Famous Prophet Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Prophet poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous prophet poems. These examples illustrate what a famous prophet poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
When in from Delos came the gold
That held the dream of Pericles,
When first Athenian ears were told
The tumult of Euripides,
When men met Aristophanes,
Who fledged them with immortal quills—
Here, where the time knew none of these,
There were some islands and some hills.
When Rome went ravening to see
The sons of mothers end their...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I LIKE a church; I like a cowl;
I love a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles;
Yet not for all his faith can see 5
Would I that cowl¨¨d churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure
Which I could not on me endure?
Not from...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Above her shook the starry lights:
She heard the torrents meet.
There in her place she did rejoice,
Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind,
But fragments of her mighty voice
Came rolling on the wind.
Then stept she down thro' town and field
To mingle with the human race,
And part by part to men reveal'd
The fulness of...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In those days the Evil Spirits,
All the Manitos of mischief,
Fearing Hiawatha's wisdom,
And his love for Chibiabos,
Jealous of their faithful friendship,
And their noble words and actions,
Made at length a league against them,
To molest them and destroy them.
Hiawatha, wise and wary,
Often said to Chibiabos,
"O my brother! do not leave me,
Lest the Evil Spirits harm you!"
Chibiabos, young and heedless,
Laughing shook his coal-black...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
Glory of architect, glory of painter, and sculptor, and bard,
Living forever in temple and picture and statue and song, --
Look how the world with the lights that they lit is illumined and starred,
Brief was the flame of their life, but the lamps of their art burn long!
Where is the Master of Music, and how has he vanished away?
Where...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
Eliza, what fools are the Mussulman sect,
Who to woman deny the soul's future existence!
Could they see thee, Eliza, they'd own their defect,
And this doctrine would meet with a general resistance.
Had their prophet possess'd half an atom of sense,
He ne'er would have woman from paradise driven;
Instead of his houris, a flimsy pretence,
With woman alone he had peopled his...Read more of this...
by
Richard Wilbur
When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God's name to have self-pity,
Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,
Unable to fear what is too strange.
Nor shall you...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
O King of Terrors, whose unbounded Sway
All that have Life, must certainly Obey;
The King, the Priest, the Prophet, all are Thine,
Nor wou'd ev'n God (in Flesh) thy Stroke decline.
My Name is on thy Roll, and sure I must
Encrease thy gloomy Kingdom in the Dust.
My soul at this no Apprehension feels,
But trembles at...Read more of this...
by
Arthur Hugh Clough
Across the sea, along the shore,
In numbers more and ever more,
From lonely hut and busy town,
The valley through, the mountain down,
What was it ye went out to see,
Ye silly folk Galilee?
The reed that in the wind doth shake?
The weed that washes in the lake?
The reeds that waver, the weeds that float?
A young man preaching in a boat.
What was it...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Murs, ville et port.")
{XXVIII., Aug. 28, 1828.}
Town, tower,
Shore, deep,
Where lower
Cliff's steep;
Waves gray,
Where play
Winds gay,
All sleep.
Hark! a sound,
Far and slight,
Breathes around
On the night
High and higher,
Nigh and nigher,
...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The works of Moses and the Lamb.
Rev. 15:3.
How strong thine arm is, mighty God!
Who would not fear thy name?
Jesus, how sweet thy graces are!
Who would not love the Lamb?
He has done more than Moses did,
Our Prophet and our King;
From bonds of hell he freed our souls,
And taught our lips to sing.
In the Red Sea, by Moses' hand,
Th' Egyptian...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Watchman, what of the night? -
Storm and thunder and rain,
Lights that waver and wane,
Leaving the watchfires unlit.
Only the balefires are bright,
And the flash of the lamps now and then
From a palace where spoilers sit,
Trampling the children of men.
Prophet, what of the night? -
I stand by the verge of the sea,
Banished, uncomforted,...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
Ah, my darling, when over the purple horizon shall loom
The shrouded mother of a new idea, men hide their faces,
Cry out and fend her off, as she seeks her procreant groom,
Wounding themselves against her, denying her fecund embraces....Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
1896
Mine was the woman to me, darkling I found her:
Haling her dumb from the camp, held her and bound her.
Hot rose her tribe on our track ere I had proved her;
Hearing her laugh in the gloom, greatly I loved her.
Swift through the forest we ran, none stood to guard us,
Few were my people and fa; then the flood barred...Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pushkin
Longing for spiritual springs,
I dragged myself through desert sands ...
An angel with three pairs of wings
Arrived to me at cross of lands;
With fingers so light and slim
He touched my eyes as in a dream:
And opened my prophetic eyes
Like eyes of eagle in surprise.
He touched my ears in movement, single,
And they were filled with noise and jingle:
I heard a...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Illustrious Prophet! whom all kings obey,
When is our darkness lightened by wine's ray?
On Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday, and Saturday, both night and day!...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
“Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing—and what of it?
Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that?
If I were not their father and if you were not their mother,
We might believe they made a noise…. What are you—driving at!”
“Well, be glad that you can hear them,...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
When I set out for Lyonnesse,
A hundred miles away,
The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
When I set out for Lyonnesse
A hundred miles away.
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there
No prophet durst declare,
Nor did the wisest wizard guess
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there.
When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes,
All...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
On the Mountains of the Prairie,
On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
He the Master of Life, descending,
On the red crags of the quarry
Stood erect, and called the nations,
Called the tribes of men together.
From his footprints flowed a river,
Leaped into the light of morning,
O'er the precipice plunging downward
Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet.
And the Spirit, stooping earthward,
With his finger...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
The Word came down to Dives in Torment where he lay:
"Our World is full of wickedness, My Children maim and slay,
"And the Saint and Seer and Prophet
"Can make no better of it
"Than to sanctify and prophesy and pray.
"Rise up, rise up, thou Dives, and take again thy gold,
"And thy women and thy housen as they were to...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Prophets have honour all over the Earth,
Except in the village where they were born,
Where such as knew them boys from birth
Nature-ally hold 'em in scorn.
When Prophets are naughty and young and vain,
They make a won'erful grievance of it;
(You can see by their writings how they complain),
But 0, 'tis won'erful good for the Prophet!
There's...Read more of this...
by
Louis Untermeyer
"Old Jews!" Well, David, aren't we?
What news is that to make you see so red,
To swear and almost tear your beard in half?
Jeered at? Well, let them laugh.
You can laugh longer when you're dead.
What? Are you still too blind to see?
Have you forgot your Midrash!... They were right,
The little goyim, with their angry stones.
You should be buried in the desert...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
And wherefore have they come, this warlike band,
That o'er the ocean many a weary day
Have tossed; and now beside Suakim's Bay,
With faces stern and resolute, do stand,
Waking the desert's echoes with the drum --
Men of Australia, wherefore have ye come?
To keep the Puppet Khedive on the throne,
To strike a blow for tyranny...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
In Cheeban [a month] I must not embrace the vine; in
Redjeb I am consecrate to Him. By right these sixty
suns to Allah and his Prophet are assigned: let Ramazan
in mercy bring the cooling cup again....Read more of this...
by
Stephen Crane
When the prophet, a complacent fat man,
Arrived at the mountain-top,
He cried: "Woe to my knowledge!
I intended to see good white lands
And bad black lands,
But the scene is grey."...Read more of this...
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