; for in you, it seems,
Heredity outshines environment.
What...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
Sometimes I tremble like a storm-swept flower,
And seek to hide my tortured soul from thee.
Bowing my head in deep humility
Before the silent thunder of thy power.
Sometimes I flee before thy blazing light,
As from the specter of pursuing death;
Intimidated lest thy mighty breath,
Windways, will sweep me into utter night.
For oh, I fear...Read more of this...
by
Francis Thompson
Thou dost to rich attire a grace,
To let it deck itself with thee,
And teachest pomp strange cunning ways
To be thought simplicity.
But lilies, stolen from grassy mold,
No more curled state unfold
Translated to a vase of gold;
In burning throne though they keep still
Serenities unthawed and chill.
Therefore, albeit thou'rt stately so,
In statelier state thou us'dst to go.
Though jewels should phosphoric burn
Through those...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
I saw by looking in his eyes
That they remembered everything;
And this was how I came to know
That he was here, still wandering.
For though the figure and the scene
Were never to be reconciled,
I knew the man as I had known
His image when I was a child.
With evidence at every turn,
I should have...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I
Around me the images of thirty years:
An ambush; pilgrims at the water-side;
Casement upon trial, half hidden by the bars,
Guarded; Griffith staring in hysterical pride;
Kevin O'Higgins' countenance that wears
A gentle questioning look that cannot hide
A soul incapable of remorse or rest;
A revolutionary soldier kneeling to be blessed;
II
An Abbot or Archbishop with an upraised hand
Blessing the Tricolour. 'This is not,'...Read more of this...
by
Howard Nemerov
What gives it power makes it change its mind
At each extreme, and lean its rising rain
Down low, first one and then the other way;
In which exchange humility and pride
Reverse, forgive, arise, and die again,
Wherefore it holds at both ends of the day
The rainbow in its scattering grains of spray....Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I meditate upon a swallow's flight,
Upon a aged woman and her house,
A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night
Although that western cloud is luminous,
Great works constructed there in nature's spite
For scholars and for poets after us,
Thoughts long knitted into a single thought,
A dance-like glory that those walls begot.
There Hyde before he had beaten into prose
That noble blade the Muses buckled...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
We have all of us read how the Israelites fled
From Egypt with Pharaoh in eager pursuit of 'em,
And Pharaoh's fierce troop were all put "in the soup"
When the waters rolled softly o'er every galoot of 'em.
The Jews were so glad when old Pharaoh was "had"
That they sounded their timbrels and capered like mad.
You...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I met upon a narrow way,
Dead weary from his toil,
A fellow warped and gnarled and grey,
Who reeked of sweat and soil.
His rags were readyful to rot,
His eyes were dreary dim;
Yet . . . yet I had the humble thought
To raise my hat to him.
For thinks I: It's the likes of him
That makes the likes of me;
With horny hand...Read more of this...
by
Edmund Spenser
Now ceasse ye damsels your delights forepast,
Enough is it, that all the day was youres:
Now day is doen, and night is nighing fast:
Now bring the Bryde into the brydall boures.
Now night is come, now soone her disaray,
And in her bed her lay;
Lay her in lillies and in violets,
And silken courteins ouer her display,
And odourd sheetes, and Arras couerlets,
Behold how...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
WHOEVER comes to shroud me do not harm
Nor question much
That subtle wreath of hair about mine arm;
The mystery the sign you must not touch
For 'tis my outward soul 5
Viceroy to that which unto heav'n being gone
Will leave this to control
And keep these limbs her provinces from dissolution.
For if the sinewy...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
1906
The stamina of an old long-noble race
in the eyebrows' heavy arches. In the mild
blue eyes the solemn anguish of a child
and here and there humility-not a fool's
but feminine: the look of one who serves.
The mouth quite ordinary large and straight
composed yet not willing to speak out
when necessary. The forehead still na?ve
most comfortable in shadows looking down.
This as a whole just...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET IV. Quel ch' infinita providenza ed arte. HE CELEBRATES THE BIRTHPLACE OF LAURA. He that with wisdom, goodness, power divine,Did ample Nature's perfect book design,Adorn'd this beauteous world, and those above,Kindled fierce Mars, and soften'd milder Jove:When seen on earth the shadows to fulfillOf the less volume which conceal'd...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Higher far,
Upward, into the pure realm,
Over sun or star,
Over the flickering Dæmon film,
Thou must mount for love,—
Into vision which all form
In one only form dissolves;
In a region where the wheel,
On which all beings ride,
Visibly revolves;
Where the starred eternal worm
Girds the world with bound and term;
Where unlike things are like,
When good and ill,
And joy and moan,
Melt into one.
There Past, Present,...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Christ's invitation to sinners, or, Humility and pride.
Mt. 11:28-30.
"Come hither, all ye weary souls,
Ye heavy-laden sinners, come;
I'll give you rest from all your toils,
And raise you to my heav'nly home.
"They shall find rest that learn of me;
I'm of a meek and lowly mind;
But passion rages like the sea,
And pride is restless as the wind.
"Blest is the man whose...Read more of this...
by
William Drummond
Doth then the world go thus? doth all thus move?
Is this the justice which on earth we find?
Is this that firm decree which all doth bind?
Are these your influences, Powers above?
Those souls, which vice's moody mists most blind,
Blind Fortune, blindly, most their friend doth prove;
And they who thee, poor idol Virtue! love,
Ply like a feather tossed by storm and...Read more of this...
by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
I
In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and...Read more of this...
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