Famous Profaned Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Flowers in Winter

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 How strange to greet, this frosty morn, 
In graceful counterfeit of flower, 
These children of the meadows, born 
Of sunshine and of showers! 

How well the conscious wood retains 
The pictures of its flower-sown home, 
The lights and shades, the purple stains, 
And golden hues of bloom! 

It was a happy thought to bring 
To the dark season's frost...Read more of this...

Bianca Among The Nightingales

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 The cypress stood up like a church
That night we felt our love would hold,
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world clean as gold;
The olives crystallized the vales'
Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:
The fireflies and the nightingales
Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

Upon the angle of its shade
The cypress stood, self-balanced high;
Half up,...Read more of this...

Psalm LXXIV: Will God For Ever Cast Us Off?

by Isaac Watts
 Will God for ever east us off?
His wrath for ever smoke
Against the people of' his love,
His little chosen flock?

Think of the tribes so dearly bought
With their Redeemer's blood;
Nor let thy Zion be forgot,
Where once thy glory stood.

Lift up thy feet and march in haste,
Aloud our ruin calls;
See what a wide and fearful waste
Is made within thy walls.

Where once thy...Read more of this...

There came a Day at Summers full

by Emily Dickinson
 There came a Day at Summer's full,
Entirely for me --
I thought that such were for the Saints,
Where Resurrections -- be --

The Sun, as common, went abroad,
The flowers, accustomed, blew,
As if no soul the solstice passed
That maketh all things new --

The time was scarce profaned, by speech --
The symbol of a word
Was needless, as at Sacrament,
The Wardrobe -- of our...Read more of this...

Sonnet 142: Love is my sin and thy dear virtue hate

by William Shakespeare
 Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving,
O, but with mine, compare thou thine own state,
And thou shalt find it merits not reproving,
Or if it do, not from those lips of thine
That have profaned their scarlet ornaments
And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine,
Robbed others' beds' revenues of their...Read more of this...

Motion

by Octavio Paz
If you are the amber mare
              I am the road of blood
If you are the first snow
              I am he who lights the hearth of dawn
If you are the tower of night
  ...Read more of this...

Sonnet 127: In the old age black was not counted fair

by William Shakespeare
 In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame.
For since each hand hath put on nature's power,
Fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my...Read more of this...

Sail On Sail On

by Thomas Moore
 Sail on, sail on, thou fearless bark -- 
Where'er blows the welcome wind, 
It cannot lead to scenes more dark, 
More sad than those we leave behind. 
Each wave that passes seems to say, 
"Though death beneath our smile may be, 
Less cold we are, less false than they, 
Whose smiling wreck'd thy hopes and thee." 

Sail on, sail...Read more of this...

One word is too often profaned

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
ONE word is too often profaned 
For me to profane it  
One feeling too falsely disdain'd 
For thee to disdain it. 
One hope is too like despair 5 
For prudence to smother  
And pity from thee more dear 
Than that from another. 

I can give not what men call love; 
But wilt thou accept not 10 
The worship...Read more of this...

Weep On Weep On

by Thomas Moore
 Weep on, weep on, your hour is past, 
Your dreams of pride are o'er; 
The fatal chain is round you cast, 
And you are men no more. 
In vain the hero's heart hath bled; 
The sage's tongue hath warn'd in vain; 
Oh, Freedom! once thy flame hath fled, 
It never lights again! 

Weep on -- perhaps in after days,...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXLII

by William Shakespeare
 Love is my sin and thy dear virtue hate,
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving:
O, but with mine compare thou thine own state,
And thou shalt find it merits not reproving;
Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine,
That have profaned their scarlet ornaments
And seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine,
Robb'd others' beds' revenues of their...Read more of this...

Ode

by John Dryden
 To the Pious Memory of the Accomplished Young Lady, Mrs Anne Killigrew,
Excellent in the Two Sister-arts of Poesy and Painting

Thou youngest Virgin Daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new-plucked from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green, above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us in thy wand'ring...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXXVII

by William Shakespeare
  In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slander'd with a bastard shame:
For since each hand hath put on nature's power,
Fairing the foul with art's false borrow'd face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore...Read more of this...

Psalm 74

by Isaac Watts
 The church pleading with God under sore persecutions.

Will God for ever cast us off?
His wrath for ever smoke
Against the people of his love,
His little chosen flock?

Think of the tribes so dearly bought
With their Redeemer's blood;
Nor let thy Zion be forgot,
Where once thy glory stood.

Lift up thy feet and march in haste,
Aloud our ruin calls;
See what a wide and fearful...Read more of this...

The Man With The Hoe

by Edwin Markham
 BOWED by the weight of centuries he leans 
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, 
The emptiness of ages in his face, 
And on his back the burden of the world. 
Who made him dead to rapture and despair, 
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, 
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? 
Who loosened...Read more of this...

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