Famous Modesty Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Modesty poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous modesty poems. These examples illustrate what a famous modesty poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Walter Savage Landor
In Clementina’s artless mien
Lucilla asks me what I see,
And are the roses of sixteen
Enough for me?
Lucilla asks, if that be all,
Have I not cull’d as sweet before:
Ah yes, Lucilla! and their fall
I still deplore.
I now behold another scene,
Where Pleasure beams with Heaven’s own light,
More pure, more constant, more serene,
And not less bright.
Faith, on whose breast the Loves repose,
Whose chain...Read more of this...
by
William Strode
Though after Death, Thanks lessen into Praise,
And Worthies be not crown'd with gold, but bayes;
Shall we not thank? To praise Thee all agree;
We Debtors must out doe it, heartily.
Deserved Nobility of True Descent,
Though not so old in Thee grew Ancient:
We number not the Tree of Branched Birth,
But genealogie of Vertue, spreading forth
To many Births in value. Piety,
True Valour, Bounty,...Read more of this...
by
Marianne Moore
Fanaticism?No.Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
You can never tell with either
how it will go
or what you will do;
generating excitement--
a fever in the victim--
pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.
Victim in what category?
Owlman watching from the press box?
To whom does it apply?
Who is excited?Might it be I?
It's a pitcher's battle all the way--a duel--
a catcher's, as, with cruel
puma paw, Elston Howard lumbers...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
At Aix-la-Chapelle, in imperial array,
In its halls renowned in old story,
At the coronation banquet so gay
King Rudolf was sitting in glory.
The meats were served up by the Palsgrave of Rhine,
The Bohemian poured out the bright sparkling wine,
And all the Electors, the seven,
Stood waiting around the world-governing one,
As the chorus of stars encircle the sun,
That honor might duly be given.
And...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
I.
The storm that snapped our fate's one ship in twain
Hath blown my half o' the wreck from thine apart.
O Love! O Love! across the gray-waved main
To thee-ward strain my eyes, my arms, my heart.
I ask my God if e'en in His sweet place,
Where, by one waving of a wistful wing,
My soul could straightway tremble face to face
With thee, with...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THE warder looks down at the mid hour of night,
On the tombs that lie scatter'd below:
The moon fills the place with her silvery light,
And the churchyard like day seems to glow.
When see! first one grave, then another opes wide,
And women and men stepping forth are descried,
In cerements snow-white and trailing.
In haste for the sport soon their ankles they twitch,
And...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CCXXII. In tale Stella duo begli occhi vidi. THE BEAUTY OF LAURA IS PEERLESS. In one fair star I saw two brilliant eyes,With sweetness, modesty, so glistening o'er,That soon those graceful nests of Love beforeMy worn heart learnt all others to despise:Equall'd not her whoever won the prizeIn ages...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
O ONCE I lov’d a bonie lass,
Ay, and I love her still;
And whilst that virtue warms my breast,
I’ll love my handsome Nell.
As bonie lasses I hae seen,
And mony full as braw;
But, for a modest gracefu’ mein,
The like I never saw.
A bonie lass, I will confess,
Is pleasant to the e’e;
But, without some better qualities,
She’s...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
WI’ braw new branks in mickle pride,
And eke a braw new brechan,
My Pegasus I’m got astride,
And up Parnassus pechin;
Whiles owre a bush wi’ donwward crush,
The doited beastie stammers;
Then up he gets, and off he sets,
For sake o’ Willie Chalmers.
I doubt na, lass, that weel ken’d name
May cost a pair o’ blushes;
I am nae stranger...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
A gentle was Fridolin,
And he his mistress dear,
Savern's fair Countess, honored in
All truth and godly fear.
She was so meek, and, ah! so good!
Yet each wish of her wayward mood,
He would have studied to fulfil,
To please his God, with earnest will.
From the first hour when daylight shone
Till rang the vesper-chime,
He lived but for her will alone,
And deemed e'en that scarce...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
She's passing fair; but so demure is she,
So quiet is her gown, so smooth her hair,
That few there are who note her and agree
She's passing fair.
Yet when was ever beauty held more rare
Than simple heart and maiden modesty?
What fostered charms with virtue could compare?
Alas, no lover ever stops to see;
The best that she is offered is the air.
Yet- if...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
They had long met o' Zundays--her true love and she--
And at junketings, maypoles, and flings;
But she bode wi' a thirtover uncle, and he
Swore by noon and by night that her goodman should be
Naibor Sweatley--a gaffer oft weak at the knee
From taking o' sommat more cheerful than tea--
Who tranted, and moved people's...Read more of this...
by
John Trumbull
Bred in distant woods, the clown
Brings all his country airs to town;
The odd address, with awkward grace,
That bows with half-averted face;
The half-heard compliments, whose note
Is swallow'd in the trembling throat;
The stiffen'd gait, the drawling tone,
By which his native place is known;
The blush, that looks by vast degrees,
Too much like modesty...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Nothin very bad happen to me lately.
How you explain that? -”I explain that, Mr Bones,
terms o' your bafflin odd sobriety.
Sober as man can get, no girls, no telephones,
what could happen bad to Mr Bones?
-”If life is a handkerchief sandwich,
in a modesty of death I join my father
who dared so long agone leave me.
A bullet on a concrete stoop
close by...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Une terre au flanc maigre.")
{Bk. III. xi., October, 1840.}
A clod with rugged, meagre, rust-stained, weather-worried face,
Where care-filled creatures tug and delve to keep a worthless race;
And glean, begrudgedly, by all their unremitting toil,
Sour, scanty bread and fevered water from the ungrateful soil;
Made harder by their gloom...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
THIS 1 wot ye all whom it concerns,
I, Rhymer Robin, alias Burns,
October twenty-third,
A ne’er-to-be-forgotten day,
Sae far I sprackl’d up the brae,
I dinner’d wi’ a Lord.
I’ve been at drucken writers’ feasts,
Nay, been *****-fou ’mang godly priests—
Wi’ rev’rence be it spoken!—
I’ve even join’d the honour’d jorum,
When mighty Squireships of the quorum,
Their hydra drouth did sloken.
But wi’ a...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
XIV. ? TO WILLIAM CAMDEN. CAMDEN ! most reverend head, to whom I owe All that I am in arts, all that I know ; (How nothing's that ?) ; to whom my country owes, The great renown, and name wherewith she goes ! Than thee the age sees not that thing more grave, More high, more holy,...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
And the weaver said, "Speak to us of Clothes."
And he answered:
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.
Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your...Read more of this...
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...
by
Richard Crashaw
Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me;
Where'er she lie,
Locked up from mortal eye
In shady leaves of destiny:
Till that ripe birth
Of studied fate stand forth,
And teach her fair steps to our earth;
Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:
Meet you her, my wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye called my...Read more of this...
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...
by
Robert Burns
O LUVE will venture in where it daur na weel be seen,
O luve will venture in where wisdom ance has been;
But I will doun yon river rove, amang the wood sae green,
And a’ to pu’ a Posie to my ain dear May.
The primrose I will pu’, the firstling o’ the year,
And I will pu’ the pink, the emblem...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's
THEY had long met o' Zundays--her true love and she--
And at junketings, maypoles, and flings;
But she bode wi' a thirtover uncle, and he
Swore by noon and by night that her goodman should be
Naibor Sweatley--a gaffer oft weak at the knee
From taking o' sommat more cheerful than tea--
Who tranted, and moved people's things.
She cried, "O pray...Read more of this...
by
Jonathan Swift
To the Priest, on Observing how most Men mistake their own Talents
When beasts could speak (the learned say,
They still can do so ev'ry day),
It seems, they had religion then,
As much as now we find in men.
It happen'd, when a plague broke out
(Which therefore made them more devout),
The king of brutes (to make it plain,
Of quadrupeds I only mean)
By...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
I
Over the yawning chimney hangs the fog. Drip
-- hiss -- drip -- hiss --
fall the raindrops on the oaken log which burns, and steams,
and smokes the ceiling beams. Drip -- hiss -- the rain
never stops.
The wide, state bed shivers beneath its velvet coverlet. Above,
dim,
in the smoke, a tarnished coronet gleams dully. Overhead
hammers and chinks
the rain....Read more of this...
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