Famous Prays Poems by Famous Poets

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

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from imperfect Eden

by Rg Gregory
 (1)
and off to scott's (the dockers' restaurant)
burly men packed in round solid tables
but what the helle (drowned in hellespont)
this place for me was rich in its own fables
i'll be the lover sunk if that enables
an awesome sense of just how deep the spells
that put scotts for me beyond the dardanelles

lace-curtained windows (or memory plays me false)
no capped odysseus could...Read more of this...

88. The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer

by Robert Burns
 YE Irish lords, ye knights an’ squires,
Wha represent our brughs an’ shires,
An’ doucely manage our affairs
 In parliament,
To you a simple poet’s pray’rs
 Are humbly sent.


Alas! my roupit Muse is hearse!
Your Honours’ hearts wi’ grief ’twad pierce,
To see her sittin on her ****
 Low i’ the dust,
And scriechinh out prosaic verse,
 An like to brust!


Tell them wha hae the...Read more of this...

Differences

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
My neighbor lives on the hill,
And I in the valley dwell,
My neighbor must look down on me,
Must I look up?—ah, well,
My neighbor lives on the hill,
And I in the valley dwell.
My neighbor reads, and prays,
And I—I laugh, God wot,
And sing like a bird when the grass is green
In my small garden plot;
But ah, he reads and prays,
And I—I laugh, God...Read more of this...

A Lost Dream

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ah, I have changed, I do not know
Why lonely hours affect me so.
In days of yore, this were not wont,
No loneliness my soul could daunt.
For me too serious for my age,
The weighty tome of hoary sage,
Until with puzzled heart astir,
One God-giv'n night, I dreamed of her.
I loved no woman, hardly knew
More of the sex that strong men woo
Than cloistered monk...Read more of this...

Sancta Maria Succurre Miseris

by Amy Lowell
 Dear Virgin Mary, far away,
Look down from Heaven while I pray.
Open your golden casement high,
And lean way out beyond the sky.
I am so little, it may be
A task for you to harken me.
O Lady Mary, I have bought
A candle, as the good priest taught.
I only had one penny, so
Old Goody Jenkins let it go.
It is a little bent, you...Read more of this...

Sonnet LX

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LX. Ite, rime dolenti, al duro sasso. HE PRAYS THAT SHE WILL BE NEAR HIM AT HIS DEATH, WHICH HE FEELS APPROACHING.  Go, plaintive verse, to the cold marble go,Which hides in earth my treasure from these eyes;[Pg 291]There call on her who answers from yon skies,Although the...Read more of this...

83. The Cotter's Saturday Night

by Robert Burns
 MY lov’d, my honour’d, much respected friend!
 No mercenary bard his homage pays;
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end,
 My dearest meed, a friend’s esteem and praise:
 To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene,
 The native feelings strong, the guileless ways,
What Aiken in a cottage would have been;
Ah! tho’ his worth...Read more of this...

Poem On His Birthday

by Dylan Thomas
 In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
 Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
 And palavers of birds
This sandgrain day in the bent bay's grave
 He celebrates and spurns
His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age;
 Herons spire and spear.

 Under and round him go
Flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails,
 Doing what they...Read more of this...

How a Little Girl Danced

by Vachel Lindsay
 DEDICATED TO LUCY BATES

(Being a reminiscence of certain private theatricals.)


Oh, cabaret dancer, I know a dancer,
Whose eyes have not looked on the feasts that are vain.
I know a dancer, I know a dancer,
Whose soul has no bond with the beasts of the plain:
Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer,
With foot like the snow, and with step like the rain.

Oh, thrice-painted...Read more of this...

Sonnet CC

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CC. Amor, io fallo e veggio il mio fallire. HE PRAYS LOVE, WHO IS THE CAUSE OF HIS OFFENCES, TO OBTAIN PARDON FOR HIM.  O Love, I err, and I mine error own,As one who burns, whose fire within him liesAnd aggravates his grief, while reason dies,With its own martyrdom almost...Read more of this...

Lament

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 When I was a windy boy and a bit
And the black spit of the chapel fold,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women),
I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood,
The rude owl cried like a tell-tale tit,
I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled
Nine-pin down on donkey's common,
And on seesaw sunday nights I wooed
Whoever I would with my...Read more of this...

God's Reserves

by Badger Clark
  One time, 'way back where the year marks fade,
    God said: "I see I must lose my West,
  The prettiest part of the world I made,
    The place where I've always come to rest,
  For the White Man grows till he fights for bread
  And he begs and prays...Read more of this...

The Guardian-Angel

by Robert Browning
 A PICTURE AT FANO.

I.

Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve
Shall find performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

II.

Then I shall feel thee step one step,...Read more of this...

When The `Army Prays For Watty

by Henry Lawson
 When the kindly hours of darkness, save for light of moon and star, 
Hide the picture on the signboard over Doughty's Horse Bazaar; 
When the last rose-tint is fading on the distant mulga scrub, 
Then the Army prays for Watty at the entrance of his pub. 

Now, I often sit at Watty's when the night is very near, 
With...Read more of this...

The Fairy Temple; Or Oberons Chapel

by Robert Herrick
 THE FAIRY TEMPLE; OR, OBERON'S CHAPEL

DEDICATED TO MR JOHN MERRIFIELD,
COUNSELLOR AT LAW

RARE TEMPLES THOU HAST SEEN, I KNOW,
AND RICH FOR IN AND OUTWARD SHOW;
SURVEY THIS CHAPEL BUILT, ALONE,
WITHOUT OR LIME, OR WOOD, OR STONE.
THEN SAY, IF ONE THOU'ST SEEN MORE FINE
THAN THIS, THE FAIRIES' ONCE, NOW THINE.

THE TEMPLE

A way enchaced with glass and beads
There is, that to the Chapel...Read more of this...

The Divine Image

by William Blake
 To Mercy Pity Peace and Love.
All pray in their distress:
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
Is God our Father dear:
And Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
Is Man his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man of every clime,
That prays...Read more of this...

Their Frailty

by Siegfried Sassoon
 He's got a Blighty wound. He’s safe; and then 
War’s fine and bold and bright. 
She can forget the doomed and prisoned men 
Who agonize and fight. 

He’s back in France. She loathes the listless strain
And peril of his plight, 
Beseeching Heaven to send him home again, 
She prays for peace each night. 

Husbands and sons and lovers; everywhere...Read more of this...

Cupid And Folly

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 CUPID, ere depriv'd of Sight, 
Young and apt for all Delight, 
Met with Folly on the way, 
As Idle and as fond of Play. 
In gay Sports the time they pass; 
Now run, now wrestle on the Grass; 
Their painted Wings then nimbly ply, 
And ev'ry way for Mast'ry try: 
'Till a Contest do's arise, 
Who has won th'...Read more of this...

Ode to Despair

by Mary Darby Robinson
 TERRIFIC FIEND! thou Monster fell, 
Condemn'd in haunts profane to dwell, 
Why quit thy solitary Home, 
O'er wide Creation's paths to roam? 
Pale Tyrant of the timid Heart, 
Whose visionary spells can bind 
The strongest passions of the mind, 
Freezing Life's current with thy baneful Art. 

Nature recoils when thou art near, 
For round thy form all plagues are...Read more of this...

How Good Are The Poor

by Victor Hugo
 ("Il est nuit. La cabane est pauvre.") 
 
 {Bk. LII. iii.} 
 
 'Tis night—within the close stout cabin door, 
 The room is wrapped in shade save where there fall 
 Some twilight rays that creep along the floor, 
 And show the fisher's nets upon the wall. 
 
 In the dim corner, from the oaken...Read more of this...

The Forsaken Merman

by Matthew Arnold
 Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below!
Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow,
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away!
This way, this way!

Call her once before you go— 
Call once yet!
In a voice that she will know:
'Margaret! Margaret!'
Children's...Read more of this...

Initial Love

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Venus, when her son was lost,
Cried him up and down the coast,
In hamlets, palaces, and parks,
And told the truant by his marks,
Golden curls, and quiver, and bow;—
This befell long ago.
Time and tide are strangely changed,
Men and manners much deranged;
None will now find Cupid latent
By this foolish antique patent.
He came late along the waste,
Shod like a traveller for haste,
With malice...Read more of this...

Sonnet XII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XII. Mai non fu' in parte ove sì chiar' vedessi. VAUCLUSE.  Nowhere before could I so well have seenHer whom my soul most craves since lost to view;Nowhere in so great freedom could have beenBreathing my amorous lays 'neath skies so blue;Never with depths of shade so calm and greenRead more of this...

68. The Holy Fair

by Robert Burns
 UPON 1 a simmer Sunday morn
 When Nature’s face is fair,
I walked forth to view the corn,
 An’ snuff the caller air.
The rising sun owre Galston muirs
 Wi’ glorious light was glintin;
The hares were hirplin down the furrs,
 The lav’rocks they were chantin
 Fu’ sweet that day.


As lightsomely I glowr’d abroad,
 To see a scene sae gay,
Three hizzies, early...Read more of this...

Sonnet XVII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XVII. Nè mai pietosa madre al caro figlio. HER COUNSEL ALONE AFFORDS HIM RELIEF.  Ne'er did fond mother to her darling son,Or zealous spouse to her belovèd mate,Sage counsel give, in perilous estate,With such kind caution, in such tender tone,As gives that fair one, who, oft looking downOn my...Read more of this...

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