Famous Resurrection Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Resurrection poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous resurrection poems. These examples illustrate what a famous resurrection poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
George Herbert
Awake, sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns ;
Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth ;
Unfold thy forehead, gathered into frowns ;
Thy Saviour comes, and with Him mirth :
Awake, awake,
And with a thankful heart His comforts take.
But thou dost still lament, and pine, and cry,
And feel His death, but not His victory.
Arise, sad heart ; if thou dost not...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Allan Poe
Of all who hail thy presence as the morning-
Of all to whom thine absence is the night-
The blotting utterly from out high heaven
The sacred sun- of all who, weeping, bless thee
Hourly for hope- for life- ah! above all,
For the resurrection of deep-buried faith
In Truth- in Virtue- in Humanity-
Of all who, on Despair's unhallowed bed
Lying down to die, have suddenly...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
Yad Mordechai. Those who fell here
still look out the windows like sick children
who are not allowed outside to play.
And on the hillside, the battle is reenacted
for the benefit of hikers and tourists. Soldiers of thin sheet iron
rise and fall and rise again. Sheet iron dead and a sheet iron life
and the voices all—sheet iron. And the resurrection of the...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
I thought of my ‘faculty of poetry’
As of the eye
The bream or white-bait showed
In its hysterical dance of death
When the receding tide
Left it asleep
In a shallow pool on the shore.
Why did I fail to take it?
Was I strangely compassionate
Or merely afraid to touch
The jerking spasm of flesh
With the still eye?
Or was it I on the shore
In the shallow pool,...Read more of this...
by
William Strode
Like to the rowling of an eye,
Or like a starre shott from the skye,
Or like a hand upon a clock,
Or like a wave upon a rock,
Or like a winde, or like a flame,
Or like false newes which people frame,
Even such is man, of equall stay,
Whose very growth leades to decay.
The eye is turn'd, the starre down bendeth
The hand doth...Read more of this...
by
Seamus Heaney
There, in the corner, staring at his drink.
The cap juts like a gantry's crossbeam,
Cowling plated forehead and sledgehead jaw.
Speech is clamped in the lips' vice.
That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic-
Oh yes, that kind of thing could start again;
The only Roman collar he tolerates
Smiles all round his sleek pint of...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
It was a Grave, yet bore no Stone
Enclosed 'twas not of Rail
A Consciousness its Acre, and
It held a Human Soul.
Entombed by whom, for what offence
If Home or Foreign born --
Had I the curiosity
'Twere not appeased of men
Till Resurrection, I must guess
Denied the small desire
A Rose upon its Ridge to sow
Or take away a Briar....Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ' ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
BE those few hours, which I have yet to spend,
Blest with the meditation of my end;
Though they be few in number, I'm content;
If otherwise, I stand indifferent,
Nor makes it matter, Nestor's years to tell,
If man lives long, and if he live not well.
A multitude of days still heaped on
Seldom brings order, but...Read more of this...
by
Theodore Roethke
This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
What saint strained so much,
Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?
I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,
In my veins, in my bones I feel it --
The small waters seeping upward,
The tight grains parting at last.
When sprouts break out,
Slippery as fish,
I quail, lean to beginnings,...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
We mix from many lands,
We march for very far;
In hearts and lips and hands
Our staffs and weapons are;
The light we walk in darkens sun and moon and star.
It doth not flame and wane
With years and spheres that roll,
Storm cannot shake nor stain
The strength that makes it whole,
The fire that moulds and moves it of the sovereign soul.
We are they...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
No Crowd that has occurred
Exhibit -- I suppose
That General Attendance
That Resurrection -- does --
Circumference be full --
The long restricted Grave
Assert her Vital Privilege --
The Dust -- connect -- and live --
On Atoms -- features place --
All Multitudes that were
Efface in the Comparison --
As Suns -- dissolve a star --
Solemnity -- prevail --
Its Individual Doom
Possess each separate Consciousness --
August --...Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
Bells are booming down the bohreens,
White the mist along the grass,
Now the Julias, Maeves and Maureens
Move between the fields to Mass.
Twisted trees of small green apple
Guard the decent whitewashed chapel,
Gilded gates and doorway grained,
Pointed windows richly stained
With many-coloured Munich glass.
See the black-shawled congregations
On the broidered vestment gaze
Murmer past the painted stations
As Thy Sacred Heart displays
Lush Kildare of scented meadows,
Roscommon,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A creeping, coloured caterpillar,
I gnaw the fresh green hawthorn spray,
I nibble it leaf by leaf away.
Down beneath grow dandelions,
Daisies, old-man’s-looking-glasses;
Rooks flap croaking across the lane.
I eat and swallow and eat again.
Here come raindrops helter-skelter;
I munch and nibble unregarding:
Hawthorn leaves are juicy and firm.
I’ll mind my business:...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
Though I have watched so many mourners weep
O'er the real dead, in dull earth laid asleep—
Those dead seemed but the shadows of my days
That passed and left me in the sun's bright rays.
Now though you go on smiling in the sun
Our love is slain, and love and you were one.
You are the first, you I have known so long,
Whose...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
All in the beautiful Autumn weather
One thought lingers with me and stays;
Death and winter are coming together,
Though both are veiled by the amber haze
I look on the forest of royal splendour!
I look on the face in my quiet room;
A face all beautiful, sad and tender,
And both are stamped with the seal of doom.
All through...Read more of this...
by
Christina Rossetti
I have no wit, I have no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
A lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is like the falling leaf;
O Jesus, quicken me....Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
Sometimes in morning sunlights by the river
Where in the early fall long grasses wave,
Light winds from over the moorland sink and shiver
And sigh as if just blown across a grave.
And then I pause and listen to this sighing.
I look with strange eyes on the well-known stream.
I hear wild birth-cries uttered by the dying.
I know men waking who appear to...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
And the priestess spoke again and said: "Speak to us of Reason and Passion."
And he answered saying:
Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite.
Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Courage in death, and hope of the resurrection.
When God is nigh, my faith is strong;
His arm is my almighty prop:
Be glad, my heart; rejoice, my tongue;
My dying flesh shall rest in hope.
Though in the dust I lay my head,
Yet, gracious God, thou wilt not leave
My soul for ever with the dead,
Nor lose thy children in the grave.
My flesh shall...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Afraid! Of whom am I afraid?
Not Death -- for who is He?
The Porter of my Father's Lodge
As much abasheth me!
Of Life? 'Twere odd I fear [a] thing
That comprehendeth me
In one or two existences --
As Deity decree --
Of Resurrection? Is the East
Afraid to trust the Morn
With her fastidious forehead?
As soon impeach my Crown!...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Hope of heaven by the resurrection of Christ.
1 Pet. 1:3-5.
Blest be the everlasting God,
The Father of our Lord;
Be his abounding mercy praised,
His majesty adored.
When from the dead he raised his Son,
And called him to the sky,
He gave our souls a lively hope
That they should never die.
What though our inbred sins require
Our flesh to see the dust,
Yet as the...Read more of this...
by
Anais Nin
"Am I, at bottom, that fervent little Spanish Catholic child who chastised herself for loving toys, who forbade herself the enjoyment of sweet foods, who practiced silence, who humiliated her pride, who adored symbols, statues, burning candles, incense, the caress of nuns, organ music, for whom Communion was a great event? I was so exalted by the idea of...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
Soft-scented in the air for yards around;
Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!
Just like a fragile bell of silver rime,
It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief
In the young pregnant year...Read more of this...
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