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Famous Observance Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Observance poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous observance poems. These examples illustrate what a famous observance poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...e the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled,
Where action were otherwise movement
Of that which is only moved
And has in it no source of movement—
Driven by dæmonic, chthonic
Powe...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)



...love. 

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung. 

And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me,
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee." 

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light,
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night. 

And she turn'd--her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs--
All the spirit deeply dawning ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ores,
Old cradle, hunting ground, and bier
Of wolf and otter, bear, and deer;
Well-built abode of many a race;
Tower of observance searching space;
Factory of river, and of rain;
Link in the alps' globe-girding chain;
By million changes skilled to tell
What in the Eternal standeth well,
And what obedient nature can,—
Is this colossal talisman
Kindly to creature, blood, and kind,
And speechless to the master's mind?

I thought to find the patriots
In whom the stock of freedom ...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...s own mercy; 
 Pro nobis Puer natus est. 

All clergy do to him inclyne, 
 And bow unto that bairn benyng, 
And do your observance divyne 
 To him that is of kingis King: 
 Encense his altar, read and sing 
In holy kirk, with mind degest, 
 Him honouring attour all thing 
 Qui nobis Puer natus est. 

Celestial foulis in the air, 
 Sing with your nottis upon hicht, 
In firthis and in forrestis fair 
 Be myrthful now at all your mycht; 
 For passit is your dully nicht, 
Aurora ...Read more of this...
by Dunbar, William
...
 So broke to blood
 And the strict works of war--
 So long subdued
To sacrifice, that threadbare Death commands
Hardly observance at our busier hands.

 Yet we were what we were,
 And, fashioned so,
 It pleases us to stare
 At the far show
Of unbelievable years and shapes that flit,
In our own likeness, on the edge of it....Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard



...ight;
The season pricketh every gentle heart,
And maketh him out of his sleep to start,
And saith, "Arise, and do thine observance."

This maketh Emily have remembrance
To do honour to May, and for to rise.
Y-clothed was she fresh for to devise;
Her yellow hair was braided in a tress,
Behind her back, a yarde long I guess.
And in the garden at *the sun uprist* *sunrise
She walketh up and down where as her list.
She gathereth flowers, party* white and red, *mingled
To make a s...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...he Doubt that sickens: "Have I done my best?"

Even as they sighed and turned to toil anew,
The Seraph hailed them with observance due;
And, after some fit talk of higher things,
Touched tentative on mundane happenings.
This they permitting, he, emboldened thus,
Prolused of humankind promiscuous,
And, since the large contention less avails
Than instances observed, he told them tales--
Tales of the shop, the bed, the court, the street,
Intimate, elemental, indiscreet:
Occasion...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry