Famous Law Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Law poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous law poems. These examples illustrate what a famous law poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Venus, when her son was lost,
Cried him up and down the coast,
In hamlets, palaces, and parks,
And told the truant by his marks,
Golden curls, and quiver, and bow;—
This befell long ago.
Time and tide are strangely changed,
Men and manners much deranged;
None will now find Cupid latent
By this foolish antique patent.
He came late along the waste,
Shod like a traveller for haste,
With malice...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Heed not the Sunna, nor the law divine;
If to the poor his portion you assign,
And never injure one, nor yet abuse,
I guarantee you heaven, and now some wine!...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THOU art confused, my beloved, at, seeing the thousandfold
union
Shown in this flowery troop, over the garden dispers'd;
any a name dost thou hear assign'd; one after another
Falls on thy list'ning ear, with a barbarian sound.
None resembleth another, yet all their forms have a likeness;
Therefore, a mystical law is by the chorus proclaim'd;
Yes, a sacred enigma! Oh, dearest friend, could...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane --
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
The Law whereby my lady moves
Was never Law to me,
But 'tis enough that she approves
Whatever Law it be.
For in that Law, and by that Law
My constant course I'll steer;
Not that I heed or deem it dread,
But that she holds it dear.
Tho' Asia sent for my content
Her richest...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
When my blood flows calm as a purling river,
When my heart is asleep and my brain has sway,
It is then that I vow we must part for ever,
That I will forget you, and put you away
Out of my life, as a dream is banished
Out of the mind when the dreamer awakes;
That I know it will...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Once more the gate behind me falls;
Once more before my face
I see the moulder'd Abbey-walls,
That stand within the chace.
Beyond the lodge the city lies,
Beneath its drift of smoke;
And ah! with what delighted eyes
I turn to yonder oak.
For when my passion first began,
Ere that, which in me burn'd,
The love, that...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
First, for effusions due unto the dead,
My solemn vows have here accomplished;
Next, how I love thee, that my grief must tell,
Wherein thou liv'st for ever.--Dear, farewell!...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
"Vocat aestus in umbram"
Nemesianus Es. IV.
E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start --
No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands;
Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume,
crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true Soul and Body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce,...Read more of this...
by
Adrienne Rich
1
You, once a belle in Shreveport,
with henna-colored hair, skin like a peachbud,
still have your dresses copied from that time,
and play a Chopin prelude
called by Cortot: "Delicious recollections
float like perfume through the memory."
Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake,
heavy with useless experience, rich
with suspicion, rumor, fantasy,
crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge
of mere fact. In the prime of your life.
Nervy, glowering,...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
Together in this grave lie Benjamin Painter, attorney at law,
And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend.
Down the grey road, friends, children, men and women,
Passing one by one out of life, left me till I was alone
With Nig for partner, bed fellow, comrade in drink.
In the morning of life I knew aspiration and...Read more of this...
by
Jean Ingelow
A Scholar is musing on his want of success.)
To strive—and fail. Yes, I did strive and fail;
I set mine eyes upon a certain night
To find a certain star—and could not hail
With them its deep-set light.
Fool that I was! I will rehearse my fault:
I, wingless, thought myself on high to lift
Among...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
If we could roll back History
A century, let's say,
And start from there, I'm sure that we
Would find things as to-day:
In all creation's cosmic range
No vestige of a change.
Turn back a thousand years, the same
Unchangement we would view;
Cause and Effect their laws proclaim,
The truest of the true,
And in life's mechanistic groove
The Universe would move.
Grim...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[written in a post-chaise.]
(* In the original, Schwager, which has the
twofold meaning of brother-in-law and postilion.)
HASTEN thee, Kronos!
On with clattering trot
Downhill goeth thy path;
Loathsome dizziness ever,
When thou delayest, assails me.
Quick, rattle along,
Over stock and stone let thy trot
Into life straightway lead
Now once more
Up the toilsome ascent
Hasten, panting for breath!
Up, then, nor idle be,--
Striving and hoping, up, up!
Wide,...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
THOUGH I waste watches framing words to fetter
Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss,
Out of the night there looms a sense 'twere better
To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss.
For winning love we win the risk of losing,
And losing love is as one's life were riven;
It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using
To cede what was superfluously given.
Let...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
My law it is in pleasure's paths to stray,
My creed to shun the theologic fray;
I wedded Luck, and offered her a dower,
She said, «I want none, so thy heart be gay.»...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
AFRICA
I will sing you a song of Los. the Eternal Prophet:
He sung it to four harps at the tables of Eternity.
In heart-formed Africa.
Urizen faded! Ariston shudderd!
And thus the Song began
Adam stood in the garden of Eden:
And Noah on the mountains of Ararat;
They saw Urizen give his Laws to the Nations
By...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
I WAITED today for a freight train to pass.
Cattle cars with steers butting their horns against the
bars, went by.
And a half a dozen hoboes stood on bumpers between
cars.
Well, the cattle are respectable, I thought.
Every steer has its transportation paid for by the farmer
sending it to market,
While the hoboes are law-breakers in riding a railroad
train without a ticket.
It reminded me...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
It is done!
Clang of bell and roar of gun
Send the tidings up and down.
How the belfries rock and reel!
How the great guns, peal on peal,
Fling the joy from town to town!
Ring, O bells!
Every stroke exulting tells
Of the burial hour of crime.
Loud and long, that all may hear,
Ring for every listening ear
Of Eternity and Time!
Let us kneel:
God's own voice is...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
LET other heroes boast their scars,
The marks of sturt and strife:
And other poets sing of wars,
The plagues of human life:
Shame fa’ the fun, wi’ sword and gun
To slap mankind like lumber!
I sing his name, and nobler fame,
Wha multiplies our number.
Great Nature spoke, with air benign,
“Go on, ye human race;
This lower world I you resign;
...Read more of this...
by
The Bible
“The law of Jehovah is perfect, bringing back the soul.
The reminder of Jehovah is trustworthy, making the inexperienced one wise.”—Ps. 19:7.
...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
TRUE Love is founded in rocks of Remembrance
In stones of Forbearance and mortar of pain.
The workman lays wearily granite on granite,
And bleeds for his castle, 'mid sunshine and rain.
Love is not velvet, not all of it velvet,
Not all of it banners, not gold-leaf alone.
'Tis stern as the ages and old as Religion.
With...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
(From The Jungle Book)
Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back --
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
MOSES ON THE NILE.
("Mes soeurs, l'onde est plus fraiche.")
{TO THE FLORAL GAMES, Toulouse, Feb. 10, 1820.}
"Sisters! the wave is freshest in the ray
Of the young morning; the reapers are asleep;
The river bank is lonely: come away!
The early murmurs of old Memphis creep
Faint on...Read more of this...
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