Famous Prayers Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Prayers poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous prayers poems. These examples illustrate what a famous prayers poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emile Verhaeren
In the garden yonder of yews and death,
There sojourneth
A man who toils, and has toiled for aye.
Digging the dried-up ground all day.
Some willows, surviving their own dead selves.
Weep there around him as he delves.
And a few poor flowers, disconsolate
Because the tempest and wind and wet
Vex them with ceaseless scourge and fret.
The ground is nothing but pits and cones,
Deep graves in...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[This Cantata was written for Prince Frederick
of Gotha, and set to music by Winter, the Prince singing the part
of Rinaldo.--See the Annalen.]
(* See Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, Canto XVI.)
CHORUS.
To the strand! quick, mount the bark!
If no favouring zephyrs blow,
Ply the oar and nimbly row,
And with zeal your prowess mark!
O'er the sea we thus career.
RINALDO.
Oh, let me linger...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
LAY me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.
Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be...Read more of this...
by
Allen Ginsberg
I
What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
ous hand, named for Death's planet through the
sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of
Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-
...Read more of this...
by
Emma Lazarus
Here, where the noises of the busy town,
The ocean's plunge and roar can enter not,
We stand and gaze around with tearful awe,
And muse upon the consecrated spot.
No signs of life are here: the very prayers
Inscribed around are in a language dead;
The light of the "perpetual lamp" is spent
That an undying radiance was to shed.
What prayers were in this...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
The first purple wisteria
I recall from boyhood hung
on a wire outside the windows
of the breakfast room next door
at the home of Steve Pisaris.
I loved his tall, skinny daughter,
or so I thought, and I would wait
beside the back door, prostrate,
begging to be taken in. Perhaps
it was only the flowers of spring...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
WANDERING oversea dreamer,
Hunting and hoarse, Oh daughter and mother,
Oh daughter of ashes and mother of blood,
Child of the hair let down, and tears,
Child of the cross in the south
And the star in the north,
Keeper of Egypt and Russia and France,
Keeper of England and Poland and Spain,
Make us a song for to-morrow.
Make us one new dream, us who forget,
Out of...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
"The sun says his prayers," said the fairy,
Or else he would wither and die.
"The sun says his prayers," said the fairy,
"For strength to climb up through the sky.
He leans on invisible angels,
And Faith is his prop and his rod.
The sky is his crystal cathedral.
And dawn is his altar to God."...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
Every night my prayers I say,
And get my dinner every day;
And every day that I've been good,
I get an orange after food.
The child that is not clean and neat,
With lots of toys and things to eat,
He is a naughty child, I'm sure--
Or else his dear papa is poor....Read more of this...
by
C S Lewis
Arise my body, my small body, we have striven
Enough, and He is merciful; we are forgiven.
Arise small body, puppet-like and pale, and go,
White as the bed-clothes into bed, and cold as snow,
Undress with small, cold fingers and put out the light,
And be alone, hush'd mortal, in the sacred night,
-A meadow whipt flat with...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
I AM that which began;
Out of me the years roll;
Out of me God and man;
I am equal and whole;
God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.
Before ever land was,
Before ever the sea,
Or soft hair of the grass,
Or fair...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
I prayed for riches, and achieved success;
All that I touched turned into gold. Alas!
My cares were greater and my peace was less,
When that wish came to pass.
I prayed for glory, and I heard my name
Sung by sweet children and by hoary men.
But ah! the hurts – the hurts that come with fame.
I was not happy then.
I prayed for Love,...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
GUNS on the battle lines have pounded now a year
between Brussels and Paris.
And, William Morris, when I read your old chapter on
the great arches and naves and little whimsical
corners of the Churches of Northern France--Brr-rr!
I'm glad you're a dead man, William Morris, I'm glad
you're down in the damp and mouldy, only a memory
instead of a living man--I'm glad you're...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
CHORUS
If with voice of words or prayers thy sons may reach thee,
We thy latter sons, the men thine after-birth,
We the children of thy grey-grown age, O Earth,
O our mother everlasting, we beseech thee,
By the sealed and secret ages of thy life;
By the darkness wherein grew thy sacred forces;
By the songs of stars thy sisters in their courses;
By thine own...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
If I was drawn here from a distant place,
'Twas not to pray nor hear our friend's address,
But, gazing once more on your winsome face,
To worship there Ideal Loveliness.
On that pure shrine that has too long ignored
The gifts that once I brought so frequently
I lay this votive offering, to record
How sweet your quiet...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXXI. Piangete, donne, e con voi pianga Amore. ON THE DEATH OF CINO DA PISTOIA. Weep, beauteous damsels, and let Cupid weep,Of every region weep, ye lover train;He, who so skilfully attuned his strainTo your fond cause, is sunk in death's cold sleep!Such limits let not my affliction keep,As...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
An imaginary composer.]
I.
Hist, but a word, fair and soft!
Forth and be judged, Master Hugues!
Answer the question I've put you so oft:
What do you mean by your mountainous fugues?
See, we're alone in the loft,---
II.
I, the poor organist here,
Hugues, the composer of note,
Dead though, and done with, this many a year:
Let's have a colloquy, something to quote,
Make the world prick up...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Search thou my heart;
If there be guile,
It shall depart
Before thy smile.
Search thou my soul;
Be there deceit,
'T will vanish whole
Before thee, sweet.
Upon my mind
Turn thy pure lens;
Naught shalt thou find
Thou canst not cleanse.
If I should pray,
I scarcely know
In just what way
My prayers would go.
So strong in me
I feel love's leaven,
I 'd bow to thee
[Pg 117]As soon as Heaven!
...Read more of this...
by
Ernest Dowson
Calm, sad, secure; behind high convent walls,
These watch the sacred lamp, these watch and pray:
And it is one with them when evening falls,
And one with them the cold return of day.
These heed not time; their nights and days they make
Into a long returning rosary,
Whereon their lives are threaded for Christ's sake;
Meekness and vigilance and chastity.
A...Read more of this...
by
W. E. B. Du Bois
Name of God's Name!
Red murder reigns;
All hell is loose;
On gold autumnal air
Walk grinning devils, barbed and hoofed;
While high on hills of hate,
Black-blossomed, crimson-sky'd,
Thou sittest, dumb.
Father Almighty!
This earth is mad!
Palsied, our cunning hands;
Rotten, our gold;
Our argosies reel and stagger
Over empty seas;
All the long aisles
Of Thy Great Temples, God,
Stink with the entrails
Of our souls.
And Thou art dumb.
Above the thunder of Thy Thunders,...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
I am no priest of crooks nor creeds,
For human wants and human needs
Are more to me than prophets' deeds;
And human tears and human cares
Affect me more than human prayers.
Go, cease your wail, lugubrious saint!
You fret high Heaven with your plaint.
Is this the "Christian's joy" you paint?
Is this the Christian's boasted bliss?
Avails your faith no more than this?
Take up your arms,...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
My prayers must meet a brazen heaven
And fail and scatter all away.
Unclean and seeming unforgiven
My prayers I scarcely call to pray.
I cannot buoy my heart above;
Above I cannot entrance win.
I reckon precedents of love,
But feel the long success of sin.
My heaven is brass and iron my earth:
Yea, iron is mingled with my clay,
So harden'd is...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
This is one spring you will not see.
The fifty roses of your spray
Smelt soft across that February day
Where trees, heavy as only crematoria
Can bear, sloped down the fallen banks
To where we waited in the chapel, me
Clutching Father Kevin’s hand, remembering
My given grace and faith renewed
In answer to my prayers, Brenda in tears,
And Joyce the sister of my years, Kim
And...Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
If I were a woman of old,
What prayers I would pray for you, dear;
My pitiful tribute behold--
Not a prayer, but a tear.
The pitiless order of things,
Whose laws we may change not nor break,
Alone I could face it--it wrings
My heart for your sake....Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
What's in the brain that ink may character
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what now to register,
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy, but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o'er the very same,
Counting no old thing old—thou mine, I thine—
Even as when first I hallowed thy...Read more of this...
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