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Famous Submission Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...r that he knows 
God's secret, while he holds the thread of life. 
Indeed the especial marking of the man 
Is prone submission to the heavenly will-- 
Seeing it, what it is, and why it is. 
'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last 
For that same death which must restore his being 
To equilibrium, body loosening soul 
Divorced even now by premature full growth: 
He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live 
So long as God please, and just how God please. 
He even se...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert



...before Term ends,
Oblig'd by hunger, and request of friends:
"The piece, you think, is incorrect: why, take it,
I'm all submission, what you'd have it, make it."

Three things another's modest wishes bound,
My friendship, and a prologue, and ten pound.
Pitholeon sends to me: "You know his Grace,
I want a patron; ask him for a place."

Pitholeon libell'd me--"but here's a letter
Informs you, sir, 'twas when he knew no better.
Dare you refuse him? Curll invites ...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander
...Catholic Missions:--
"Sacred heart of the Saviour! O inexhaustible fountain!
Fill our hearts this day with strength and submission and patience!"
Then the old men, as they marched, and the women that stood by the wayside
Joined in the sacred psalm, and the birds in the sunshine above them
Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed.

Half-way down to the shore Evangeline waited in silence,
Not overcome with grief, but strong in the hour of affliction,--...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...neral mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying.Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...d Fingalian race:
For though their name some part may lack,
Old Fingal spelt it with a Mac;
Which great M'Pherson, with submission,
We hope will add the next edition.


His fathers flourish'd in the Highlands
Of Scotia's fog-benighted islands;
Whence gain'd our 'Squire two gifts by right,
Rebellion, and the Second-sight.
Of these, the first, in ancient days,
Had gain'd the noblest palm of praise,
'Gainst kings stood forth and many a crown'd head
With terror of its mig...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John



...rancour
Still for our blood their minions hanker;
Nor aught can sate their mad ambition,
From us, but death, or worse, submission.
Shall these then riot in our spoil,
Reap the glad harvest of our toil,
Rise from their country's ruins proud,
And roll their chariot-wheels in blood?
See Gage, with inauspicious star,
Has oped the gates of civil war,
When streams of gore, from freemen slain,
Encrimson'd Concord's fatal plain;
Whose warning voice, with awful sound,
Still cries...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John
...wit and valour join!
This, this is he--the famed Burgoyne!
Who pawn'd his honor and commission,
To coax the patriots to submission,
By songs and balls secure allegiance,
And dance the ladies to obedience.
Oft his Camp-Muses he'll parade
At Boston in the grand blockade;
And well inspired with punch of arrack,
Hold converse sweet in tent or barrack,
Aroused to more poetic passion,
Both by his theme and situation.
For genius works more strong and clear
When close confine...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John
...from a child.
Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went,
Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent,
I learn'd at last submission to my lot;
But, though I less deplor'd thee, ne'er forgot.

Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more,
Children not thine have trod my nurs'ry floor;
And where the gard'ner Robin, day by day,
Drew me to school along the public way,
Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapt
In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet capt,
'Tis now become a history ...Read more of this...
by Cowper, William
...Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts 
Full counsel must mature. Peace is despaired; 
For who can think submission? War, then, war 
Open or understood, must be resolved." 
 He spake; and, to confirm his words, outflew 
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs 
Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze 
Far round illumined Hell. Highly they raged 
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms 
Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war, 
H...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...a Heaven. 
O, then, at last relent: Is there no place 
Left for repentance, none for pardon left? 
None left but by submission; and that word 
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame 
Among the Spirits beneath, whom I seduced 
With other promises and other vaunts 
Than to submit, boasting I could subdue 
The Omnipotent. Ay me! they little know 
How dearly I abide that boast so vain, 
Under what torments inwardly I groan, 
While they adore me on the throne of Hell.Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...stay: go, waken Eve; 
Her also I with gentle dreams have calmed 
Portending good, and all her spirits composed 
To meek submission: thou, at season fit, 
Let her with thee partake what thou hast heard; 
Chiefly what may concern her faith to know, 
The great deliverance by her seed to come 
(For by the Woman's seed) on all mankind: 
That ye may live, which will be many days, 
Both in one faith unanimous, though sad, 
With cause, for evils past; yet much more cheered 
With medi...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...d will relent, and quit thee all his debt;
Who evermore approves and more accepts 
(Best pleas'd with humble and filial submission)
Him who imploring mercy sues for life,
Then who selfrigorous chooses death as due;
Which argues overjust, and self-displeas'd
For self-offence, more then for God offended.
Reject not then what offerd means, who knows
But God hath set before us, to return thee
Home to thy countrey and his sacred house,
Where thou mayst bring thy off'rings, to ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...thus looking within and around me, I ever renew
``(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too)
``The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete,
``As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet.
``Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity known,
``I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own.
``There's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hoodwink,
``I am fain to keep still in abeyance, (I laugh as ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...which time the happy people
(Sniggering, ruddily naked, and shamelessly drunk)
Will stun the foe by their overwhelming submission,
Corrupt the generals, infiltrate the staff,
Usurp the throne, proclaim themselves to be sun-gods,
And bring about the collapse of the whole empire....Read more of this...
by Wilbur, Richard
...t was yet so much of her 
That she might yet go mad? What were it worth
To live, to linger, and to be condemned 
In her submission to a common thought 
That clogged itself and made of its first faith 
Its last impediment? What augured it, 
Now in this quick beginning of new life,
To clutch the sunlight and be feeling back, 
Back with a scared fantastic fearfulness, 
To touch, not knowing why, the vexed-up ghost 
Of what was gone? 

Yes, there was Argan’s face,
Pallid and pinc...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...o left me fatherless in a strange country, I rejected all Catholicism with exaggeration. Goodness, virtue, charity, submission, stifled me. I took up the words of Lawrence: "They stress only pain, sacrifice, suffering and death. They do not dwell enough on the resurrection, on joy and life in the present." Today I feel my past like an unbearable weight, I feel that it interferes with my present life, that it must be the cause for this withdrawal, this closing ...Read more of this...
by Nin, Anais
...clad hills of Languedoc,
Taught to the bare-foot peasant, whose hard hands
Produc'd 4 the nectar he could seldom taste,
Submission to the Lord for whom he toil'd;
He, or his brethren, who to Neustria's sons
Enforc'd religious patience, when, at times,
On their indignant hearts Power's iron hand
Too strongly struck; eliciting some sparks
Of the bold spirit of their native North;
Even these Parochial Priests, these humbled men;
Whose lowly undistinguish'd cottages
Witness'd a l...Read more of this...
by Turner Smith, Charlotte
.... 
He did not die with Christian ease, 
Asking pardon of His enemies: 
If He had, Caiaphas would forgive; 
Sneaking submission can always live. 
He had only to say that God was the Devil, 
And the Devil was God, like a Christian civil; 
Mild Christian regrets to the Devil confess 
For affronting him thrice in the wilderness; 
He had soon been bloody Caesar’s elf, 
And at last he would have been Caesar himself, 
Like Dr. Priestly and Bacon and Newton— 
Poor spiritu...Read more of this...
by Blake, William
...yal bolt were fiercest sped.
     For thee, who, at thy King's command,
     Canst aid him with a gallant band,
     Submission, homage, humbled pride,
     Shall turn the Monarch's wrath aside.
     Poor remnants of the Bleeding Heart,
     Ellen and I will seek apart
     The refuge of some forest cell,
     There, like the hunted quarry, dwell,
     Till on the mountain and the moor
     The stern pursuit be passed and o'er,'—
     ***.

     'No, by mine hono...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...he plasm direct?

Worse than the cry of the new-born,
A scream,
A yell,
A shout,
A paean,
A death-agony,
A birth-cry,
A submission,
All tiny, tiny, far away, reptile under the first dawn.

War-cry, triumph, acute-delight, death-scream reptilian,
Why was the veil torn?
The silken shriek of the soul's torn membrane?
The male soul's membrane
Torn with a shriek half music, half horror.

Crucifixion.
Male tortoise, cleaving behind the hovel-wall of that dense female,
M...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry