Famous Reprieve Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Reprieve poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous reprieve poems. These examples illustrate what a famous reprieve poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Isaac Watts
Jesus our surety and Savior.
1 Pet. 1:18; Gal. 3:13; Rom. 4:25.
Adam, our father and our head,
Transgressed, and justice doomed us dead;
The fiery law speaks all despair:
There's no reprieve nor pardon there.
But, O unutterable grace
The Son of God takes Adam's place;
Down to our world the Savior flies,
Stretches his arms, and bleeds, and dies.
Justice was pleased to bruise the God,
And...Read more of this...
by
Omer Tarin
You draw your breath
yearning
a sadness infinite
in its contemplation;
I, who embraced death
in dumbfounded rapture
am reborn
in the eternal question
imprisoned in your eyes;
Are we to celebrate
this reprieve
relying
on our doomed songs
of desperate desire?
Let's be buried together.
(from ''Burnt Offerings, 1996)
...Read more of this...
by
George Herbert
O do not use me
After my sins! look not on my dessert,
But on your glory! Then you will reform
And not refuse me: for you only art
The mighty God, but I a silly worm;
O do not bruise me!
O do not urge me!
For what account can your ill steward make?
I have abused your...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
First, London, for its myriads; for its height,
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite;
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . .
Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays
Than, having beauty and your twenty years,
You have the means...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Would you like summer? Taste of ours.
Spices? Buy here!
Ill! We have berries, for the parching!
Weary! Furloughs of down!
Perplexed! Estates of violet trouble ne'er looked on!
Captive! We bring reprieve of roses!
Fainting! Flasks of air!
Even for Death, a fairy medicine.
But, which is it, sir?...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
1923
Man dies too soon, beside his works half-planned.
His days are counted and reprieve is vain:
Who shall entreat with Death to stay his hand;
Or cloke the shameful nakedness of pain?
Send here the bold, the seekers of the way--
The passionless, the unshakeable of soul,
Who serve the inmost mysteries of man's clay,
And ask no more than leave to...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Felix Randal the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty all ended,
Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome
Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some
Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?
Sickness broke him. Impatient he cursed at first, but mended
Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some
Months earlier, since...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
The sky is like an envelope,
One of those blue official things;
And, sealing it, to mock our hope,
The moon, a silver wafer, clings.
What shall we find when death gives leave
To read--our sentence or reprieve?
I'm holding it down on God's scrap-pile, up on the ***-end of earth;
O'er me a menace of mountains, a river that...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas in the United States of America some years ago
An aged father sat at his fireside with his heart full of woe,
And talking to his neighbour, Mr Allan, about his boy Bennie
That was to be shot because found asleep doing sentinel duty.
"Inside of twenty-four hours, the telegram said,
And, oh! Mr Allan, he's dead, I am afraid.
Where is my...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
Shake out my pockets! Harken to the call
Of that calm voice that makes no sound at all!
Take of me all you can; my average weight
May make amends for this, my low estate.
But do not shake, Green Thumb, as once you did
My heart and liver, or my prostate bid
Good Morning to -- leave it,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Tried always and Condemned by thee
Permit me this reprieve
That dying I may earn the look
For which I cease to live --...Read more of this...
by
Hart Crane
How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty--
Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
--Till elevators drop us from our day . . .
I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
v.6-14
C. M.
Pride and death; or, The vanity of life and riches.
Why doth the man of riches grow
To insolence and pride,
To see his wealth and honors flow
With every rising tide?
[Why doth he treat the poor with scorn,
Made of the self-same clay,
And boast as though his flesh was born
Of better dust than they?]
Not all his treasures can procure
His soul a...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.
It is their care...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
We talked with each other about each other
Though neither of us spoke --
We were listening to the seconds' Races
And the Hoofs of the Clock --
Pausing in Front of our Palsied Faces
Time compassion took --
Arks of Reprieve he offered to us --
Ararats -- we took --...Read more of this...
by
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
My Lady (Español)
Perdite, señora, quiero
de mi silencio perdón,
si lo que ha sido atención
le hace parecer grosero.
Y no me podrás culpar
si hasta aquí mi proceder,
por ocuparse en querer,
se ha olvidado de explicar.
Que en mi amorosa pasión
no fue desuido, ni mengua,
quitar el uso a la lengua
por dárselo al corazón.
...Read more of this...
by
Bliss Carman
TO the assembled folk
At great St. Kavin’s spoke
Young Brother Amiel on Christmas Eve;
I give you joy, my friends,
That as the round year ends,
We meet once more for gladness by God’s leave.
On other festal days
For penitence or praise
Or prayer we meet, or fullness of thanksgiving;
To-night we calendar
The rising of that...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
'Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch,
That nearer, every Day,
Kept narrowing its boiling Wheel
Until the Agony
Toyed coolly with the final inch
Of your delirious Hem --
And you dropt, lost,
When something broke --
And let you from a Dream --
As if a Goblin with a Gauge --
Kept measuring the Hours --
Until you felt your Second
Weigh, helpless, in his Paws --
And not a...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
It came his turn to beg --
The begging for the life
Is different from another Alms
'Tis Penury in Chief --
I scanned his narrow realm
I gave him leave to live
Lest Gratitude revive the snake
Though smuggled his reprieve...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
You never heard tell of the story?
Well, now, I can hardly believe!
Never heard of the honour and glory
Of Pardon, the son of Reprieve?
But maybe you're only a Johnnie
And don't know a horse from a hoe?
Well, well, don't get angry, my sonny,
But, really, a young un should know.
They bred him out back...Read more of this...
by
Henry Vaughan
Love, the world's life! What a sad death
Thy absence is to lose our breath
At once and die, is but to live
Enlarged, without the scant reprieve
Of pulse and air: whose dull returns
And narrow circles the soul mourns.
But to be dead alive, and still
To wish, but never have our will:
To be possessed, and yet to miss;
To wed a true but absent...Read more of this...
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