Famous Profane Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Profane poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous profane poems. These examples illustrate what a famous profane poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed.... Here is no treasure hid
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress
But only what you see.... Look yet again—
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless
Yet...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Oh how it would enable me
To titillate my vanity
If you should choose to label me
A Poet of Profanity!
For I've been known with vulgar slang
To stoke the Sacred Fire,
And even used a word like 'hang',
Suggesting ire.
Yea, I've been slyly told, although
It savours of inanity,
In print the ladies often show
A failing for profanity.
So to delight...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
I
Ay, it is fitting on this holiday,
Commemorative of our soldier dead,
When -- with sweet flowers of our New England May
Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray --
Their graves in every town are garlanded,
That pious tribute should be given too
To our intrepid few
Obscurely fallen here beyond the seas.
Those to preserve...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
Oh, come with me to the Happy Isles
In the golden haze off yonder,
Where the song of the sun-kissed breeze beguiles,
And the ocean loves to wander.
Fragrant the vines that mantle those hills,
Proudly the fig rejoices;
Merrily dance the virgin rills,
Blending their myriad voices.
Our herds shall fear no evil there,
But peacefully feed and rest them;
Neither shall serpent nor prowling bear
Ever come there...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,
And I will comment upon that offence;
Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt,
Against thy reasons making no defence.
Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill,
To set a form upon desirèd change,
As I'll my self disgrace, knowing thy will,
I will acquaintance strangle and look strange,
Be absent from thy walks...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
DEAR love for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dream;
It was a theme
For reason much too strong for fantasy.
Therefore thou waked'st me wisely; yet 5
My dream thou brok'st not but continued'st it.
Thou art so true that thoughts of thee suffice
To make dreams truths and fables histories;
Enter these arms for...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Sincerity professed, and grace tried; or, The heart-searching God.
My God, what inward grief I feel
When impious men transgress thy will!
I mourn to hear their lips profane
Take thy tremendous name in vain.
Does not my soul detest and hate
The sons of malice and deceit?
Those that oppose thy laws and thee,
I count them enemies to me.
Lord, search my soul, try every thought;
Though...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
What if this present were the world's last night?
Mark in my heart, O soul, where thou dost dwell,
The picture of Christ crucified, and tell
Whether that countenance can thee affright,
Tears in his eyes quench the amazing light,
Blood fills his frowns, which from his pierced head fell.
And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell,
Which prayed forgiveness for his foes' fierce spite?
No,...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
At dusk, when lowlands where dark waters glide
Robe in gray mist, and through the greening hills
The hoot-owl calls his mate, and whippoorwills
Clamor from every copse and orchard-side,
I watched the red star rising in the East,
And while his fellows of the flaming sign
From prisoning daylight more and more released,
Lift their pale lamps, and,...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
Until tonight they were separate specialties,
different stories, the best of their own worst.
Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy's
laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first
story. Someday, I promised her, I'll be someone
going somewhere and we plotted it in the humdrum
school for proper girls. The next April the plane
bucked...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
Is this the land our fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the soil whereon they moved?
Are these the graves they slumber in?
Are we the sons by whom are borne
The mantles which the dead have worn?
And shall we crouch above these graves,
With craven soul and fettered lip?
Yoke in with...Read more of this...
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...
by
Isaac Watts
The saint's safety and hope in evil times.
Lord, if thou dost not soon appear,
Virtue and truth will fly away;
A faithful man amongst us here
Will scarce be found, if thou delay.
The whole discourse, when neighbors meet,
Is filled with trifles loose and vain;
Their lips are flattery and deceit,
And their proud language is profane.
But lips that with deceit abound
Shall not maintain their...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
Luini in porcelain!
The grand piano
Utters a profane
Protest with her clear soprano.
The sleek head emerges
From the gold-yellow frock
As Anadyomene in the opening
Pages of Reinach.
Honey-red, closing the face-oval,
A basket-work of braids which seem as if they were
Spun in King Minos' hall
From metal, or intractable amber;
The face-oval beneath the glaze,...Read more of this...
by
Aleister Crowley
Hear me, Lord of the Stars!
For thee I have worshipped ever
With stains and sorrows and scars,
With joyful, joyful endeavour.
Hear me, O lily-white goat!
O crisp as a thicket of thorns,
With a collar of gold for Thy throat,
A scarlet bow for Thy horns!
Here, in the dusty air,
I build Thee a shrine of yew.
All green is the garland I wear,
But I feed...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
In many and reportless places
We feel a Joy --
Reportless, also, but sincere as Nature
Or Deity --
It comes, without a consternation --
Dissolves -- the same --
But leaves a sumptuous Destitution --
Without a Name --
Profane it by a search -- we cannot
It has no home --
Nor we who having once inhaled it --
Thereafter roam....Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Afflicted saints happy, and prosperous sinners cursed.
Now I'm convinced the Lord is kind
To men of heart sincere;
Yet once my foolish thoughts repined,
And bordered on despair.
I grieved to see the wicked thrive,
And spoke with angry breath,
"How pleasant and profane they live!
How peaceful is their death!
"With well-fed flesh and haughty eyes,
They lay their fears to sleep;
Against the heav'ns their slanders rise,
While...Read more of this...
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...
by
William Butler Yeats
I
Swear by what the sages spoke
Round the Mareotic Lake
That the Witch of Atlas knew,
Spoke and set the cocks a-crow.
Swear by those horsemen, by those women
Complexion and form prove superhuman,
That pale, long-visaged company
That air in immortality
Completeness of their passions won;
Now they ride the wintry dawn
Where Ben Bulben sets the scene.
Here's the gist of what they mean.
II
Many times man lives...Read more of this...
by
Delmira Agustini
SpanishVagos preludios. En la noche espléndidaSu voz de perlas una fuente calla,Cuelgan las brisas sus celestes pifanosEn el follaje. Las cabezas pardasDe los búhos acechan.Las flores se abren más, como asombradas.Los cisnes de marfil tienden los cuellosEn las lagunas pálidas.Selene mira del azul. Las frondasTiemblan… y todo! hasta el silencio, calla…Es que ella pasa con su boca tristeY el gran...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Turner Smith
Sweet poet of the woods---a long adieu!
Farewel, soft minstrel of the early year!
Ah! 'twill be long ere thou shalt sing anew,
And pour thy music on the 'night's dull ear,'
Whether on spring thy wandering flights await,
Or whether silent in our groves ye dwell,
The pensive muse shall own thee for her mate,
And still protect the song, she loves so well.
With cautious...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
"Do I believe," sayest thou, "what the masters of wisdom would teach me,
And what their followers' band boldly and readily swear?
Cannot I ever attain to true peace, excepting through knowledge,
Or is the system upheld only by fortune and law?
Must I distrust the gently-warning impulse, the precept
That thou, Nature, thyself hast in my bosom impressed,
Till the schools have affixed to...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one:
Inconstancy unnaturally hath begot
A constant habit; that when I would not
I change in vows, and in devotion.
As humorous is my contrition
As my profane love, and as soon forgot:
As riddlingly distempered, cold and hot,
As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none.
I durst not view heaven yesterday; and today
In prayers and flattering speeches I...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Un bouffon manquait à cette fête.")
{LES BURGRAVES, Part II.}
The EMPEROR FREDERICK BARBAROSSA, believed to be dead, appearing
as a beggar among the Rhenish nobility at a castle, suddenly reveals
himself.
HATTO. This goodly masque but lacked a fool!
First gypsy; next a beggar;—good! Thy name?
BARBAROSSA. Frederick...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed... Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see... Look yet again—
...Read more of this...
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