Famous Virtue Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Virtue poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous virtue poems. These examples illustrate what a famous virtue poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Ben Jonson
XII. — EPISTLE TO ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF RUTLAND. That which, to boot with hell, is thought worth heaven, And for it, life, conscience, yea souls are given, Toils, by grave custom, up and down the court, To every squire, or groom, that will report Well or ill, only all the following year, Just to the weight their this day's presents...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I know how father's strap would feel,
If ever I were caught,
So mother's jam I did not steal,
Though theft was in my thought.
Then turned fourteen and full of pitch,
Of love I was afraid,
And did not dare to dally with
Our pretty parlour maid.
And so it is and always was,
The path of rectitude
I've followed all my life because
The Parson said I should.
The...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
In such a night, when every louder wind
Is to its distant cavern safe confined;
And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings,
And lonely Philomel, still waking, sings;
Or from some tree, famed for the owl's delight,
She, hollowing clear, directs the wand'rer right:
In such a night, when passing clouds give place,
Or thinly veil the heav'ns' mysterious face;
When in some river, overhung with green,
The waving...Read more of this...
by
Sir Philip Sidney
Virtue, alas, now let me take some rest.
Thou set'st a bate between my soul and wit.
If vain love have my simple soul oppress'd,
Leave what thou likest not, deal not thou with it.
The scepter use in some old Cato's breast;
Churches or schools are for thy seat more fit.
I do confess, pardon a fault confess'd,...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving,
O, but with mine, compare thou thine own state,
And thou shalt find it merits not reproving,
Or if it do, not from those lips of thine
That have profaned their scarlet ornaments
And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine,
Robbed others' beds' revenues of their...Read more of this...
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
Robert Herrick
A wearied pilgrim I have wander'd here,
Twice five-and-twenty, bate me but one year;
Long I have lasted in this world; 'tis true
But yet those years that I have lived, but few.
Who by his gray hairs doth his lustres tell,
Lives not those years, but he that lives them well:
One man has reach'd his sixty years, but he
Of all those three-score has...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Renunciation -- is a piercing Virtue --
The letting go
A Presence -- for an Expectation --
Not now --
The putting out of Eyes --
Just Sunrise --
Lest Day --
Day's Great Progenitor --
Outvie
Renunciation -- is the Choosing
Against itself --
Itself to justify
Unto itself --
When larger function --
Make that appear --
Smaller -- that Covered Vision -- Here --...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men's eyes shall...Read more of this...
by
Phillis Wheatley
O Thou bright jewel in my aim I strive
To comprehend thee. Thine own words declare
Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach.
I cease to wonder, and no more attempt
Thine height t' explore, or fathom thy profound.
But, O my soul, sink not into despair,
Virtue is near thee, and with gentle hand
Would now embrace thee, hovers o'er thine head.
Fain would the...Read more of this...
by
George Herbert
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
The dew shall weep thy fall tonight;
For thou must die.
Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.
Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My music shows ye...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
The gold-hoarder walked in his palace park and with him walked his troubles. And over his head hovered worries as a vulture hovers over a carcass, until he reached a beautiful lake surrounded by magnificent marble statuary.
He sat there pondering the water which poured from the mouths of the statues like thoughts flowing freely from a lover's imagination,...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Two are the pathways by which mankind can to virtue mount upward;
If thou should find the one barred, open the other will lie.
'Tis by exertion the happy obtain her, the suffering by patience.
Blest is the man whose kind fate guides him along upon both!...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Jenny was my first sweetheart;
Poor lass! she was none too smart.
Though I swore she'd never rue it,
She would never let me do it.
When I tried she mad a fuss,
So damn pure and virtuous.
Girls should cozen all they can,
Use their wiles to get their man.
June, my second, was no prude;
Too good-looking to be good;
Wanton and a giddy-gadder,
Never knew who might...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
HAIL! GODDESS of persuasive art!
The magic of whose tuneful tongue
Lulls to soft harmony the wand'ring heart
With fascinating song;
O, let me hear thy heav'n-taught strain,
As thro' my quiv'ring pulses steal
The mingling throbs of joy and pain,
Which only sensate minds can feel;
Ah ! let me taste the bliss supreme,
Which thy warm touch...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Man of virtue has need;-into life with boldness he plunges,
Entering with fortune more sure into the hazardous strife;
But to woman one virtue suffices; it is ever shining
Lovingly forth to the heart; so let it shine to the eye!...Read more of this...
by
Richard Crashaw
Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me;
Where'er she lie,
Locked up from mortal eye
In shady leaves of destiny:
Till that ripe birth
Of studied fate stand forth,
And teach her fair steps to our earth;
Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:
Meet you her, my wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye called my...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XXVII. Soleano i miei pensier soavemente. HE COMFORTS HIMSELF WITH THE HOPE THAT SHE HEARS HIM. My thoughts in fair alliance and arrayHold converse on the theme which most endears:Pity approaches and repents delay:E'en now she speaks of us, or hopes, or fears.Since the last day, the terrible hour when...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
To prayer, my child! and O, be thy first prayer
For her who, many nights, with anxious care,
Rocked thy first cradle; who took thy infant soul
From heaven and gave it to the world; then rife
With love, still drank herself the gall of life,
And left for thy young lips the honeyed...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
1901
Not in the camp his victory lies
Or triumph in the market-place,
Who is his Nation's sacrifice
To turn the judgement from his race.
Happy is he who, bred and taught
By sleek, sufficing Circumstance --
Whose Gospel was the apparelled thought,
Whose Gods were Luxury and Chance --
Seese, on the threshold of his days,
The old life shrivel like a scroll,
And to...Read more of this...
by
Stevie Smith
I remember the Roman Emperor, one of the cruellest of them,
Who used to visit for pleasure his poor prisoners cramped in dungeons,
So then they would beg him for death, and then he would say:
Oh no, oh no, we are not yet friends enough.
He meant they were not yet friends enough for him to give them death.
So I fancy my...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
For those endowed with knowledge and virtue, who
through their wisdom have become as torches to their
disciples, even those have not progressed beyond this
night profound. They have left some fables and returned
to death's long sleep.
395...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and sea
So spread'st thy pinions that the fame of thee
Hath reached no less into the depths of Hell.
So noble were the five I found to dwell
Therein -- thy sons -- whence shame accrues to me
And no great praise is thine; but if it be
That truth unveil in...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
THOUGH beauty be the mark of praise
And yours of whom I sing be such
As not the world can praise too much
Yet 'tis your Virtue now I raise.
A virtue like allay so gone 5
Throughout your form as though that move
And draw and conquer all men's love
This subjects you to love of...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
Oh for the swords of former time!
Oh for the men who bore them,
When, arm'd for Right, they stood sublime,
And tyrants crouch'd before them:
When free yet, ere courts began
With honours to enslave him,
The best honours worn by Man
Were those which Virtue gave him.
Oh for the swords, etc., etc.
Oh for the Kings...Read more of this...
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