Famous Atheist Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Atheist poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous atheist poems. These examples illustrate what a famous atheist poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Burns, Robert
...reaching cant forbear,
And ev’n the rigid feature:
Yet ne’er with wits profane to range,
Be complaisance extended;
An atheist-laugh’s a poor exchange
For Deity offended!
When ranting round in pleasure’s ring,
Religion may be blinded;
Or if she gie a random sting,
It may be little minded;
But when on life we’re tempest driv’n—
A conscience but a canker—
A correspondence fix’d wi’ Heav’n,
Is sure a noble anchor!
Adieu, dear, amiable youth!
Your heart can ne’er be wa...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...>
God knows, I’m no the thing I should be,
Nor am I even the thing I could be,
But twenty times I rather would be
An atheist clean,
Than under gospel colours hid be
Just for a screen.
An honest man may like a glass,
An honest man may like a lass,
But mean revenge, an’ malice fause
He’ll still disdain,
An’ then cry zeal for gospel laws,
Like some we ken.
They take religion in their mouth;
They talk o’ mercy, grace, an’ truth,
For what?—to gie their malice sko...Read more of this...
by
Khayyam, Omar
...All that you tell me emanates from hatred [O mullah]!
You never cease to treat me as an atheist, a man
without religion. I am convinced of that which I am,
and I avow it; and should I be right, is it for you to
lecture me thus?...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...stands!
Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.
The honest thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist, demirep
That loves and saves her soul in new French books--
We watch while these in equilibrium keep
The giddy line midway: one step aside,
They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line
Before your sages,--just the men to shrink
From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad
You offer their refinement. Fool or knave?
...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...Although the Preacher be a bore,
The Atheist is even more.
I ain't religious worth a damn;
My views are reckoned to be broad;
And yet I shut up like a clam
When folks get figgerin' on God;
I'd hate my kids to think like me,
And though they leave me in the lurch,
I'm always mighty glad to see
My fam'ly trot to Church.
Although of books I have a shelf
Of skeptic stuff, I must confess
I...Read more of this...
by
Bryant, William Cullen
...hs at all
The laws that God or man has made, and round
Hedges his seat with power, and shines in wealth,--
Lifts up his atheist front to scoff at Heaven,
And celebrates his shame in open day,
Thou, in the pride of all his crimes, cutt'st off
The horrible example. Touched by thine,
The extortioner's hard hand foregoes the gold
Wrong from the o'er-worn poor. The perjurer,
Whose tongue was lithe, e'en now, and voluble
Against his neighbour's life, and he who laughed
And ...Read more of this...
by
Khayyam, Omar
...In slandering and reviling you persist,
Calling me infidel and atheist:
My errors I will not deny, but yet
Does foul abuse become a moralist?...Read more of this...
by
Kumin, Maxine
...Devil, no eternal fire,
and no choosing what to come back as.
When the grizzly bear appears, he lies/lays down
on atheist and zealot.In the pitch-dark
each of us waits for him in Glacier Park....Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...or an IDEA is the mental vision of an object.
For Lock supposes that an human creature, at a given time may be an atheist i.e. without God, by the folly of his doctrine concerning innate ideas.
For it is not lawful to sell poyson in England any more than it is in Venice, the Lord restrain both the finder and receiver.
For the ACCENTS are the invention of the Moabites, who learning the GREEK tongue marked the words after their own vicious pronuntiatio...Read more of this...
by
Donne, John
...e wakened by this tyranny
To ungod this child again, it could not be
I should love her who loves not me.
Rebel and atheist too, why murmur I
As though I felt the worst that love could do?
Love might make me leave loving, or might try
A deeper plague, to make her love me too,
Which, since she loves before, I'm loth to see;
Falsehood is worse than hate; and that must be,
If she whom I love should love me....Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...aker,
Why has the Lord afflicted me?
What a return for all my endeavour--
Not to mention the L. S. D!
I am an atheist now and for ever,
Because this God has afflicted me!
Progressive
Money spent on an Army or Fleet
Is homicidal lunacy. . . .
My son has been killed in the Mons retreat,
Why is the Lord afflicting me?
Why are murder, pillage and arson
And rape allowed by the Deity?
I will write to the Times, deriding our parson
Because my God h...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...br> To him no temple stood
Or altar smoked; yet who more oft than he
In temples and at altars, when the priest
Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who filled
With lust and violence the house of God?
In courts and palaces he also reigns,
And in luxurious cities, where the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
And injury and outrage; and, when night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
Witness the st...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ned in their flight,
Mangled with ghastly wounds through plate and mail.
Nor stood unmindful Abdiel to annoy
The atheist crew, but with redoubled blow
Ariel, and Arioch, and the violence
Of Ramiel scorched and blasted, overthrew.
I might relate of thousands, and their names
Eternize here on earth; but those elect
Angels, contented with their fame in Heaven,
Seek not the praise of men: The other sort,
In might though wonderous and in acts of war,
Nor of reno...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...When young I was an Atheist,
Yea, pompous as a pigeon
No opportunity I missed
To satirize religion.
I sneered at Scripture, scoffed at Faith,
I blasphemed at believers:
Said I: "There's nothing after Death,--
Your priests are just deceivers."
In middle age I was not so
Contemptuous and caustic.
Thought I: "There's much I do not know:
I'd better be agnostic.Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...
Follow falsehood, follow scorning,
Denounce who will, who will, deny,
And pile the hills to scale the sky;
Let theist, atheist, pantheist,
Define and wrangle how they list,—
Fierce conserver, fierce destroyer,
But thou joy-giver and enjoyer,
Unknowing war, unknowing crime,
Gentle Saadi, mind thy rhyme.
Heed not what the brawlers say,
Heed thou only Saadi's lay.
Let the great world bustle on
With war and trade, with camp and town.
A thousand men shall dig and eat...Read more of this...
by
Crowley, Aleister
...Hazif gives
the worship unto poets due : -
But songs are nought and Music all;
what poet music may define?
Allah's the atheist! he owns
no Allah. Sneer, thou dullard churl!
The Sufi worships not, but drinks,
being himself the all-divine.
Come, my Habib, the roses blush,
the waters gleam, the bulbul sings -
To pierce thy podex El Quahar's
urgent and and imminent design!...Read more of this...
by
Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...Methinks this World is oddly made,
And ev'ry thing's amiss,
A dull presuming Atheist said,
As stretch'd he lay beneath a Shade;
And instanced in this:
Behold, quoth he, that mighty thing,
A Pumpkin, large and round,
Is held but by a little String,
Which upwards cannot make it spring,
Or bear it from the Ground.
Whilst on this Oak, a Fruit so small,
So disproportion'd, grows;
That, who with Sence surveys this All,
Thi...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...an,
Becoming one, not two,
When smacks across the startled earth
The Kiss of Kikuyu.
When Man is the Turk, and the Atheist,
Essene, Erastian, Whig,
And the Thug and the Druse and the Catholic
And the crew of the Captain's gig....Read more of this...
by
Killigrew, Anne
...Tale
His Colour chang'd, and Posthumus grew pale.
His Impious Courage had no other Root,
But that the Villaine, Atheist was to boot....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...WHO learns my lesson complete?
Boss, journeyman, apprentice—churchman and atheist,
The stupid and the wise thinker—parents and offspring—merchant, clerk, porter
and
customer,
Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy—Draw nigh and commence;
It is no lesson—it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
And that to another, and every one to another still.
The great laws take and effuse without argument;
I am of the same style, for...Read more of this...
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