Famous Rosary Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Rosary poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous rosary poems. These examples illustrate what a famous rosary poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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The Rosary

by Robert Herrick
 Not on the lute, nor harp of many strings
Shall all men praise the Master of all song.
Our life is brief, one saith, and art is long;
And skilled must be the laureates of kings.
Silent, O lips that utter foolish things!
Rest, awkward fingers striking all notes wrong!
How from your toil shall issue, white and strong,
Music like that God's chosen poet sings?
There...Read more of this...

Interim

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 The room is full of you!—As I came in
And closed the door behind me, all at once
A something in the air, intangible,
Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick!—

Sharp, unfamiliar odors have destroyed
Each other room's dear personality.
The heavy scent of damp, funereal flowers,—
The very essence, hush-distilled, of Death—
Has strangled that habitual breath of home
Whose expiration leaves all houses dead;
And...Read more of this...

As with others

by Emile Verhaeren
As with others, an hour has its ill-humour: the peevish hour or a malevolent humour has sometimes stamped our hearts with its black seals; and yet, in spite of all, even at the close of the darkest days, never have our hearts said the irrevocable words.
A radiant and glowing sincerity was our joy and counsel, and our passionate soul found...Read more of this...

Sancta Maria Succurre Miseris

by Amy Lowell
 Dear Virgin Mary, far away,
Look down from Heaven while I pray.
Open your golden casement high,
And lean way out beyond the sky.
I am so little, it may be
A task for you to harken me.
O Lady Mary, I have bought
A candle, as the good priest taught.
I only had one penny, so
Old Goody Jenkins let it go.
It is a little bent, you...Read more of this...

Pagodas, just as mosques, are homes of prayer,

by Omar Khayyam
Pagodas, just as mosques, are homes of prayer,
'Tis prayer that church-bells chime unto the air,
Yea, Church and Ka'ba, Rosary and Cross
Are all but divers tongues of world-wide prayer....Read more of this...

Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell

by Archibald MacLeish
 Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered
Figuring what anything is for:
Enough for her devotions that things are
And can be contemplated soon as gathered.

She knows how every living thing was fathered,
She calculates the climate of each star,
She counts the fish at sea, but cannot care
Why any one of them exists, fish, fire or feathered.

Why should she? Her religion is to...Read more of this...

The Star-Apple Kingdom

by Derek Walcott
 There were still shards of an ancient pastoral 
in those shires of the island where the cattle drank 
their pools of shadow from an older sky, 
surviving from when the landscape copied such objects as 
"Herefords at Sunset in the valley of the Wye." 
The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheel 
sprinkling like petals from the...Read more of this...

Regarding Art

by Nazim Hikmet
 Sometimes, I, too, tell the ah's
of my heart one by one
like the blood-red beads
of a ruby rosary strung
 on strands of golden hair!

But my
poetry's muse
takes to the air
on wings made of steel
like the I-beams
 of my suspension bridges!

I don't pretend
 the nightingale's lament
to the rose isn't easy on the ears...
But the language
 that really speaks to me
are Beethoven sonatas...Read more of this...

The Rosary

by Robert Herrick
 One asked me where the roses grew:
I bade him not go seek,
But forwith bade my Julia show
A bud in either cheek....Read more of this...

The Obdurate Beauty

by Victor Hugo
 ("A Juana la Grenadine!") 
 
 {XXIX., October, 1843.} 


 To Juana ever gay, 
 Sultan Achmet spoke one day 
 "Lo, the realms that kneel to own 
 Homage to my sword and crown 
 All I'd freely cast away, 
 Maiden dear, for thee alone." 
 
 "Be a Christian, noble king! 
 For it were a...Read more of this...

Ode on Melancholy

by John Keats
NO no! go not to Lethe neither twist 
Wolf's-bane tight-rooted for its poisonous wine; 
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist 
By nightshade ruby grape of Proserpine; 
Make not your rosary of yew-berries 5 
Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be 
Your mournful Psyche nor the downy owl 
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; 
For shade to shade...Read more of this...

Autumn

by Thomas Hood
 I Saw old Autumn in the misty morn 
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening 
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing 
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, 
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;— 
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright 
With tangled gossamer that fell by night, 
Pearling his coronet of golden corn. 

Where are the songs of...Read more of this...

In A Breton Cemetery

by Ernest Dowson
 They sleep well here,
These fisher-folk who passed their anxious days
In fierce Atlantic ways;
And found not there,
Beneath the long curled wave,
So quiet a grave.

And they sleep well,
These peasant-folk, who told their lives away,
From day to market-day,
As one should tell,
With patient industry,
Some sad old rosary.

And now night falls,
Me, tempest-tost, and driven from pillar to post,
A poor worn ghost,
This quiet pasture calls;
And...Read more of this...

Nuns Of The Perpetual Adoration

by Ernest Dowson
 Calm, sad, secure; behind high convent walls,
 These watch the sacred lamp, these watch and pray:
And it is one with them when evening falls,
 And one with them the cold return of day.

These heed not time; their nights and days they make
 Into a long returning rosary,
Whereon their lives are threaded for Christ's sake;
 Meekness and vigilance and chastity.

A...Read more of this...

For The Year Of The Insane

by Anne Sexton
 a prayer

O Mary, fragile mother, 
hear me, hear me now 
although I do not know your words. 
The black rosary with its silver Christ 
lies unblessed in my hand 
for I am the unbeliever. 
Each bead is round and hard between my fingers, 
a small black angel. 
O Mary, permit me this grace, 
this crossing over, 
although I am...Read more of this...

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