Faith poems
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Sonnet XI. To Sleep
© Charlotte Turner Smith
COME, balmy Sleep! tired nature's soft resort!
On these sad temples all thy poppies shed;
And bid gay dreams, from Morpheus' airy court,
Float in light vision round my aching head!
The Lesson
© Rudyard Kipling
Not on a single issue, or in one direction or twain,
But conclusively, comprehensively, and several times and
again,
The Legend of Mirth
© Rudyard Kipling
The Four Archangels, so the legends tell,
Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, Azrael,
Being first of those to whom the Power was shown
Stood first of all the Host before The Throne,
The Last Rhyme of True Thomas
© Rudyard Kipling
The King has called for priest and cup,
The King has taken spur and blade
To dub True Thomas a belted knight,
And all for the sake o' the songs he made.
The Land
© Rudyard Kipling
When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald,
In the days of Diocletian owned our Lower River-field,
He called to him Hobdenius-a Briton of the Clay,
Saying: "What about that River-piece for layin'' in to hay?"
The Ladies
© Rudyard Kipling
I've taken my fun where I've found it;
I've rouged an' I've ranged in my time;
I've 'ad my pickin' o' seethearts,
An' four o' the lot was prime.
The Bells Of San Blas
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
What say the Bells of San Blas
To the ships that southward pass
From the harbor of Mazatlan?
To them it is nothing more
Than the sound of surf on the shore,--
Nothing more to master or man.
Justice
© Rudyard Kipling
October, 1918
Across a world where all men grieve
And grieving strive the more,
The great days range like tides and leave
The Surrender
© Henry King
My once dear Love; hapless that I no more
Must call thee so: the rich affections store
That fed our hopes, lies now exhaust and spent,
Like summes of treasure unto Bankrupts lent.
Hymn Before Action
© Rudyard Kipling
The earth is full of anger,
The seas are dark with wrath,
The Nations in their harness
Go up against our path:
The Holy War
© Rudyard Kipling
"For here lay the excellent wisdom of him that built Mansoul, thatthe
walls could never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse
potentate unless the townsmen gave consent thereto."--Bunyan's Holy War.)
The Heritage
© Rudyard Kipling
Our Fathers in a wondrous age,
Ere yet the Earth was small,
Ensured to us a heritage,
And doubted not at all
Undivine Comedy
© Zygmunt Krasinski
THE MAN:
(Casting away his cloak) I need you no longer. My best men have perished and those kneeling over there are stretching out their arms to the victors and bellowing for mercy! (He looks all around him.) They are not coming up this side yet. There is still time. Let us rest a while. Ha, now they have battered their way up the northern tower. New troops have plunged into the tower and they are looking to see if Count Henry is hidden somewhere there. I am here, here - but you shall not judge me! I have already started on my way. I am going toward the judgment of God. (He mounts a fragment of a bastion overhanging the very precipice.) I see it, all black, with dark expanses, flowing toward me, my eternity, without shores, without islands, without end, and in its midst is God, like an eternally burning sun - ever shining - and illuminating nothing. (Advances a step farther. ) They run, they've seen me! Jesus, Mary! O poetry, be you as cursed as I am for all the ages! Arms of mine, go before and cut me a path through those ramparts! (He leaps into the precipice.)
The Precision
© Yvor Winters
Mine, Rock, thought, and
rock. Concrete the flesh - it lay
within me, turned, cold
in the living sheets.
Great-Heart
© Rudyard Kipling
Theodore Roosevelt"The interpreter then called for a man-servant of his, one Great-Heart."--Bunyan's' Pilgrim's Process Concerning brave Captains
Our age hath made known
For all men to honour,
One standeth alone,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
© Rudyard Kipling
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
'eering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
Gentlmen-Rankers
© Rudyard Kipling
To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,
To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
Sings a gentleman of England cleanly bred, machinely crammed,
And a trooper of the Empress, if you please.
The Galley-Slave
© Rudyard Kipling
Oh gallant was our galley from her caren steering-wheel
To her figurehead of silver and her beak of hammered steel;
The leg-bar chafed the ankle and we gasped for cooler air,
But no galley on the waters with our galley could compare!
Snow Maiden
© Alexander Blok
She hailed from a very distant country,
Nocturnal child of ancient times;
She had no kin to greet her entry
Not even skies with a welcome shine.
