Famous Nun Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Nun poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous nun poems. These examples illustrate what a famous nun poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Joyce Kilmer
(For Edward J. Wheeler)
Within the Jersey City shed
The engine coughs and shakes its head,
The smoke, a plume of red and white,
Waves madly in the face of night.
And now the grave incurious stars
Gleam on the groaning hurrying cars.
Against the kind and awful reign
Of darkness, this our angry train,
A noisy little rebel, pouts
Its brief defiance, flames and shouts --
And passes on,...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
The goblet is sparkling with purpled-tinged wine,
Bright glistens the eye of each guest,
When into the hall comes the Minstrel divine,
To the good he now brings what is best;
For when from Elysium is absent the lyre,
No joy can the banquet of nectar inspire.
He is blessed by the gods, with an intellect clear,
That mirrors the world as it glides;
He has seen...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
Needle, needle, dip and dart,
Thrusting up and down,
Where's the man could ease a heart
Like a satin gown?
See the stitches curve and crawl
Round the cunning seams-
Patterns thin and sweet and small
As a lady's dreams.
Wantons go in bright brocade;
Brides in organdie;
Gingham's for the plighted maid;
Satin's for the free!
Wool's to line a miser's chest;
Crepe's to calm the old;
Velvet hides an empty breast
Satin's...Read more of this...
by
Joaquin Miller
THE moon resumed all heaven now,
She shepherded the stars below
Along her wide, white steeps of snow,
Nor stooped nor rested, where or how.
She bared her full white breast, she dared
The sun e'er show his face again.
She seemed to know no change, she kept
Carousal constantly, nor slept,
Nor turned aside a breath, nor spared...Read more of this...
by
Denise Duhamel
my mother pushed my sister out of the apartment door with an empty
suitcase because she kept threatening to run away my sister was sick of me
getting the best of everything the bathrobe with the pink stripes instead of
the red the soft middle piece of bread while she got the crust I was sick with
asthma and she...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea....Read more of this...
by
Robert Southey
The Raven croak'd as she sate at her meal,
And the Old Woman knew what he said,
And she grew pale at the Raven's tale,
And sicken'd and went to her bed.
'Now fetch me my children, and fetch them with speed,'
The Old Woman of Berkeley said,
'The Monk my son, and my daughter the Nun,
Bid them...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
OR THE CONTENTED METAPHYSICIAN
TO the lore of no manner of men
Would his vision have yielded
When he found what will never again
From his vision be shielded,—
Though he paid with as much of his life
As a nun could have given,
And to-night would have been as a knife,
Devil-drawn, devil-driven.
For to-night, with his flame-weary eyes
On...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Only a Shrine, but Mine --
I made the Taper shine --
Madonna dim, to whom all Feet may come,
Regard a Nun --
Thou knowest every Woe --
Needless to tell thee -- so --
But can'st thou do
The Grace next to it -- heal?
That looks a harder skill to us --
Still -- just as easy, if it be thy Will
To thee -- Grant...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I
I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and histories,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way - the children's eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.
II
I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire....Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
OH, Prue she has a patient man,
And Joan a gentle lover,
And Agatha's Arth' is a hug-the-hearth,
But my true love's a rover!
Mig, her man's as good as cheese
And honest as a briar,
Sue tells her love what he's thinking of,
But my dear lad's a liar!
Oh, Sue and Prue and Agatha
Are thick with Mig and Joan!
They bite their threads and...Read more of this...
by
Pablo Neruda
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.
The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only...Read more of this...
by
Spike Milligan
Through every nook and every cranny
The wind blew in on poor old Granny
Around her knees, into each ear
(And up nose as well, I fear)
All through the night the wind grew worse
It nearly made the vicar curse
The top had fallen off the steeple
Just missing him (and other people)
It blew on man, it blew on beast
It blew on nun, it blew...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women were far and rare,
Tellus, the smith, had taken to wife a maiden amazingly fair;
Tellus, the brawny worker in iron, hairy and heavy of hand,
Saw her and loved her and bore her away from the tribe of a Southern land;
Deeming her worthy to queen his home and mother him...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?
And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog,
That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog?
And what should be my singing,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Sweet Mountains -- Ye tell Me no lie --
Never deny Me -- Never fly --
Those same unvarying Eyes
Turn on Me -- when I fail -- or feign,
Or take the Royal names in vain --
Their far -- slow -- Violet Gaze --
My Strong Madonnas -- Cherish still --
The Wayward Nun -- beneath the Hill --
Whose service -- is to You...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Through the pungent hours of the afternoon,
On the autumn slopes we have lightly wandered
Where the sunshine lay in a golden swoon
And the lingering year all its sweetness squandered.
Oh, it was blithesome to roam at will
Over the crest of each westering hill,
Over those dreamy, enchanted lands
Where the trees held to us their friendly hands!
Winds...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
Beaten like an old hound
Whimpering by the stove,
I complicate the pain
That smarts with promised love.
The oilstove falls, the rain,
Forecast, licks at my wound;
Ice forms, clips the green shoot,
And strikes the wren house mute.
May commoner and king,
The barren bride and nun
Begrudge the season's dues.
May children curse the sun,
Sweet...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
How this tart fable instructs
And mocks! Here's the parody of that moral mousetrap
Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers
Approving chased girls who get them to a tree
And put on bark's nun-black
Habit which deflects
All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the virgin shape
In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers,
Whether goat-thighed or god-haloed. Ever since that first Daphne
Switched her incomparable back
For a...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?
And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog,
That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog?
And what should be my singing,...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Nous emmenions en esclavage.")
{VIII., March, 1828.}
We're bearing fivescore Christian dogs
To serve the cruel drivers:
Some are fair beauties gently born,
And some rough coral-divers.
We hardy skimmers of the sea
Are lucky in each sally,
And, eighty strong, we send along
The dreaded Pirate Galley.
...Read more of this...
by
John Gould Fletcher
HEAR, ye ladies that despise
What the mighty Love has done;
Fear examples and be wise:
Fair Callisto was a nun;
Leda, sailing on the stream
To deceive the hopes of man,
Love accounting but a dream,
Doted on a silver swan;
Danae, in a brazen tower,
Where no love was, loved a shower.
Hear, ye ladies that are coy,
What the mighty...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
I
He bends his travel-tarnished feet
To where she wastes in clay:
From day-dawn until eve he fares
Along the wintry way;
From day-dawn until eve repairs
Unto her mound to pray.
II
"Are these the gravestone shapes that meet
My forward-straining view?
Or forms that cross a window-blind
In circle, knot, and queue:...Read more of this...
by
Marge Piercy
1.
The dark socket of the year
the pit, the cave where the sun lies down
and threatens never to rise,
when despair descends softly as the snow
covering all paths and choking roads:
then hawkfaced pain seized you
threw you so you fell with a sharp
cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk.
My father heard the...Read more of this...
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