Famous Rubric Poems by Famous Poets

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

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All Thats Not Love . .

...All that's not love is the dearth of my days, 
The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, 
The temple in times without prayer, without praise, 
The altar unset and the candle unlit. 


Let me survive not the lovable sway 
Of early desire, nor see when it goes 
The courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay, 
Whence sometime sweet anthems and incense arose. 


The delicate hues of its sevenfold rings 
The rainbow outlives not; their yell...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan


Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot

...praise.
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?

What though my name stood rubric on the walls,
Or plaister'd posts, with claps, in capitals?
Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers' load,
On wings of winds came flying all abroad?
I sought no homage from the race that write;
I kept, like Asian monarchs, from their sight:
Poems I heeded (now berhym'd so long)
No more than thou, great George! a birthday song.
I ne'er with wits or witling...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

La Nue

...hee all earthly loveliness beside 
Is but the radiate, infinite aureole. 


Thou art the poem on the cosmic page -- 
In rubric written on its golden ground -- 
That Nature paints her flowers and foliage 
And rich-illumined commentary round. 


Thou art the rose that the world's smiles and tears 
Hover about like butterflies and bees. 
Thou art the theme the music of the spheres 
Echoes in endless, variant harmonies. 


Thou art the idol in the altar-niche 
Faced by Love's con...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan

Paradise Regained: The Fourth Book

...I discern not; 
Nor when: eternal sure—as without end,
Without beginning; for no date prefixed
Directs me in the starry rubric set."
 So saying, he took (for still he knew his power
Not yet expired), and to the Wilderness
Brought back, the Son of God, and left him there,
Feigning to disappear. Darkness now rose,
As daylight sunk, and brought in louring Night,
Her shadowy offspring, unsubstantial both,
Privation mere of light and absent day. 
Our Saviour, meek, and with untrou...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Religio Laici

...dictates right;
Liv'd up, and lifted high their natural light;
With Socrates may see their Maker's Face,
While thousand rubric-martyrs want a place.

Nor does it baulk my charity, to find
Th'Egyptian Bishop of another mind:
For, though his Creed eternal truth contains,
'Tis hard for man to doom to endless pains
All who believ'd not all, his zeal requir'd,
Unless he first could prove he was inspir'd.
Then let us either think he meant to say
This faith, where publish'd, was the...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John


Street Cries

...ere good-morrow's passed,
Burly Opinion wedging in hath cried
`Thou shalt not sit by us, to break thy fast,
Save to our Rubric thou subscribe and swear --
`Religion hath blue eyes and yellow hair:'
She's Saxon, all.'

"Then, hard a-hungered for my brother's grace
Till well-nigh fain to swear his folly's true,
In sad dissent I turn my longing face
To him that sits on the left: `Brother, -- with you?'
-- `Nay, not with me, save thou subscribe and swear
`Religion hath black eyes...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

The Fairy Temple; Or Oberons Chapel

...h the trout-flies' curious wings,
Which serve for watchet ribbonings.
Now, we must know, the elves are led
Right by the Rubric, which they read:
And if report of them be true,
They have their text for what they do;
Ay, and their book of canons too.
And, as Sir Thomas Parson tells,
They have their book of articles;
And if that Fairy knight not lies
They have their book of homilies;
And other Scriptures, that design
A short, but righteous discipline.
The bason stands the board ...Read more of this...
by Herrick, Robert

The Princess (part 3)

..."O marvellously modest maiden, you! 
Men! girls, like men! why, if they had been men 
You need not set your thoughts in rubric thus 
For wholesale comment." Pardon, I am shamed 
That I must needs repeat for my excuse 
What looks so little graceful: "men" (for still 
My mother went revolving on the word) 
"And so they are,--very like men indeed-- 
And with that woman closeted for hours!" 
Then came these dreadful words out one by one, 
"Why--these--~are~--men:" I shuddered: "a...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Wizard in the Street

...how suggest old times and reverenced lands. 
From them doll-monsters come, we know not how: 
Puppets, with Cain's black rubric on the brow. 
Some passing jugglers, smiling, now concede 
That his best cabinet-work is made, indeed 
By bleeding his right arm, day after day, 
Triumphantly to seal and to inlay. 
They praise his little act of shedding tears; 
A trick, well learned, with patience, thro' the years. 

I love him in this blatant, well-fed place. 
Of all the faces, his ...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel

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