Famous Worship Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Tranquilism

by Robert William Service
 I call myself a Tranquilist;
With deep detachment I exist,
 From friction free;
While others court the gilded throng
And worship Women, Wine and Song,
 I scorn the three.
For I have reached the sober age
When I prefer to turn a page
 Beside the fire,
And from the busy mart of men
To meditative book and pen
 With grace retire.

If you are craving peace of...Read more of this...

Yee Bow

by Edgar Lee Masters
 They got me into the Sunday-school
In Spoon River
And tried to get me to drop Confucius for Jesus.
I could have been no worse off
If I had tried to get them to drop Jesus for Confucius.
For, without any warning, as if it were a prank,
And sneaking up behind me, Harry Wiley,
The minister's son, caved my ribs into my lungs,
With a blow...Read more of this...

Morning Worship

by Mark Van Doren
 I wake and hearing it raining.
Were I dead, what would I give
Lazily to lie here,
Like this, and live?

Or better yet: birdsong,
Brightening and spreading --
How far would I come then
To be at the world's wedding?

Now that I lie, though,
Listening, living,
(Oh, but not forever,
Oh, end arriving)

How shall I praise them:
All the sweet beings
Eternally that outlive
Me and my dying?

Mountains, I mean; wind,...Read more of this...

Song For Saint Cecilias Day 1687

by John Dryden
 From Harmony, from heavenly Harmony
 This universal frame began:
 When nature underneath a heap
 Of jarring atoms lay
 And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
 Arise, ye more than dead!
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry
In order to their stations leap,
 And Music's power obey.
From Harmony, from heavenly harmony
 This universal frame began:
...Read more of this...

La Gitana

by Aleister Crowley
 Your hair was full of roses in the dewfall as we danced, 
The sorceress enchanting and the paladin entranced, 
In the starlight as we wove us in a web of silk and steel 
Immemorial as the marble in the halls of Boabdil, 
In the pleasuance of the roses with the fountains and the yews 
Where the snowy Sierra soothed...Read more of this...

The Gods Of Greece

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Ye in the age gone by,
Who ruled the world--a world how lovely then!--
And guided still the steps of happy men
In the light leading-strings of careless joy!
Ah, flourished then your service of delight!
How different, oh, how different, in the day
When thy sweet fanes with many a wreath were bright,
O Venus Amathusia!

Then, through a veil of dreams
Woven by song, truth's youthful...Read more of this...

The Phantom of Love

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
She stood by my side with a queenly air,
Her face it was young and proud and fair;
She held my rose in her hands of snow;
It crimsoned her face with a deeper glow;
The sunlight drooped in her eyes of fire
And quickened my heart to a wild desire;
I envied the rose in her hands so fair,
I envied the flowers that gleamed in...Read more of this...

Hero Worship

by Robert William Service
 Said he: "You saw the Master clear;
By Rushy Pond alone he sat,
Serene and silent as a seer,
in tweedy coat and seedy hat.
you tell me you did not intrude,
(Although his book was in your hand,)
Upon his melancholy mood . . .
 I do not understand.

"You did not tell him: 'I have come
From o'er the sea to speak to you.'
You did...Read more of this...

Mud

by Robert William Service
 Mud is Beauty in the making,
Mud is melody awaking;
Laughter, leafy whisperings,
Butterflies with rainbow wings;
Baby babble, lover's sighs,
Bobolink in lucent skies;
Ardours of heroic blood
All stem back to Matrix Mud.

Mud is mankind in the moulding,
Heaven's mystery unfolding;
Miracles of mighty men,
Raphael's brush and Shakespear's pen;
Sculpture, music, all we owe
Mozart, Michael Angelo;
Wonder, worship, dreaming spire,
Issue out of primal mire.

In the raw, red womb...Read more of this...

O Lord! to Thee all creatures worship pay,

by Omar Khayyam
O Lord! to Thee all creatures worship pay,
To Thee both small and great for ever pray,
Thou takest woe away, and givest weal,
Give then, or, if it please Thee, take away!...Read more of this...

Freedom XIV

by Kahlil Gibran
 And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom." 

And he answered: 

At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom, 

Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them. 

Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the...Read more of this...

Plead For Me

by Emily Brontë
 Oh, thy bright eyes must answer now,
When Reason, with a scornful brow,
Is mocking at my overthrow!
Oh, thy sweet tongue must plead for me
And tell, why I have chosen thee! 

Stern Reason is to judgment come,
Arrayed in all her forms of gloom:
Wilt thou, my advocate, be dumb?
No, radiant angel, speak and say,
Why I did cast the world away. 

Why I...Read more of this...

My Dog

by Robert William Service
 'Twas in a pub just off the Strand
When I was in my cups,
There passed a bloke with in his hand
Two tiny puling pups;
And one was on me with a bound,
Seeking to lick my face,
And so I bought him for a pound
And took him to my place.

Three acres by the shore I own,
A hut, a pint wood;
And there for fifteen...Read more of this...

Sweet Mountains -- Ye tell Me no lie --

by Emily Dickinson
 Sweet Mountains -- Ye tell Me no lie --
Never deny Me -- Never fly --
Those same unvarying Eyes
Turn on Me -- when I fail -- or feign,
Or take the Royal names in vain --
Their far -- slow -- Violet Gaze --

My Strong Madonnas -- Cherish still --
The Wayward Nun -- beneath the Hill --
Whose service -- is to You...Read more of this...

The Song of the Women

by Rudyard Kipling
 How shall she know the worship we would do her?
 The walls are high, and she is very far.
How shall the woman's message reach unto her
 Above the tumult of the packed bazaar?
 Free wind of March, against the lattice blowing,
 Bear thou our thanks, lest she depart unknowing.

Go forth across the fields we may not roam in,
 Go...Read more of this...

Gods Battleground

by Robert William Service
 God dwells in you; in pride and shame,
In all you do to blight or bless;
In all you are of praise and blame,
In beauty or in ugliness.
"Divine Creation" - What a fraud!
God did not make you . . . You make God.

God lives in me, in all I feel
Of love and hate, of joy and pain,
Of grace and greed, or...Read more of this...

On Stellas Birth-Day 1719

by Jonathan Swift
 Stella this Day is thirty four,
(We shan't dispute a Year or more)
However Stella, be not troubled,
Although thy Size and Years are doubled,
Since first I saw Thee at Sixteen
The brightest Virgin on the Green,
So little is thy Form declin'd
Made up so largely in thy Mind.
Oh, woud it please the Gods to split
Thy Beauty, Size, and Years, and Wit,
No Age could...Read more of this...

Psalm 84

by Isaac Watts
 v.1-4,10, paraphrased 
C. M.
Delight in ordinances of worship; or, God present in his churches.

My soul, how lovely is the place
To which thy God resorts!
'Tis heav'n to see his smiling face,
Though in his earthly courts.

There the great Monarch of the skies
His saving power displays,
And light breaks in upon our eyes
With kind and quick'ning rays.

With his rich gifts the heav'nly Dove
Descends...Read more of this...

I worship rose-red cheeks with heart and soul,

by Omar Khayyam
I worship rose-red cheeks with heart and soul,
I suffer not my hand to quit the bowl,
I make each part of me his function do,
Or e'er my parts be swallowed in the Whole....Read more of this...

Day And Night

by Rupert Brooke
 Through my heart's palace Thoughts unnumbered throng;
And there, most quiet and, as a child, most wise,
High-throned you sit, and gracious. All day long
Great Hopes gold-armoured, jester Fantasies,
And pilgrim Dreams, and little beggar Sighs,
Bow to your benediction, go their way.
And the grave jewelled courtier Memories
Worship and love and tend you, all the day.

But when I sleep, and all my thoughts...Read more of this...

The Worship of Nature

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 The harp at Nature's advent strung
Has never ceased to play; 
The song the stars of morning sung
Has never died away.

And prayer is made, and praise is given, 
By all things near and far; 
The ocean looketh up to heaven, 
And mirrors every star.

Its waves are kneeling on the strand, 
As kneels the human knee, 
Their white locks bowing to...Read more of this...

Whom We Worship

by George William Russell
 I WOULD not have the love of lips and eyes,
 The ancient ways of love:
But in my heart I built a Paradise,
 A nest there for the dove.


I felt the wings of light that fluttered through
 The gate I held apart:
And all without was shadow, but I knew
 The bird within my heart.


Then, while the innermost with music beat,
...Read more of this...

Hero-Worship

by Amy Lowell
 A face seen passing in a crowded street,
A voice heard singing music, large and free;
And from that moment life is changed, and we
Become of more heroic temper, meet
To freely ask and give, a man complete
Radiant because of faith, we dare to be
What Nature meant us. Brave idolatry
Which can conceive a hero! No deceit,
No knowledge taught by unrelenting years,
Can quench...Read more of this...

The Matrimonial Stakes

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 I wooed her with a steeplechase, I won her with a fall, 
I made her heartstrings quiver on the flat 
When the pony missed his take-off, and we crached into the wall; 
Well, she simply had to have me after that! 
It awoke a thrill of int'rest when they pulled me out for dead 
From beneath the shattered ruins...Read more of this...

Mystic Trumpeter The

by Walt Whitman
 1
HARK! some wild trumpeter—some strange musician, 
Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night. 

I hear thee, trumpeter—listening, alert, I catch thy notes, 
Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me, 
Now low, subdued—now in the distance lost.

2
Come nearer, bodiless one—haply, in thee resounds 
Some dead composer—haply thy pensive life 
Was fill’d with aspirations high—unform’d ideals, 
Waves, oceans musical,...Read more of this...

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