Famous Prudence Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Prudence poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous prudence poems. These examples illustrate what a famous prudence poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Burns, Robert
...pondence fix’d wi’ Heav’n,
Is sure a noble anchor!
Adieu, dear, amiable youth!
Your heart can ne’er be wanting!
May prudence, fortitude, and truth,
Erect your brow undaunting!
In ploughman phrase, “God send you speed,”
Still daily to grow wiser;
And may ye better reck the rede,
Then ever did th’ adviser!...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...>
168 Old customs, new Prerogatives stood on.
169 Had they not held law fast, all had been gone,
170 Which by their prudence stood them in such stead
171 They took high Strafford lower by the head,
172 And to their Laud be 't spoke they held 'n th' Tower
173 All England's metropolitan that hour.
174 This done, an Act they would have passed fain
175 No prelate should his Bishopric retain.
176 Here tugg'd they hard indeed, for all men saw
177 This must be done by Go...Read more of this...
by
Milosz, Czeslaw
...ttering at dawn.
What oppressed me so much
Was a bit shameful.
Talking of it aloud
Would show neither tact nor prudence.
It might even seem an outrage
Against the health of mankind.
Alas, my memory
Does not want to leave me
And in it, live beings
Each with its own pain,
Each with its own dying,
Its own trepidation.
Why then innocence
On paradisal beaches,
An impeccable sky
Over the church of hygiene?
Is it because that
Was long ago?
To a saintly man
--...Read more of this...
by
Field, Eugene
...Prudence Mears hath an old blue plate
Hid away in an oaken chest,
And a Franklin platter of ancient date
Beareth Amandy Baker's crest;
What times soever I've been their guest,
Says I to myself in an undertone:
"Of womenfolk, it must be confessed,
These do I love, and these alone."
Well, again, in the Nutmeg State,
Dorothy Pratt is richly blest
With a re...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...s—had found somehow
The spark in him, and we had fanned it there,
Choked under, like a jest in Holy Writ,
By Tilbury prudence. He had lived his life
And in his way had shared, with all mankind,
Inveterate leave to fashion of himself,
By some resplendent metamorphosis,
Whatever he was not. And after time,
When it had come sufficiently to pass
That he was going patch-clad through the streets,
Weak, dizzy, chilled, and half starved, he had laid
Some nerveless fi...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...at most,
To covet flying, and regret when lost:
At last, to follies Youth could scarce defend,
It grows their Age's prudence to pretend;
Asham'd to own they gave delight before,
Reduc'd to feign it, when they give no more:
As Hags hold Sabbaths, less for joy than spite,
So these their merry, miserable Night;
Still round and round the Ghosts of Beauty glide,
And haunt the places where their Honour died.
See how the World its Veterans rewards!
A Youth of Frolic...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...?
Still to one bishop Philips seem a wit?
Still Sappho-- "Hold! for God-sake--you'll offend:
No names!--be calm!--learn prudence of a friend!
I too could write, and I am twice as tall;
But foes like these!" One flatt'rer's worse than all.
Of all mad creatures, if the learn'd are right,
It is the slaver kills, and not the bite.
A fool quite angry is quite innocent;
Alas! 'tis ten times worse when they repent.
One dedicates in high heroic prose,
And ridicules beyon...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...1
MANHATTAN’S streets I saunter’d, pondering,
On time, space, reality—on such as these, and abreast with them, prudence.
2
After all, the last explanation remains to be made about prudence;
Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that suits immortality.
The Soul is of itself;
All verges to it—all has reference to what ensues;
All that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence;
Not a move can a man or woman make, that affects hi...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...even a boon,
Nor more unkind for coming soon,
Yet shunned and dreaded with such care,
As if it only were a snare
That prudence might escape:
At times both wished for and implored,
At times sought with self-pointed sword,
Yet still a dark and hideous close
To even intolerable woes,
And welcome in no shape.
And, strange to say, the sons of pleasure,
They who have revelled beyond measure
In beauty, wassail, wine, and treasure,
Die calm, or calmer, oft than he
Whose her...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...challenged for his own.
Thence what the lofty grave Tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,
High actions and high passions best describing.
Thence to the famous Orators repair,
Those ancient whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democraty,
Shook the Arsenal, and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Arta...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...those fashions I hardly shall know!
``Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage that gains,
``And the prudence that keeps what men strive for.'' And now these old trains
Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so, once more the string
Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus---
XIII.
``Yea, my King,''
I began---``thou dost well in rejecting mere comforts that spring
``From the mere mortal life held in common by man and by brute:
``In our f...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Anne
...tell
Their love whose ardent bosoms swell
With thoughts they need not hide;
Where fortune frowns not on their joy,
And Prudence seeks not to destroy,
Nor Reason to deride.
Whose love may freely gush and flow,
Unchecked, unchilled by doubt or fear,
For in their inmost hearts they know
It is not vainly nourished there.
They know that in a kindred breast
Their long desires have found a home,
Where heart and soul may kindly rest,
Weary and lorn no more to roam.
The...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...tands
them;
Where no monuments exist to heroes, but in the common words and deeds;
Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place;
Where the men and women think lightly of the laws;
Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases;
Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons;
Where fierce men and women pour forth, as the sea to the whistle of death pours its
sweeping
and
unript waves;
Where outside authorit...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...d quick maneuvres and threads of silk:
But courtship and wooing, whatever their form, are
informed
By extreme caution, prudence, and calculation,
For the female spider, lazier and fiercer than the male
suitor,
May make a meal of him if she does not feel in the same
mood, or if her appetite
Consumes her far more than the revelation of love's
consummation.
Here among spiders, as in the higher forms of nature,
The male runs a terrifying risk when he goes seeking for
t...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...t dear to him my blighted name.
'Tis strange - he prophesied my doom,
And I have smiled - I then could smile -
When prudence would his voice assume,
And warn - I recked not what - the while:
But now remembrance whispers o'er
Those accents scarcely marked before.
Say - that his bodings came to pass,
And he will start to hear their truth,
And wish his words had not been sooth:
Tell him, unheeding as I was,
Through many a busy bitter scene
Of all our golden youth had bee...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...>
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time....Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...'for we two
Were always friends, none closer, elm and vine:
But yet your mother's jealous temperament--
Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove
The Danaïd of a leaky vase, for fear
This whole foundation ruin, and I lose
My honour, these their lives.' 'Ah, fear me not'
Replied Melissa; 'no--I would not tell,
No, not for all Aspasia's cleverness,
No, not to answer, Madam, all those hard things
That Sheba came to ask of Solomon.'
'Be it so' the other,...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...r'd upon my name;Your Love had blame in its excess alone,And wanted prudence; while you sought to tell,By act and air, what long I knew and well,To the whole world your secret heart was shown;Thence was the coldness which your hopes distress'd,For such our sympathy in all the rest,As is alone wher...Read more of this...
by
Johnson, Samuel
...heard and less, the faint remonstrance falls;
333 Tir'd with contempt, she quits the slipp'ry reign,
334 And Pride and Prudence take her seat in vain.
335 In crowd at once, where none the pass defend,
336 The harmless freedom, and the private friend.
337 The guardians yield, by force superior plied;
338 By Int'rest, Prudence; and by Flatt'ry, Pride.
339 Now Beauty falls betray'd, despis'd, distress'd,
340 And hissing Infamy proclaims the rest.
341 Where then...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...A
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, ea...Read more of this...
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