Browse Sermon Illustrations
2,180 illustrations available
Dirge for the Year
Orphan Hours, the Year is dead, Come and sigh, come and weep! Merry Hours, smile instead, For the Year is but asleep. See, it smiles as it is sleeping, Mocking your untimely weeping. As an earthquake...
Emmonsail's Heath in Winter
I love to see the old heath's withered brake Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling, While the old heron from the lonely lake Starts slow and flaps his melancholy wing, And oddling crow in idl...
Love
Love, though it is not chill and cold, But burning like eternal fire, Is yet not of approaches bold, Which gay dramatic tastes admire. Oh timid love, more fond than free, In daring song is ill p...
The Flower
How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean Are thy returns! ev'n as the flowers in spring; To which, besides their own demean, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. Grief melts away Like snows ...
Sonnet 23 - Is it indeed so? If I lay here dead
Is it indeed so? If I lay here dead, Wouldst thou miss any life in losing mine? And would the sun for thee more coldly shine Because of grave-damps falling round my head? I marvelled, my Beloved, when I read Thy thought so in the letter....
The Fugitives
The waters are flashing, The white hail is dashing, The lightnings are glancing, The hoar-spray is dancing-- Away! The whirlwind is rolling, The thunder is tolling, The forest is swinging, The minste...
Summer Evening (excerpt)
The sinking sun is taking leave, And sweetly gilds the edge of Eve, While huddling clouds of purple dye Gloomy hang the western sky. Crows crowd croaking over head, Hastening to the woods to bed. Cooi...
278. On the late Captain Grose’s Peregrinations
HEAR, Land o’ Cakes, and brither Scots, Frae Maidenkirk to Johnie Groat’s;— If there’s a hole in a’ your coats, I rede you tent it: A chield’s amang you takin notes, ...
On Finding a Fan
In one who felt as once he felt, This might, perhaps, have fann'd the flame; But now his heart no more will melt, Because that heart is not the same. As when the ebbing flames are low, The aid which ...
O Star of France.
1 O STAR of France! The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame, Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long, Beseems to-day a wreck, driven by the gale—a mastless hulk; And ’mid its teeming, madden’d, half-drown’d crowds, Nor helm nor helmsman....
Of a Lady Singing to Her Lute.
IMMITATION OF ENGLISH POETS. WALLER Fair charmer, cease! nor make your voice's prize, A heart resign'd, the conquest of your eyes: Well might, alas! that threaten'd vessel fail, Which winds and light...
The City In The Sea
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest. There shrines a...
Song to the Men of England
Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low? Wherefore weave with toil and care The rich robes your tyrants wear? Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save, From the cradle to the grave,...
On Leaving Newstead Abbey
Why dost thou build the hall, Son of the winged days? Thou lookest from thy tower to-day: yet a few years, and the blast of the desart comes: it howls in thy empty court.-OSSIAN. Through thy ba...
Upon My Dear and Loving Husband his Going into England Jan. 16
O thou Most High who rulest all And hear'st the prayers of thine, O hearken, Lord, unto my suit And my petition sign. Into Thy everlasting arms Of mercy I commend Thy servant, Lord. Keep and preserve...
403. The Soldier’s Return: A Ballad
WHEN wild war’s deadly blast was blawn, And gentle peace returning, Wi’ mony a sweet babe fatherless, And mony a widow mourning; I left the lines and tented field, Where lang I’d been a lodger, My humble knapsack a’ my wealth, A poor and honest sodger....
On a Distant View of the Village and School of Harrow on the Hill, 1806
Ye scenes of my childhood, whose lov'd recollection Embitters the present, compar'd with the past; Where science first dawn'd on the powers of reflection, And friendships were form'd, too romantic...
Homer's Hymn to Venus
[VERSES 1-55, WITH SOME OMISSIONS.] Muse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite, Who wakens with her smile the lulled delight Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings Of Heaven, and men, and all the li...
195. Song—A Rose-bud by my Early Walk
A ROSE-BUD by my early walk, Adown a corn-enclosed bawk, Sae gently bent its thorny stalk, All on a dewy morning. Ere twice the shades o’ dawn are fled, In a’ its crimson glory spread, And droopin...
Sonnet 74: But be contented: when that fell arrest
But be contented: when that fell arrest Without all bail shall carry me away, My life hath in this line some interest, Which for memorial still with thee shall stay. When thou reviewest this, thou dos...
The Tear
O lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros Ducentium ortus ex animo; quater Felix! in imo qui scatentem Pectore te, pia Nympha, sensit. GRAY, 'Alcaic Fragment'. When Friendshi...
The Sunset
There late was One within whose subtle being, As light and wind within some delicate cloud That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky, Genius and death contended. None may know The sweetness of the j...
Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte
I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan To think that a most unambitious slave, Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne Where it had stood even...
Firwood
The fir trees taper into twigs and wear The rich blue green of summer all the year, Softening the roughest tempest almost calm And offering shelter ever still and warm To the small path that towels un...