Faith poems
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Their Bodies
© David Wagoner
They gave away the gift of those useful bodies
Against his wish. (They had their own ways
Of doing everything, always.) If you’re not certain
Which ones are theirs, be gentle to everybody.
Michael: A Pastoral Poem
© William Wordsworth
Thus in his Father's sight the Boy grew up:
And now, when he had reached his eighteenth year,
He was his comfort and his daily hope.
The Joy Of The Lord Is Your Strength
© John Newton
Joy is a fruit that will not grow
In nature's barren foil;
All we can boast, till Christ we know,
Is vanity and toil.
Voyages
© Hart Crane
Above the fresh ruffles of the surf
Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.
They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,
And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed
Gaily digging and scattering.
The Flâneur
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Boston Common, December 6, 1882 during the Transit of Venus
I love all sights of earth and skies,
To Virgil, Written at the Request of the Manuans for the Nineteenth Centenary of Virgil's Death
© Alfred Tennyson
Roman Virgil, thou that singest
Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire,
Ilion falling, Rome arising,
wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre;
The King Of Brentfords Testament
© William Makepeace Thackeray
The noble King of Brentford
Was old and very sick,
He summon'd his physicians
To wait upon him quick;
They stepp'd into their coaches
And brought their best physick.
Prayer
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Give us the open mind, O God,
The mind that dares believe
In paths of thought as yet untrod;
The mind that can conceive
Large visions of a wider way
Than circumscribes our world to-day.
Five Visions of Captain Cook
© Kenneth Slessor
Two chronometers the captain had,
One by Arnold that ran like mad,
One by Kendal in a walnut case,
Poor devoted creature with a hangdog face.
My Mother-Land
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
Death! What of death?--
Can he who once drew honorable breath
In liberty's pure sphere,
Foster a sensual fear,
When death and slavery meet him face to face,
Kisses
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Cupid, if storying legends tell aright,
Once framed a rich elixer of delight.
A chalice o'er love-kindled flames he fixed,
And in it nectar and ambrosia mixed:
The Monument Of Francis Makemie
© Henry Van Dyke
(Presbyter of Christ in America, 1683-1708)
To thee, plain hero of a rugged race,
HYMNS: My God! I Know, I Feel Thee Mine
© Charles Wesley
1
My God! I know, I feel thee mine,
And will not quit my claim
Till all I have is lost in thine,
And all renewed I am.
Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of 1825 in Bowdoin College
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.
Ovid, Fastorum, Lib. vi.
"O Cæsar, we who are about to die
Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry
In the arena, standing face to face
With death and with the Roman populace.
Allegro Maestoso
© William Ernest Henley
Spring winds that blow
As over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may;
I Wasn’t One of the Six Million: And What Is My Life Span? Open Closed Open
© John Wesley
3
And what is my life span? I’m like a man gone out of Egypt:
the Red Sea parts, I cross on dry land,
two walls of water, on my right hand and on my left.
Pharaoh’s army and his horsemen behind me. Before me the desert,
perhaps the Promised Land, too. That is my life span.
