Famous Offering Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Poets Voice XV

...eligion, for the varied paths of religion are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being, extended to all, offering completeness of spirit to all, anxious to receive all. 

I love you for your Truth, derived from your knowledge; that Truth which I cannot see because of my ignorance. But I respect it as a divine thing, for it is the deed of the spirit. Your Truth shall meet my Truth in the coming world and blend together like the fragrance of flowers and becoming ...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil


Charmides

...homestead and from stall;
And then the clear-voiced maidens 'gan to sing,
And to the altar each man brought some goodly offering,

A beechen cup brimming with milky foam,
A fair cloth wrought with cunning imagery
Of hounds in chase, a waxen honey-comb
Dripping with oozy gold which scarce the bee
Had ceased from building, a black skin of oil
Meet for the wrestlers, a great boar the fierce and white-tusked
spoil

Stolen from Artemis that jealous maid
To please Athena, and the d...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Comus

...betakes him to this ominous wood,
And, in thick shelter of black shades imbowered,
Excels his mother at her mighty art;
Offering to every weary traveller
His orient liquor in a crystal glass,
To quench the drouth of Phoebus; which as they taste
(For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst),
Soon as the potion works, their human count'nance,
The express resemblance of the gods, is changed
Into some brutish form of wolf or bear,
Or ounce or tiger, hog, or bearded goat,
Al...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Contemplations

...e Earth and Fatlings each do bring.
87 On Abel's gift the fire descends from Skies,
88 But no such sign on false Cain's offering.
89 With sullen hateful looks he goes his ways,
90 Hath thousand thoughts to end his brother's days,
91 Upon whose blood his future good he hopes to raise. 

14 

92 There Abel keeps his sheep, no ill he thinks,
93 His brother comes, then acts his fratricide.
94 The Virgin Earth of blood her first draught drinks,
95 But since that time she often hat...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne

Endymion: Book IV

...would have, great gods! but one short hour
Of native air--let me but die at home."

 Endymion to heaven's airy dome
Was offering up a hecatomb of vows,
When these words reach'd him. Whereupon he bows
His head through thorny-green entanglement
Of underwood, and to the sound is bent,
Anxious as hind towards her hidden fawn.

 "Is no one near to help me? No fair dawn
Of life from charitable voice? No sweet saying
To set my dull and sadden'd spirit playing?
No hand to toy with mi...Read more of this...
by Keats, John


Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding

...d for age
 To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
 First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
 But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
 As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
 At human folly, and the laceration
 Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
 Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
 Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of thin...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Hymn to Demeter by Homer

...r, the Son of Cronos. But he was sitting aloof, apart from the gods, in his temple where many pray, and receiving sweet offerings from mortal men. So he, that Son of Cronos, of many names, who is Ruler of Many and Host of Many, was bearing her away by leave of Zeus on his immortal chariot -- his own brother's child and all unwilling.

[Line 33] And so long as she, the goddess, yet beheld earth and starry heaven and the strong-flowing sea where fishes shoal, and the rays of ...Read more of this...
by Homer,

In the Home Stretch

...et the table with the loaf.
Let’s see you find your loaf. I’ll light the fire.
I like chairs occupying other chairs
Not offering a lady—”

“There again, Joe!
You’re tired.”

“I’m drunk-nonsensical tired out;
Don’t mind a word I say. It’s a day’s work
To empty one house of all household goods
And fill another with ’em fifteen miles away,
Although you do no more than dump them down.”

“Dumped down in paradise we are and happy.”

“It’s all so much what I have always wanted,
I ca...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

Inaugural Poem

...r new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And in...Read more of this...
by Angelou, Maya

Maple

...ard.
She told him of the bookmark maple leaf
In the big Bible, and all she remembered
of the place marked with it—"Wave offering,
Something about wave offering, it said."

 "You've never asked your father outright, have you?"

 "I have, and been Put off sometime, I think."
(This was her faded memory of the way
Once long ago her father had put himself off.)
"Because no telling but it may have been
Something between your father and your mother
Not meant for us at all."
"Not mea...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

On the Pulse of Morning

...
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into you...Read more of this...
by Angelou, Maya

Paradise Lost: Book 11

...rificing, laid 
The inwards and their fat, with incense strowed, 
On the cleft wood, and all due rights performed: 
His offering soon propitious fire from Heaven 
Consumed with nimble glance, and grateful steam; 
The other's not, for his was not sincere; 
Whereat he inly raged, and, as they talked, 
Smote him into the midriff with a stone 
That beat out life; he fell;and, deadly pale, 
Groaned out his soul with gushing blood effused. 
Much at that sight was Adam in his heart ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Samson Agonistes

...le Samson, far renown'd,
The dread of Israel's foes, who with a strength
Equivalent to Angels walk'd thir streets,
None offering fight; who single combatant
Duell'd thir Armies rank't in proud array,
Himself an Army, now unequal match
To save himself against a coward arm'd
At one spears length. O ever failing trust
In mortal strength! and oh what not in man
Deceivable and vain! Nay what thing good 
Pray'd for, but often proves our woe, our bane?
I pray'd for Children, and tho...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

So Long

...
To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing—their affection me more clearly
 explaining, 
To young men my problems offering—no dallier I—I the muscle of their brains
 trying, 
So I pass—a little time vocal, visible, contrary; 
Afterward, a melodious echo, passionately bent for—(death making me really undying;) 
The best of me then when no longer visible—for toward that I have been incessantly
 preparing.

What is there more, that I lag and pause, and crouch extended with...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Song of Myself

...in; 
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron;
The squaw, wrapt in her yellow-hemm’d cloth, is offering moccasins and
 bead-bags for sale; 
The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut eyes bent
 sideways; 
As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat, the plank is thrown for the
 shore-going passengers; 
The young sister holds out the skein, while the elder sister winds it off in a
 ball, and stops now and then for the knots;...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Last Tournament

...gic oak-tree in mid-heaven, 
And won by Tristram as a tourney-prize, 
And hither brought by Tristram for his last 
Love-offering and peace-offering unto thee.' 

He spoke, he turned, then, flinging round her neck, 
Claspt it, and cried, `Thine Order, O my Queen!' 
But, while he bowed to kiss the jewelled throat, 
Out of the dark, just as the lips had touched, 
Behind him rose a shadow and a shriek-- 
`Mark's way,' said Mark, and clove him through the brain. 

That night came ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Man Against the Sky

...nor do I.
But this we know, if we know anything: 
That we may laugh and fight and sing 
And of our transience here make offering 
To an orient Word that will not be erased, 
Or, save in incommunicable gleams
Too permanent for dreams, 
Be found or known. 
No tonic and ambitious irritant 
Of increase or of want 
Has made an otherwise insensate waste
Of ages overthrown 
A ruthless, veiled, implacable foretaste 
Of other ages that are still to be 
Depleted and rewarded variously ...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

The Millers Tale

...caught her*
This parish clerk, this jolly Absolon,
Hath in his hearte such a love-longing!
That of no wife took he none offering;
For courtesy he said he woulde none.
The moon at night full clear and brighte shone,
And Absolon his gitern hath y-taken,
For paramours he thoughte for to waken,
And forth he went, jolif* and amorous, *joyous
Till he came to the carpentere's house,
A little after the cock had y-crow,
And *dressed him* under a shot window , *stationed himself.*
...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Rock Cries Out to Us Today

...hances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister'...Read more of this...
by Angelou, Maya

When You Come

...When you come to me, unbidden,
Beckoning me
To long-ago rooms,
Where memories lie.

Offering me, as to a child, an attic,
Gatherings of days too few.
Baubles of stolen kisses.
Trinkets of borrowed loves.
Trunks of secret words,

I cry....Read more of this...
by Angelou, Maya

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