Famous Psalms Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Psalms poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous psalms poems. These examples illustrate what a famous psalms poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
...I have built you up into my heart and brain
So fast that we can never part again.
Why should I sing you these fantastic psalms
When all the time I have you in my arms?
Why? 'tis the murmur of our love that swells
Earth's dithyrambs and ocean's oracles.
But this is dawn; my soul shall make its nest
Where your sighs swing from rapture into rest
Love's thurible, your tiger-lily breast....Read more of this...
by
Crowley, Aleister
...music -- clouds of mosses gray
That rain me rains of pleasant thoughts alway
From a low sky of leaves -- faint yearning psalms
Of endless metre breathing through the palms
That crowd and lean and gaze from off the shore
Ever for one that cometh nevermore --
Palmettos ranked, with childish spear-points set
Against no enemy -- rich cones that fret
High roofs of temples shafted tall with pines --
Green, grateful mangroves where the sand-beach shines --
Long lissome coast that in...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...ry new,
A dirty novel done in Erse
Or written backwards in Welsh verse,
Or paintings on the backs of vests,
Or Sanskrit psalms on lepers' chests.
But if this proved imposs-i-ble
Perhaps it would be just as well,
For you could then write what you please,
And modern verse is done with ease.
Do not forget that 'limpet' rhymes
With 'strumpet' in these troubled times,
And commas are the worst of crimes;
Few understand the works of Cummings,
And few James Joyce's mental slummings,...Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Dylan
...ures batten o'er their stores,
And careful nature all her doors
For ADORATION shuts.
LXIV
For ADORATION, DAVID's psalms
Life up the heart to deeds of alms;
And he, who kneels and chants,
Prevails his passions to control,
Finds meat and med'cine to the soul,
Which for translation pants.
LXV
For ADORATION, beyond match,
The scholar bullfinch aims to catch
The soft flute's iv'ry touch;
And, careless on the hazel spray,
The daring redbreast keeps at bay
T...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
..."Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself."
(David, Psalms 50.21)
['Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best,
Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire,
With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin.
And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush,
And feels about his spine small eft-things course,
Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh:
And while above his head a pompion-plant,
Coating t...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...that cold, grey, damp, smelling church,
And I had to sit on a hard bench,
Wriggle off it to kneel down when they sang psalms
And wriggle off it to kneel down when they prayed,
And then there was nothing to do
Except to play trains with the hymn-books.
There was nothing to see,
Nothing to do,
Nothing to play with,
Except that in an empty room upstairs
There was a large tin box
Containing reproductions of the Magna Charta,
Of the Declaration of Independence
And of...Read more of this...
by
Aldington, Richard
...stretch the ray to ages yet unborn.
Not but there are, who merit other palms;
Hopkins and Sternhold glad the heart with psalms:
The boys and girls whom charity maintains,
Implore your help in these pathetic strains:
How could devotion touch the country pews,
Unless the gods bestow'd a proper Muse?
Verse cheers their leisure, verse assists their work,
Verse prays for peace, or sings down Pope and Turk.
The silenc'd preacher yields to potent strain,
And feels that grace his pra...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...till whilst her morning unseen fled away
In ord'ring the linen and making the tea
That scarce could have time for the psalms of the day;
And while after dinner the night came so soon
That half she propos'd very seldom was done;
With twenty God bless me's, how this day is gone! --
While she read and accounted and paid and abated,
Eat and drank, play'd and work'd, laugh'd and cried, lov'd and hated,
As answer'd the end of her being created:
In the midst of her age c...Read more of this...
by
Prior, Matthew
...t be leaven'd with honey.
For a NEW SONG also is best, if it be to the glory of God; and taken with the food like the psalms.
For the Planet Saturn is the word TEMPERANCE or PATIENCE.
For Jacob's Ladder are the steps of the Earth graduated hence to Paradice and thence to the throne of God.
For a good wish is well but a faithful prayer is an eternal benefit.
For SPICA VIRGINIS is the star that appeared to the wise men in the East and directed their way before it was ...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...ar thro' Christ 1763.
Let Jesse, house of Jesse rejoice with the Lawrey a kind of bird. God forward my version of the psalms thro' Jesus Christ our Lord.
Let Clemison, house of Clemison rejoice with Helix a kind of Ivy. God be praised for the vision of the Redcap and packet.
Let Crockatt, house of Crockatt rejoice with Emboline an Asiatic Shrub with small leaves an antidote. I pray for the soul of Crockatt the bookseller the first to put me upon a version of the Psalms....Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...not?"
The first responded, "Because there are
No women in his one novel."
And Mrs. Whitimore was now reading from the Psalms.
Coughing into her handkerchief. Snow above the windows.
There was a blue light on her face, breasts, and arms.
Sometimes a whole civilization can be dying
Peacefully in one young woman, in a small heated room
With thirty children
Rapt, confident and listening to the pure
God-rendering voice of a storm....Read more of this...
by
Dubie, Norman
...ith poem, where so soon
As in our native language can I find
That solace? All our Law and Story strewed
With hymns, our Psalms with artful terms inscribed,
Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon
That pleased so well our victor's ear, declare
That rather Greece from us these arts derived—
Ill imitated while they loudest sing
The vices of their deities, and their own,
In fable, hymn, or song, so personating
Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.
Remove their swellin...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...http://www.poetrysoup.com/bible/book/psalms...Read more of this...
by
Bible, The
...ied up for punishment—I hear the sibilant whisk of thongs
through
the air;
I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms;
I hear the rhythmic myths of the Greeks, and the strong legends of the Romans;
I hear the tale of the divine life and bloody death of the beautiful God—the Christ;
I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars, adages, transmitted safely
to
this
day, from poets who wrote three thousand years ago.
4
What do you see, Walt Whitman...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ng three eggs; and the next year…”
S. “Foaled thirteen squamous young beneath, and rid
Wales of drink, melancholy, and psalms, she did.”
Said he, “Before this quaint mood fails,
We’ll sit and weave a nonsense hymn,”
R. “Hanging it up with monkey tails
In a deep grove all hushed and dim….”
S. “To glorious yellow-bunched banana-trees,”
R. “Planted in dreams by pious Portuguese,”
S. “Which men are wise beyond their time,
And worship nonsense, no one more.”
R. “Hard by,...Read more of this...
by
Graves, Robert
...sands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body want...Read more of this...
by
Gilbert, Jack
...these;
Make chants that repeat and weave.
Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns;
Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns.
Make a marching song of swinging arms and swinging legs,
Going along,
Going along,
On the roads from San Antonio to Athens, from Seattle to Bagdad—
The boys and men in winding lines of khaki, the circling squares of bayonet points.
Cowpunchers, cornhuskers, shopmen, ready in khaki;
Ballplayers, lumberjacks, ironworke...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...eads for questions. When I was a lad
I learned a bit from mother, and never thought
To educate myself for prayers and psalms.
But now I’m old and bald and serious-minded,
With days to sit and ponder. I’d no chance
When young and gay to get the hang of all
This Hell and Heaven: and when the clergy hoick
And holloa from their pulpits, I’m asleep,
However hard I listen; and when they pray
It seems we’re all like children sucking sweets
In school, and wondering whether m...Read more of this...
by
Sassoon, Siegfried
...t burst his pipes,
Groaning for power, and rolling through the court
A long melodious thunder to the sound
Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies,
The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven
A blessing on her labours for the world.
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon, and blow,
Blow him again to me;
While my little one, while my pretty one, ...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...bosom;
With the fierce-biting storm
Bearest him proudly on high;
Winter torrents rush from the cliffs,--
Blend with his psalms;
An altar of grateful delight
He finds in the much-dreaded mountain's
Snow-begirded summit,
Which foreboding nations
Crown'd with spirit-dances.
Thou stand'st with breast inscrutable,
Mysteriously disclosed,
High o'er the wondering world,
And look'st from clouds
Upon its realms and its majesty,
Which thou from the veins of thy brethren
Near thee dost...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Psalms poems.