Famous Offerings Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Hymn 145

by Isaac Watts
 Christ and Aaron.
Heb. 7; 9. 

Jesus, in thee our eyes behold
A thousand glories more,
Than the rich gems and polished gold
The sons of Aaron wore.

They first their own burnt-offerings brought,
To purge themselves from sin;
Thy life was pure without a spot,
And all thy nature clean.

[Fresh blood as constant as the day
Was on their altar spilt;
But thy one offering takes away
For ever...Read more of this...

Requiem

by Omer Tarin
You draw your breath
yearning
a sadness infinite
in its contemplation;

I, who embraced death
in dumbfounded rapture
am reborn
in the eternal question
imprisoned in your eyes;

Are we to celebrate 
this reprieve
relying 
on our doomed songs 
of desperate desire?

Let's be buried together.


(from ''Burnt Offerings, 1996) 
...Read more of this...

A Pastoral Upon The Birth Of Prince Charles:presented To The King And Set By Mr Nic. Laniere

by Robert Herrick
 A PASTORAL UPON THE BIRTH OF PRINCE CHARLES:
PRESENTED TO THE KING, AND SET BY MR NIC. LANIERE

THE SPEAKERS: MIRTILLO, AMINTAS, AND AMARILLIS

AMIN. Good day, Mirtillo. MIRT. And to you no less;
And all fair signs lead on our shepherdess.
AMAR. With all white luck to you. MIRT. But say,
What news
Stirs in our sheep-walk? AMIN. None, save that my
ewes,
My wethers, lambs, and...Read more of this...

To my dear Sister Mrs. C. P. on her Nuptial

by Katherine Philips
 We will not like those men our offerings pay 
Who crown the cup, then think they crown the day. 
We make no garlands, nor an altar build, 
Which help not Joy, but Ostentation yield. 
Where mirth is justly grounded these wild toyes 
Are but a troublesome, and empty noise. 

2. 
But these shall be my great Solemnities, 
Orinda's wishes...Read more of this...

Before the Altar

by Amy Lowell
 Before the Altar, bowed, he stands
With empty hands;
Upon it perfumed offerings burn
Wreathing with smoke the sacrificial urn.
Not one of all these has he given,
No flame of his has leapt to Heaven
Firesouled, vermilion-hearted,
Forked, and darted,
Consuming what a few spare pence
Have cheaply bought, to fling from hence
In idly-asked petition.
His sole condition
Love and poverty.
And while the moon
Swings slow across the sky,
Athwart a...Read more of this...

Psalm 04

by John Milton
 Aug. 10. 1653.


Answer me when I call
God of my righteousness;
In straights and in distress
Thou didst me disinthrall
And set at large; now spare,
Now pity me, and hear my earnest prai'r.

Great ones how long will ye
My glory have in scorn
How long be thus forlorn
Still to love vanity, 
To love, to seek, to prize
Things false and vain and nothing else but lies?

Yet...Read more of this...

Plead For Me

by Emily Brontë
 Oh, thy bright eyes must answer now,
When Reason, with a scornful brow,
Is mocking at my overthrow!
Oh, thy sweet tongue must plead for me
And tell, why I have chosen thee! 

Stern Reason is to judgment come,
Arrayed in all her forms of gloom:
Wilt thou, my advocate, be dumb?
No, radiant angel, speak and say,
Why I did cast the world away. 

Why I...Read more of this...

Manteau Three

by Jorie Graham
 In the fairy tale the sky
 makes of itself a coat
because it needs you
 to put it 
on. How can it do this?
 It collects its motes. It condenses its sound-
track, all the pyrric escapes, the pilgrimages
 still unconsummated, 
the turreted thoughts of sky it slightly liquefies
 and droops, the hum of the yellowest day alive,

office-holders in their books,...Read more of this...

Champagne 1914-15

by Alan Seeger
 In the glad revels, in the happy fetes, 
When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled 
With the sweet wine of France that concentrates 
The sunshine and the beauty of the world, 

Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread 
The undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth, 
To those whose blood, in pious duty shed, 
Hallows the soil where...Read more of this...

The New World

by Philip Levine
 A man roams the streets with a basket
of freestone peaches hollering, "Peaches,
peaches, yellow freestone peaches for sale."

My grandfather in his prime could outshout
the Tigers of Wrath or the factory whistles
along the river. Hamtramck hungered

for yellow freestone peaches, downriver
wakened from a dream of work, Zug Island danced
into the bright day glad to be alive.

Full-figured women in their negligees
streamed into the...Read more of this...

The Three Kings

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Three Kings came riding from far away,
Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar;
Three Wise Men out of the East were they,
And they travelled by night and they slept by day,
For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star. 

The star was so beautiful, large, and clear,
That all the other stars of the sky
Became a white mist in the atmosphere,
And by this they...Read more of this...

It has been some time

by Omer Tarin
It has been some time, since we spoke in rhyme
my love;

And tonight I behold you anew
Burning with your adored endlessness

As reckless as the morning dew,
caressing the rose in its repose

Rising with the sun, 
to be one, 
descending with the rain,

Reborn in pain
torn in twain
driven insane;

Somewhere, out there,
within your vast domain,
when we unite
there is no day or night. 




(from ''Burnt Offerings'',...Read more of this...

A Poem for Will Baking

by Susan Rich
 Each night he stands before

the kitchen island, begins again

from scratch: chocolate, cinnamon, nutmeg,

he beats, he folds;

keeps faith in what happens

when you combine known quantities,

bake twelve minutes at a certain heat.

The other rabbis, the scholars,

teenagers idling by the beach,

they receive his offerings,

in the early hours, share his grief.

It’s enough now, they say.

Each day more baked goods to friends,

and friends of...Read more of this...

Offerings

by Walt Whitman
 A THOUSAND perfect men and women appear, 
Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths, with offerings....Read more of this...

Pilates Wifes Dream

by Charlotte Bronte
 I've quenched my lamp, I struck it in that start
Which every limb convulsed, I heard it fall­
The crash blent with my sleep, I saw depart
Its light, even as I woke, on yonder wall;
Over against my bed, there shone a gleam
Strange, faint, and mingling also with my dream. 

It sunk, and I am wrapt in utter gloom; 
How far is...Read more of this...

Sea Gull (Leith Docks, 1995)

by Omer Tarin
Once before I've heard this
anguished cry

A long-drawn note of many-lettered woe,
The great open beak straining 
against the roar of raging surf;

Head, thrown back, taut
against the distant sails

Anger flickering in eyes flecked with amber,
rolling in lonely knowledge,
this bond servant of the sea,
tied by its giant wingspan 
to the torturous flight of sainthood

Martyred
in its terrible existence
murdered
by the yellow fog of banality

Victim 
to...Read more of this...

Written in a Volume of the Comtesse de Noailles

by Alan Seeger
 Be my companion under cool arcades 
That frame some drowsy street and dazzling square 
Beyond whose flowers and palm-tree promenades 
White belfries burn in the blue tropic air. 
Lie near me in dim forests where the croon 
Of wood-doves sounds and moss-banked water flows, 
Or musing late till the midsummer moon 
Breaks through some ruined abbey's empty rose. 
Sweetest...Read more of this...

A Years Burden -- 1870

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Fire and wild light of hope and doubt and fear,
Wind of swift change, and clouds and hours that veer
As the storm shifts of the tempestuous year;
Cry wellaway, but well befall the right.

Hope sits yet hiding her war-wearied eyes,
Doubt sets her forehead earthward and denies,
But fear brought hand to hand with danger dies,
Dies and is burnt up in the fire...Read more of this...

To prevent the escape

by Emile Verhaeren
To prevent the escape of any part of us from our embrace that is so intense as to be holy, and to let love shine clear through the body itself, we go down together to the garden of the flesh.
Your breasts are there like offerings and your two hands are stretched out to me; and nothing is of so much...Read more of this...

Endless Time

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Time is endless in thy hands, my lord. 
There is none to count thy minutes. 

Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers. 
Thou knowest how to wait. 

Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower. 

We have no time to lose, 
and having no time we must scramble for a chance. 
We are...Read more of this...

To His Lovely Mistresses

by Robert Herrick
 One night i'th' year, my dearest Beauties, come,
And bring those dew-drink-offerings to my tomb;
When thence ye see my reverend ghost to rise,
And there to lick th' effused sacrifice,
Though paleness be the livery that I wear,
Look ye not wan or colourless for fear.
Trust me, I will not hurt ye, or once show
The least grim look, or cast a frown on...Read more of this...

The Old And The New Masters

by Randall Jarrell
 About suffering, about adoration, the old masters 
Disagree. When someone suffers, no one else eats 
Or walks or opens the window--no one breathes 
As the sufferers watch the sufferer. 
In St. Sebastian Mourned by St. Irene
The flame of one torch is the only light. 
All the eyes except the maidservant's (she weeps 
And covers them with a cloth) are...Read more of this...

Morning Song Of Senlin

by Conrad Aiken
 from Senlin: A Biography 


It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning 
When the light drips through the shutters like the dew, 
I arise, I face the sunrise, 
And do the things my fathers learned to do. 
Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops 
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die, 
And I myself on...Read more of this...

Salomes Dancing-Lesson

by Dorothy Parker
 She that begs a little boon
(Heel and toe! Heel and toe!)
Little gets- and nothing, soon.
(No, no, no! No, no, no!)
She that calls for costly things
Priceless finds her offerings-
What's impossible to kings?
(Heel and toe! Heel and toe!)

Kings are shaped as other men.
(Step and turn! Step and turn!)
Ask what none may ask again.
(Will you learn? Will you learn?)
Lovers whine, and kisses...Read more of this...

Psalm 40 Part 2

by Isaac Watts
 v.6-9 
C. M.
The incarnation and sacrifice of Christ.

Thus saith the Lord, "Your work is vain
Give your burnt-offerings o'er;
In dying goats, and bullocks slain,
My soul delights no more."

Then spake the Savior, "Lo, I'm here,
My God, to do thy will;
Whate'er thy sacred books declare,
Thy servant shall fulfil.

"Thy law is ever in my sight,
I keep it near my heart;
Mine ears are opened...Read more of this...

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