Famous Temple Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Temple poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous temple poems. These examples illustrate what a famous temple poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Crowley, Aleister
...black treasons rear
Their heads, blind hates, deaf agonies of fear,
Cruelty, cowardice, falsehood, broken pledges,
The temple soiled with senseless sacrileges,
Sickness and poverty, a thousand evils,
Concerted malice of a million devils; ---
You never swerved; your high-pooped galleon
Went marvellously, majestically on
Full-sailed, while every other braver bark
Drove on the rocks, or foundered in the dark.
Then Easter, and the days of all delight!
God's sun lit noontide...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...more,
Whether on Gerizim or Zion hill
They shall bow down. Above Moriah's mount
Each eye is raised to him, whose temple is
Th' infinitude of space, whom earth, sea, sky
And heav'n itself cannot contain. No more
The noise of battle shall be heard, or shout
Of war by heathen princes wag'd; There's nought
Shall injure or destroy; they shall not hurt
In all my holy mountain saith the Lord.
The earth in peace and ev'ry shadow fled,
Bespeaks Emmanuel's happy ...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...nst the boaster, from the brook,
The weapons of the war.
VII
Pious—magnificent and grand;
'Twas he the famous temple plann'd;
(The seraph in his soul:)
Foremost to give his Lord His dues,
Foremost to bless the welcome news,
And foremost to condole.
VIII
Good—from Jehudah's genuine vein,
From God's best nature good in grain,
His aspect and his heart;
To pity, to forgive, to save,
Witness En-gedi's conscious cave,
And Shimei's blunted dart.
...Read more of this...
by
Amjad, Majeed
...s of the hamlet where Beauty dwells,
Why her eyes smile that way ?
When notes arising from her soul,
That Temple-Palace of Music,
And traipsing through the land of glad tidings,
Mirthfully smothering the tinkling of their anklets,
Tip toe up, haltingly, secretively,
To the gates of her lips,
Why her gaze sparkles and smiles ?
Leaping over islands of silence
And wastelands of sealed lip pining,
When the silhouettes of desire
Come w...Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...gle silken hair
Awoke that slept- or knew that he was there.
"The last spot of Earth's orb I trod upon
Was a proud temple call'd the Parthenon;
More beauty clung around her column'd wall
Than ev'n thy glowing bosom beats withal,
And when old Time my wing did disenthral
Thence sprang I- as the eagle from his tower,
And years I left behind me in an hour.
What time upon her airy bounds I hung,
One half the garden of her globe was flung
Unrolling as a chart unto my view-...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...en Sculpture and her Sister-Arts revive;
Stones leap'd to Form, and Rocks began to live;
With sweeter Notes each rising Temple rung;
A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung!
Immortal Vida! on whose honour'd Brow
The Poet's Bays and Critick's Ivy grow:
Cremona now shall ever boast thy Name,
As next in Place to Mantua, next in Fame!
But soon by Impious Arms from Latium chas'd,
Their ancient Bounds the banish'd Muses past:
Thence Arts o'er all the Northern World advance,
But Critic ...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...heir little flock, and the shy shepherd fling
The crackling salt upon the flame, or hang
His studded crook against the temple wall
To Her who keeps away the ravenous fang
Of the base wolf from homestead and from stall;
And then the clear-voiced maidens 'gan to sing,
And to the altar each man brought some goodly offering,
A beechen cup brimming with milky foam,
A fair cloth wrought with cunning imagery
Of hounds in chase, a waxen honey-comb
Dripping with oozy gold which scar...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...dote on: so I'd fain,
Peona, ye should hand in hand repair
Into those holy groves, that silent are
Behind great Dian's temple. I'll be yon,
At vesper's earliest twinkle--they are gone--
But once, once, once again--" At this he press'd
His hands against his face, and then did rest
His head upon a mossy hillock green,
And so remain'd as he a corpse had been
All the long day; save when he scantly lifted
His eyes abroad, to see how shadows shifted
With the slow move of time,...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...forge where Vulcan smote
Her beauty on his anvil. Well, as much
As star transcends a sequin, and just such
As temple is to rubbish-heap, I say,
You do eclipse their beauty every way.
Those airy sprites that from the azure smile,
Peris and elfs the while they men beguile,
Have brows less youthful pure than yours; besides
Dishevelled they whose shaded beauty hides
In clouds."
"Flatt'rer," said Mahaud, "you but sing
Too well."
Then Joss more ...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
....
Their former trophies they recall to mind
And to new edge their angry courage grind.
First entered forward Temple, conqueror
Of Irish cattle and Solicitor;
Then daring Seymour, that with spear and shield
Had stretched the Monster Patent on the field;
Keen Whorwood next, in aid of damsel frail,
That pierced the giant Mordaunt through his mail;
And surly Williams, the accountants' bane;
And Lovelace young, of chimney-men the cane.
Old Waller, trumpet-ge...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...ge regions
Her lost daughter Prosperine.
But the Goddess found no refuge,
Found no kindly welcome there,
And no temple bearing witness
To the worship of the gods.
From the fields and from the vineyards
Came no fruit to deck the feasts,
Only flesh of blood-stained victims
Smouldered on the alter-fires,
And where'er the grieving goddess
Turns her melancholy gaze,
Sunk in vilest degradation
Man his loathsomeness displays.
Would he purge his soul fro...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...all the fowls he seems
A phoenix, gazed by all as that sole bird,
When, to enshrine his reliques in the Sun's
Bright temple, to Egyptian Thebes he flies.
At once on the eastern cliff of Paradise
He lights, and to his proper shape returns
A Seraph winged: Six wings he wore, to shade
His lineaments divine; the pair that clad
Each shoulder broad, came mantling o'er his breast
With regal ornament; the middle pair
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round
Skirted...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...lowers.
Not less renown'd then in Mount Ephraim,
Jael who with inhospitable guile
Smote Sisera sleeping through the Temples nail'd.
Nor shall I count it hainous to enjoy
The public marks of honour and reward
Conferr'd upon me, for the piety
Which to my countrey I was judg'd to have shewn.
At this who ever envies or repines
I leave him to his lot, and like my own.
Chor: She's gone, a manifest Serpent by her sting
Discover'd in the end, till now conceal'd....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ss’d all over their bodies.
An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies;
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
The young men float on their backs—their white bellies bulge to the
sun—they do not ask who seizes fast to them;
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch;
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall
in t...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...as heard from Zion’s Hill,
And in His hand the scourge shone bright;
He scourg’d the merchant Canaanite
From out the Temple of His Mind,
And in his body tight does bind
Satan and all his hellish crew;
And thus with wrath He did subdue
The serpent bulk of Nature’s dross,
Till He had nail’d it to the Cross.
He took on sin in the Virgin’s womb
And put it off on the Cross and tomb
To be worshipp’d by the Church of Rome.
Was Jesus humble? or did He
Give any p...Read more of this...
by
Donne, John
...pare,
Where we almost, yea more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, we are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Curel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...th to be wele*. *assures no continuance of
And certes, lord, t'abiden your presence prosperous estate*
Here in this temple of the goddess Clemence
We have been waiting all this fortenight:
Now help us, lord, since it lies in thy might.
"I, wretched wight, that weep and waile thus,
Was whilom wife to king Capaneus,
That starf* at Thebes, cursed be that day: *died
And alle we that be in this array,
And maken all this lamentatioun,
We losten all our husbands at that...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ely Lady garmented in light
From her own beauty: deep her eyes as are
Two openings of unfathomable night
Seen through a temple's cloven roof; her hair
Dark; the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight,
Picturing her form. Her soft smiles shone afar;
And her low voice was heard like love, and drew
All living things towards this wonder new.
And first the spotted cameleopard came;
And then the wise and fearless elephant;
Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame
Of his own ...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...r of God,
It is hard to be a hermit,
To be happy is also hard.
Only fiery sleep will come to me,
I'll enter a temple on the hill,
Five-domed, white, and stone-hewn,
On the paths remembered well.
x x x
The spring was still mysteriously swooning,
Across the hills wandered transparent wind
And the deep lake was growing blue among us --
A temple forged and kept not by mankind.
You were affrighted of our first encounter,
And prayed already fo...Read more of this...
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