Famous Truths Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Truths poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous truths poems. These examples illustrate what a famous truths poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Ben Jonson
THE TURN
Brave infant of Saguntum, clear
Thy coming forth in that great year,
When the prodigious Hannibal did crown
His rage with razing your immortal town.
Thou looking then about,
Ere thou wert half got out,
Wise child, didst hastily return,
And mad'st thy mother's womb thine urn.
How summ'd a circle didst thou leave mankind
Of deepest lore, could we the centre find!
THE COUNTER-TURN
Did wiser nature draw...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though loth to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My buried thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.
If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry muse
Puts confusion in my brain.
But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blind worm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife.
Or who,...Read more of this...
by
Ruth Stone
For me the great truths are laced with hysteria.
How many Einsteins can we tolerate?
I leap into the uncertainty principle.
After so many smears, you want to wash it off with a laugh.
Ha ha, you say. So what if it's a meltdown?
Last lines to poems I will write immediately....Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The gospel the power of God to salvation.
Rom. 1:16.
What shall the dying sinner do
That seeks relief for all his woe?
Where shall the guilty conscience find
Ease for the torment of the mind?
How shall we get our crimes forgiv'n?
Or form our natures fit for heav'n?
Can souls all o'er defiled with sin
Make their own powers and passions clean?
In vain we search,...Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
If that apparent part of life's delight
Our tingled flesh-sense circumscribes were seen
By aught save reflex and co-carnal sight,
Joy, flesh and life might prove but a gross screen.
Haply Truth's body is no eyable being,
Appearance even as appearance lies,
Haply our close, dark, vague, warm sense of seeing
Is the choked vision of blindfolded eyes.
Wherefrom what comes to thought's sense of life? Nought.
All is...Read more of this...
by
Hafez
I said, ‘O heavenly Leader, O truth’s day,
Guide thou this wanderer’. He said, ‘In quest
Of his own pleasure did thy wand’rer stray’.
I pleaded, ‘Bide with me’. He answer’d, ‘Nay,
Unmeet were thy cold couch & cheerless rest
For me, soft-nurtur’d: vain is thy request.
The royal-born, how hardly may endure
After pomp’s luxury & silk array,
Thy mean provisioning, thy dwelling poor’.
Again I prayed, ‘O...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy;
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find.
But from thine...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Deeper and bolder truths be careful, my friends, of avowing;
For as soon as ye do all the world on ye will fall....Read more of this...
by
John Matthew
You will realize this wisdom,
When you are my age, and experience,
Gained from being in vexing situations,
Yet, being out of it. You do the same,
There is a joy in detachment,
Forsaking instant pleasures, pains,
For things deeper and enduring.
Don’t be a slave to the work,
Of smart slave-drivers in cubicles,
Instead explore the works of men,
Who have experienced the truths,
And distilled in their words,...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Let there be many windows to your soul,
That all the glory of the universe
May beautify it. Not the narrow pane
Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays
That shine from countless sources. Tear away
The blinds of superstition; let the light
Pour through fair windows broad as truth itself
And high as God.
Why should...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
O God, where does this tend—these struggling aims?
What would I have? What is this ‘sleep’, which seems
To bound all? can there be a ‘waking’ point
Of crowning life? The soul would never rule—
It would be first in all things—it would have
Its utmost pleasure filled,—but that complete
Commanding for commanding sickens it.
The last point I...Read more of this...
by
Countee Cullen
"Lord, being dark," I said, "I cannot bear
The further touch of earth, the scented air;
Lord, being dark, forewilled to that despair
My color shrouds me in, I am as dirt
Beneath my brother's heel; there is a hurt
In all the simple joys which to a child
Are sweet; they are contaminate, defiled
By truths of wrongs the childish vision fails
To see; too great...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Oh tell me not of the lands so old
Where the Orient treasures its hills of gold,
And the rivers lie in the sun's bright rays
Forever singing the old world's praise.
Nor proudly boast of the gardens grand
That spring to earth at a king's command;
There are treasures here in the far great West
That rival the hills on the Orient's crest.
Far from the sight...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though loath to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My honied thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.
If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry Muse
Puts confusion in my brain.
But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blindworm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife!
Or who, with accent...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
I wandered o'er the vast green plains of youth,
And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height
Fame's silhouette stood sharp against the skies.
Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway
I caught the glimmer of a golden goal,
While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love.
Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed at Love,
With all the haughty insolence of...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Straight through my heart this fact to-day,
By Truth’s own hand is driven:
God never takes one thing away,
But something else is given.
I did not know in earlier years,
This law of love and kindness;
I only mourned through bitter tears
My loss, in sorrow’s blindness.
But, ever following each regret
O’er some departed treasure,
My sad repining heart was met
With...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
For many long uninterrupted years
She was the friend and confidant of Art;
They walked together, heart communed with heart
In that sweet comradeship that so endears.
Her fondest hope, her sorrows and her fears
She told her mate; who would in turn impart
Important truths and secrets. But a dart,
Shot by that unskilled, mischevous boy, who peers
From ambush on us, struck one day in...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
DEVOUTEST of my Sunday friends,
The patient Organ-blower bends;
I see his figure sink and rise,
(Forgive me, Heaven, my wandering eyes!)
A moment lost, the next half seen,
His head above the scanty screen,
Still measuring out his deep salaams
Through quavering hymns and panting psalms.
No priest that prays in gilded stole,
To save a rich man's mortgaged soul;
No sister, fresh from holy vows,
So humbly stoops,...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous
The little, smoky vaporsProduce the drops of rain;These little drops commingle,And form the boundless main.Then, drops compose the fountains;And little grains of sandCompose the mighty mountains,That high above us stand.The little atoms, it is said,Compose the solid earth;Such truths will show, if rightly read,What little things are worth.For, as the sea of drops is made,So it is Heaven’s plan,That atoms...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
All in the dark we grope along,
And if we go amiss
We learn at least which path is wrong,
And there is gain in this.
We do not always win the race,
By only running right,
We have to tread the mountain's base
Before we reach its height.
The Christs alone no errors made;
So often had they trod
The...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
ON WHICH THE JEWS WERE FORCED TO
ATTEND AN ANNUAL CHRISTIAN SERMON
IN ROME.
[``Now was come about Holy-Cross Day,
and now must my lord preach his first sermon
to the Jews: as it was of old cared for in tine
merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to
speak, a crumb at least from her conspicuous
table here in Rome should be, though but
once yearly, cast...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Carew
Can we not force from widow'd poetry,
Now thou art dead (great Donne) one elegy
To crown thy hearse? Why yet dare we not trust,
Though with unkneaded dough-bak'd prose, thy dust,
Such as th' unscissor'd churchman from the flower
Of fading rhetoric, short-liv'd as his hour,
Dry as the sand that measures it, should lay
Upon thy ashes,...Read more of this...
by
Helen Hunt Jackson
Darling,' he said, 'I never meant
To hurt you;' and his eyes were wet.
'I would not hurt you for the world:
Am I to blame if I forget?'
'Forgive my selfish tears!' she cried,
'Forgive! I knew that it was not
Because you meant to hurt me, sweet-
I knew it was that you forgot!'
But all the same, deep in her heart
Rankled this thought, and...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time,
When far within the spirit's hearing rolls
The great soft rumble of the course of things --
A bulk of silence in a mask of sound, --
When darkness clears our vision that by day
Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl
For truth and flitteth here and there about
Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft
Is minded...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
Keep me, I pray, in wisdom's way
That I may truths eternal seek;
I need protecting care to-day,--
My purse is light, my flesh is weak.
So banish from my erring heart
All baleful appetites and hints
Of Satan's fascinating art,
Of first editions, and of prints.
Direct me in some godly walk
Which leads away from bookish strife,
That I with pious...Read more of this...
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