Famous Promise Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Promise poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous promise poems. These examples illustrate what a famous promise poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
What phantom is this that appears
Through the purple mist of the years,
Itself but a mist like these?
A woman of cloud and of fire;
It is she; it is Helen of Tyre,
The town in the midst of the seas.
O Tyre! in thy crowded streets
The phantom appears and retreats,
And the Israelites that sell
Thy lilies and lions of brass,
Look up as they...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Heed me, feed me, I am hungry, I am red-tongued with desire;
Boughs of balsam, slabs of cedar, gummy fagots of the pine,
Heap them on me, let me hug them to my eager heart of fire,
Roaring, soaring up to heaven as a symbol and a sign.
Bring me knots of sunny maple, silver birch and tamarack;
Leaping, sweeping, I will lap them...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
God's conduct of Israel, and the plagues of Egypt.
Give thanks to God, invoke his name,
And tell the world his grace;
Sound through the earth his deeds of fame,
That all may seek his face.
His cov'nant, which he kept in mind
For num'rous ages past,
To num'rous ages yet behind
In equal force shall last.
He sware to Abraham and his seed,
And made the blessing sure;
Gentiles...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The Divine Perfections.
Great God! thy glories shall employ
My holy fear, my humble joy;
My lips in songs of honor bring
Their tribute to th' eternal King.
[Earth, and the stars, and worlds unknown,
Depend precarious on his throne;
All nature hangs upon his word,
And grace and glory own their Lord.]
[His sovereign power what mortal knows?
If be command, who dares oppose?
With strength he girds himself...Read more of this...
by
Mark Doty
Today the Masons are auctioning
their discarded pomp: a trunk of turbans,
gemmed and ostrich-plumed, and operetta costumes
labeled inside the collar "Potentate"
and "Vizier." Here their chairs, blazoned
with the Masons' sign, huddled
like convalescents, lean against one another
on the grass. In a casket are rhinestoned poles
the hierophants carried in parades;
here's a splendid golden staff...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
The heads of strong old age are beautiful
Beyond all grace of youth. They have strange quiet,
Integrity, health, soundness, to the full
They've dealt with life and been tempered by it.
A young man must not sleep; his years are war,
Civil and foreign but the former's worse;
But the old can breathe in safety now that they are
Forgetting what youth meant, the being...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
I. SPEAK NOW FOR PEACE
Lady of Light, and our best woman, and queen,
Stand now for peace, (though anger breaks your heart),
Though naught but smoke and flame and drowning is seen.
Lady of Light, speak, though you speak alone,
Though your voice may seem as a dove's in this howling flood,
It is heard to-night by every senate and throne.
Though the widening battle...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
I
The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies
white and unspotted,
in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness
sweep into
the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair. The
air
is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight.
See how the roof glitters, like ice!
Over there, a slice of yellow...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Better -- than Music! For I -- who heard it --
I was used -- to the Birds -- before --
This -- was different -- 'Twas Translation --
Of all tunes I knew -- and more --
'Twasn't contained -- like other stanza --
No one could play it -- the second time --
But the Composer -- perfect Mozart --
Perish with him --...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Promise This -- When You be Dying --
Some shall summon Me --
Mine belong Your latest Sighing --
Mine -- to Belt Your Eye --
Not with Coins -- though they be Minted
From an Emperor's Hand --
Be my lips -- the only Buckle
Your low Eyes -- demand --
Mine to stay -- when all have wandered --
To devise once more
If the Life be...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
For oh, when the war will be over
We'll go and we'll look for our dead;
We'll go when the bee's on the clover,
And the plume of the poppy is red:
We'll go when the year's at its gayest,
When meadows are laughing with flow'rs;
And there where the crosses are greyest,
We'll seek for the cross that is ours.
For they...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
A PROMISE to California,
Also to the great Pastoral Plains, and for Oregon:
Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain, to teach robust
American
love;
For I know very well that I and robust love belong among you, inland, and along the
Western
Sea;
For These States tend inland, and toward the Western Sea—and I...Read more of this...
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
I hate this City, seated on the Plain,
The clang and clamour of the hot Bazar,
Knowing, amid the pauses of my pain,
This month the Almonds bloom in Kandahar.
The Almond-trees, that sheltered my Delight,
Screening my happiness as evening...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Muir
The rivulet-loving wanderer Abraham
Through waterless wastes tracing his fields of pasture
Led his Chaldean herds and fattening flocks
With the meandering art of wavering water
That seeks and finds, yet does not know its way.
He came, rested and prospered, and went on,
Scattering behind him little pastoral kingdoms,
And over each one its own particular sky,
Not the great rounded sky through which he journeyed,
That...Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
Put the sweet thoughts from out thy mind,
The dreams from out thy breast;
No joy for thee--but thou shalt find
Thy rest
All day I could not work for woe,
I could not work nor rest;
The trouble drove me to and fro,
Like a leaf on the storm's breast.
Night came and saw my sorrow cease;
Sleep in the chamber stole;
Peace crept about my limbs, and...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy brav'ry in their rotten smoke?
'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound and cures not...Read more of this...
by
Margaret Widdemer
I am the Dark Cavalier; I am the Last Lover:
My arms shall welcome you when other arms are tired;
I stand to wait for you, patient in the darkness,
Offering forgetfulness of all that you desired.
I ask no merriment, no pretense of gladness,
I can love heavy lids and lips without their rose;
Though...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
SIT stilla worda breath may break
(As light airs stir a sleeping lake,)
The glassy calm that soothes my woes,
The sweet, the deep, the full repose.
O leave me not ! for ever be
Thus, more than life itself to me !
Yes, close beside thee, let me kneel
Give me thy hand that I may feel
The...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Thou father of the children of my brain
By thee engendered in my willing heart,
How can I thank thee for this gift of art
Poured out so lavishly, and not in vain.
What thou created never more can die,
Thy fructifying power lives in me
And I conceive, knowing it is by thee,
Dear other parent of my poetry!
For I was but a shadow with...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The Divine Perfections.
Jehovah reigns, his throne is high,
His robes are light and majesty;
His glory shines with beams so bright,
No mortal can sustain the sight.
His terrors keep the world in awe;
His justice guards his holy law;
His love reveals a smiling face;
His truth and promise seal the grace.
Through all his works his wisdom shines,
And baffles Satan's deep designs;
His power is sovereign...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
THE groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould,
Fair Spring slides hither o'er the Southern sea,
Wavers on her thin stem the snowdrop cold
That trembles not to kisses of the bee:
Come Spring, for now from all the dripping eaves
The spear of ice has wept itself away,
And hour by hour unfolding woodbine leaves
O'er his uncertain...Read more of this...
by
Richard Crashaw
HAIL, sister springs,
Parents of silver-footed rills!
Ever bubbling things,
Thawing crystal, snowy hills!
Still spending, never spent; I mean
Thy fair eyes, sweet Magdalene.
Heavens thy fair eyes be;
Heavens of ever-falling stars;
'Tis seed-time still with thee,
And stars thou sow'st whose harvest dares
Promise the earth to countershine
Whatever makes Heaven's forehead fine.
Every morn from hence
A brisk cherub something...Read more of this...
by
Marilyn Hacker
for Audre Lorde and Sonny Wainwright
Twice in my quickly disappearing forties
someone called while someone I loved and I were
making love to tell me another woman had died of cancer.
Seven years apart, and two different lovers:
underneath the numbers, how lives are braided,
how those women's death and lives, lived and died, were
interleaved also.
Does lip touch on lip a memento mori?
Does the...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
Thar showed up out'n Denver in the spring uv '81
A man who'd worked with Dana on the Noo York Sun.
His name wuz Cantell Whoppers, 'nd he wuz a sight ter view
Ez he walked inter the orfice 'nd inquired fer work ter do.
Thar warn't no places vacant then,--fer be it understood,
That wuz the time when talent flourished at that altitood;
But...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
I grew a rose within a garden fair,
And, tending it with more than loving care,
I thought how, with the glory of its bloom,
I should the darkness of my life illume;
And, watching, ever smiled to see the lusty bud
Drink freely in the summer sun to tinct its blood.
My rose began to open, and its hue
Was sweet to me as to it...Read more of this...
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