Famous Judgment Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Judgment poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous judgment poems. These examples illustrate what a famous judgment poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Vachel Lindsay
This poem is intended as a description of a sort of Blashfield mural painting on the sky. To be sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle, yet in a slower, more orotund fashion. It is presumably an exercise for an entertainment on the evening of Washington's Birthday.
Dawn this morning burned all red
Watching them in wonder.
There I saw our spangled...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
'Love is all
Unsatisfied
That cannot take the whole
Body and soul';
And that is what Jane said.
'Take the sour
If you take me
I can scoff and lour
And scold for an hour.'
"That's certainly the case,' said he.
'Naked I lay,
The grass my bed;
Naked and hidden away,
That black day';
And that is what Jane said.
'What can be shown?
What true love be?
All could be known or shown
If Time...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The Saviour looked on Peter. Ay, no word,
No gesture of reproach; the Heavens serene
Though heavy with armed justice, did not lean
Their thunders that way: the forsaken Lord
Looked only, on the traitor. None record
What that look was, none guess; for those who have seen
Wronged lovers loving through a death-pang keen,
Or pale-cheeked martyrs smiling to a sword,
Have missed Jehovah at the...Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
With beating heart and lagging feet,
Lord, I approach the Judgment-seat.
All bring hither the fruits of toil,
Measures of wheat and measures of oil;
Gold and jewels and precious wine;
No hands bare like these hands of mine.
The treasure I have nor weighs nor gleams:
Lord, I can bring you only dreams.
In days of spring, when my blood ran high,
I lay in the grass...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Judgment is justest
When the Judged,
His action laid away,
Divested is of every Disk
But his sincerity.
Honor is then the safest hue
In a posthumous Sun --
Not any color will endure
That scrutiny can burn....Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy;
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find.
But from thine...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Departed -- to the Judgment --
A Mighty Afternoon --
Great Clouds -- like Ushers -- learning --
Creation -- looking on --
The Flesh -- Surrendered -- Cancelled --
The Bodiless -- begun --
Two Worlds -- like Audiences -- disperse --
And leave the Soul -- alone --...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
LII. — TO CENSORIOUS COURTLING. COURTLING, I rather thou should'st utterly Dispraise my work, than praise it frostily : When I am read, thou feign'st a weak applause, As if thou wert my friend, but lack'dst a cause. This but thy judgment fools : the other way Would both thy folly and thy spite betray....Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The magistrate's Psalm.
Mercy and judgment are my song;
And since they both to thee belong,
My gracious God, my righteous King,
To thee my songs and vows I bring.
If I am raised to bear the sword,
I'll take my counsels from thy word;
Thy justice and thy heav'nly grace
Shall be the pattern of my ways.
Let wisdom all my actions guide,
And let my God with...Read more of this...
by
Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
I sing of the decline of Henry Clay
Who loved a white girl of uncommon size.
Although a small man in a little way,
He had in him some seed of enterprise.
Each day he caught the seven-thirty train
To work, watered his garden after tea,
Took an umbrella if it looked like rain A
nd was remarkably like...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Alas! noble Prince Leopold, he is dead!
Who often has his lustre shed:
Especially by singing for the benefit of Esher School,
Which proves he was a wise prince. and no conceited fool.
Methinks I see him on the platform singing the Sands o' Dee,
The generous-hearted Leopold, the good and the free,
Who was manly in his actions, and beloved by his mother;
And in...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
Hatred and vengence—my eternal portion
Scarce can endure delay of execution—
Wait with impatient readiness to seize my
Soul in a moment.
Damned below Judas; more abhorred than he was,
Who for a few pence sold his holy Master!
Twice betrayed, Jesus me, the last delinquent,
Deems the profanest.
Man disavows, and Deity disowns me:
Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;
Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths...Read more of this...
by
Robert Southey
The summer and autumn had been so wet,
That in winter the corn was growing yet,
'Twas a piteous sight to see all around
The grain lie rotting on the ground.
Every day the starving poor
Crowded around Bishop Hatto's door,
For he had a plentiful last-year's store,
And all the neighbourhood could tell
His granaries were furnish'd well.
At last Bishop Hatto appointed a day
To quiet the...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hood
Tim Turpin he was gravel-blind,
And ne'er had seen the skies :
For Nature, when his head was made,
Forgot to dot his eyes.
So, like a Christmas pedagogue,
Poor Tim was forced to do -
Look out for pupils; for he had
A vacancy for two.
There's some have specs to help their sight
Of objects dim and small :
But Tim had specks within his...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
1892
"And there is a Japanese idol at Kamakura"
Oye who treated the Narrow Way
By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day,
Be gentle when "the heathen" pray
To Buddha at Kamakura!
To him the Way, the Law, apart,
Whom Maya held beneath her heart,
Ananda's Lord, the Bodhisat,
The Buddha of Kamakura.
For though he neither burns nor sees,
Nor hears ye thank your Deities,
Ye have not sinned with...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
I. THE FLOWER'S NAME
Here's the garden she walked across,
Arm in my arm, such a short while since:
Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss
Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!
She must have reached this shrub ere she turned,
As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned,
To feed and forget it the...Read more of this...
by
Ellis Parker Butler
Saint Peter stood, at Heaven's gate,
All souls claims to adjudicate
Saying to some souls, "Enter in!"
"Go to Hell," to others, "you are steeped in sin."
When up from earth, with a great hubbub,
Came all the members of the Tuscarora Club.
The angel Gabriel, peering out,
Said, "What, the devil, is this noise about?"
"Gabe," said Peter, "There's always lots of noise,
At any get-together of...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
WHEN sounds the trumpet at the Judgment Day,
And when forever all things earthly die,
We must a full and true account supply
Of ev'ry useless word we dropp'd in play.
But what effect will all the words convey
Wherein with eager zeal and lovingly,
That I might win thy favour, labour'd I,
If on thine ear alone they die away?
Therefore, sweet love, thy conscience bear...Read more of this...
by
Arthur Symons
They pass upon their old, tremulous feet,
Creeping with little satchels down the street,
And they remember, many years ago,
Passing that way in silks. They wander, slow
And solitary, through the city ways,
And they alone remember those old days
Men have forgotten. In their shaking heads
A dancer of old carnivals yet treads
The measure of past...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
One Blessing had I than the rest
So larger to my Eyes
That I stopped gauging -- satisfied --
For this enchanted size --
It was the limit of my Dream --
The focus of my Prayer --
A perfect -- paralyzing Bliss --
Contented as Despair --
I knew no more of Want -- or Cold --
Phantasms both become
For this new Value in the Soul --
Supremest...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
(a)
they seek to celebrate the word
not to bring their knives out on a poem
dissecting it to find a heart
whose beat lies naked on a table
not to score in triumph on a line
no sensitive would put a nostril to
but simply to receive it as an
offering glimpsing the sacred there
poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Tie the Strings to my Life, My Lord,
Then, I am ready to go!
Just a look at the Horses --
Rapid! That will do!
Put me in on the firmest side --
So I shall never fall --
For we must ride to the Judgment --
And it's partly, down Hill --
But never I mind the steeper --
And never I mind the Sea --
Held fast...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
I have fetched the tears up out of the little wells,
Scooped them up with small, iron words,
Dripping over the runnels.
The harsh, cold wind of my words drove on, and still
I watched the tears on the guilty cheek of the boys
Glitter and spill.
Cringing Pity, and Love, white-handed, came
Hovering about the Judgment which stood in my eyes,
Whirling a flame.
....Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
Though better men may fear that trumpet's warning,
I meet you, lady, on the Judgment morning,
With golden hope my spirit still adorning.
Our God who made you all so fair and sweet
Is three times gentle, and before his feet
Rejoicing I shall say:—"The girl you gave
Was my first Heaven, an angel bent to save.
Oh, God, her maker, if my ingrate breath
Is worth...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
The man above was a murderer, the man below was a thief;
And I lay there in the bunk between, ailing beyond belief;
A weary armful of skin and bone, wasted with pain and grief.
My feet were froze, and the lifeless toes were purple and green and gray;
The little flesh that clung to my bones, you could punch it in holes...Read more of this...
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