Famous Jews Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Jews poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous jews poems. These examples illustrate what a famous jews poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Philip Levine
"Hill of Jews," says one,
named for a cemetery
long gone."Hill of Jove,"
says another, and maybe
Jove stalked here
once or rests now
where so many lie
who felt God swell
the earth and burn
along the edges
of their breath.
Almost seventy years
since a troop of cavalry
jingled up the silent road,
dismounted, and loaded
their...Read more of this...
by
Erica Jong
We have a small sculpture of Henry James on our terrace in New York City.
Nothing would surprise him.
The beast in the jungle was what he saw--
Edith Wharton's obfuscating older brother. . .
He fled the demons
of Manhattan
for fear they would devour
his inner ones
(the ones who wrote the books)
& silence the stifled screams
of his protagonists.
To Europe
like a wandering Jew--
WASP that he...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
we say blame the teachers
don't we send our young to school
to be taught the simple rules
for decent public-spirited behaviour
do we pay such crushing rates
to have our children turned to louts
we're sick of all this fuss
we say blame the teachers
or the preachers
they're all the same to us
we say blame the preachers
what right have they to shake
their moral fingers every week
at...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
I don't Know if history repeats itself
But I do know that you don't.
I remember that city was didvided
Not only between Jews and Arabs,
But Between me and you,
When we were there together.
We made ourselves a womb of dangers
We built ourselves a house of deadening wars
Like men of far north
Who build themselves a safe warm house of deadening ice.
The...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Three Kings came riding from far away,
Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar;
Three Wise Men out of the East were they,
And they travelled by night and they slept by day,
For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star.
The star was so beautiful, large, and clear,
That all the other stars of the sky
Became a white mist in the atmosphere,
And by this they...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
God's wonders of creation, providence, redemption, and salvation.
Give to our God immortal praise;
Mercy and truth are all his ways:
Wonders of grace to God belong,
Repeat his mercies in your song.
Give to the Lord of lords renown,
The King of kings with glory crown:
His mercies ever shall endure,
When lords and kings are known no more.
He built the earth, he spread the sky,
And...Read more of this...
by
Paul Celan
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown
we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night
we drink it and drink it
we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined
A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents
he writes
he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden
hair Margarete
he writes...Read more of this...
by
Derek Walcott
A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?
Threshed out by beaters,...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Sonnez, clairons de la pensée!")
{Bk. VII. i., March 19, 1853.}
Sound, sound for ever, Clarions of Thought!
When Joshua 'gainst the high-walled city fought,
He marched around it with his banner high,
His troops in serried order following nigh,
But not a sword was drawn, no shaft outsprang,
Only...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
Some people find out they are Jews.
They can't believe it.
Thy had always hated Jews.
As children they had roamed in gangs on winter nights in the old
neighborhood, looking for Jews.
They were not Jewish, they were Irish.
They brandished broken bottles, tough guys with blood on their
lips, looking for Jews.
They intercepted Jewish boys walking alone and beat them up.
Sometimes they...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Because my overcoat's in pawn,
I choose to take my glass
Within a little bistro on
The rue du Montparnasse;
The dusty bins with bottles shine,
The counter's lined with zinc,
And there I sit and drink my wine,
And think and think and think.
I think of hoary old Stamboul,
Of Moslem and of Greek,
Of Persian in coat of wool,
Of Kurd and Arab sheikh;
Of all the types...Read more of this...
by
Laure-Anne Bosselaar
Doors were left open in heaven again:
drafts wheeze, clouds wrap their ripped pages
around roofs and trees. Like wet flags, shutters
flap and fold. Even light is blown out of town,
its last angles caught in sopped
newspaper wings and billowing plastic —
all this in one American street.
Elsewhere, somewhere, a tide
recedes, incense is lit, an infant...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
What blest examples do I find
Writ in the Word of Truth
Of children that began to mind
Religion in their youth!
Jesus, who reigns above the sky,
And keeps the world in awe,
Was once a child as young as I,
And kept His Father's law.
At twelve years old he talked with men,
The Jews all wondering stand;
Yet He obeyed his Mother then,
And came at her...Read more of this...
by
Osip Mandelstam
This night is irredeemable.
Where you are, it is still bright.
At the gates of Jerusalem,
a black sun is alight.
The yellow sun is hurting,
sleep, baby, sleep.
The Jews in the Temple’s burning
buried my mother deep.
Without rabbi, without blessing,
over her ashes, there,
the Jews in the Temple’s burning
chanted the prayer.
Over this mother,
Israel’s voice was sung.
I woke in a glittering cradle,
lit by a black sun....Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
My Claudia, it is long since we have met,
So kissed, so held each other heart to heart!
I thought to greet thee as a conqueror comes,
Bearing the trophies of his prowess home,
But Jove hath willed it should be otherwise
Jove, say I? Nay, some mightier stranger-god
Who thus hath laid his heavy hand on me,
No victor,...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
He yelled at me in Greek,
my God!-”It's not his language
and I'm no good at-”his Aramaic,
was-”I am a monoglot of English
(American version) and, say pieces from
a baker's dozen others: where's the bread?
but rising in the Second Gospel, pal:
The seed goes down, god dies,
a rising happens,
some crust, and then occurs an eating. He said so,
a Greek idea,
troublesome to imaginary Jews,
like a...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
Ah, well! but the case seems hopeless, and the pen might write in vain;
The people gabble of old things over and over again.
For the sake of the sleek importer we slave with the pick and the shears,
While hundreds of boys in Australia long to be engineers.
A new generation has risen under Australian skies,
Boys with...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
v.22-27
S. M.
An hosanna for the Lord's day; or, A new song of salvation by Christ.
See what a living stone
The builders did refuse;
Yet God hath built his church thereon,
In spite of envious Jews.
The scribe and angry priest
Reject thine only Son;
Yet on this Rock shall Zion rest,
As the chief corner-stone.
The work, O Lord, is thine,
And wondrous in our eyes;
This day...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 Browning
Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews -- sons mine -- ah God, I know not! Well --
She, men would have to be your mother once,
Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
What's done is done, and she is dead beside,
Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
And as she died so must we...Read more of this...
by
Robert Pinsky
In the willows along the river at Pleasure Bay
A catbird singing, never the same phrase twice.
Here under the pines a little off the road
In 1927 the Chief of Police
And Mrs. W. killed themselves together,
Sitting in a roadster. Ancient unshaken pilings
And underwater chunks of still-mortared brick
In shapes like bits of puzzle strew the bottom
Where the landing was for Price's Hotel...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Praise God, all his saints or, The saints judging the world.
All ye that love the Lord, rejoice,
And let your songs be new;
Amidst the church with cheerful voice
His later wonders show.
The Jews, the people of his grace,
Shall their Redeemer sing;
And Gentile nations join the praise,
While Zion owns her King.
The Lord takes pleasure in the just,
Whom sinners treat with scorn;
The meek...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
Spit in my face you Jews, and pierce my side,
Buffet, and scoff, scourge, and crucify me,
For I have sinned, and sinned, and only he
Who could do no iniquity hath died:
But by my death can not be satisfied
My sins, which pass the Jews' impiety:
They killed once an inglorious man, but I
Crucify him daily, being now glorified.
Oh let me, then, his...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The apostles' commission.
Mark 16:15ff; Matt. 28:18ff.
"O preach my gospel," saith the Lord,
"Bid the whole earth my grace receive;
He shall be saved that trusts my word,
He shall be damned that won't believe.
"I'll make your great commission known,
And ye shall prove my gospel true,
By all the works that I have done,
By all the wonders ye shall do.
"Go heal the sick,...Read more of this...
by
Hart Crane
How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty--
Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
--Till elevators drop us from our day . . .
I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes...Read more of this...
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