Here are my favorite poems about redemption categorized:
- Short poems about redemption
- Poems about sin and redemption
- Poems about redemption and forgiveness
- Poems about guilt and redemption
- Poems about redemption by famous poets
- Famous poems about redemption
So if you want the best poems about redemption, then you’re in the right place.
Let’s get started!
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Empowering Poems About Redemption
Let these touching stories of transformation and second chances unfold like a symphony of hope, through our wide-range selection of verses.
These poems navigate the intricate pathways of mistakes, regrets, and the longing for forgiveness, ultimately illuminating the transformative power that lies within each of us.
From shattered souls finding solace in redemption’s embrace to tales of forgiveness that mend fractured hearts, these verses offer glimpses into the incredible capacity we possess for growth and renewal.
If you wanna be inspired, reflect, or simply be reminded that redemption is within reach, our anthology is a sanctuary where stories of redemption come to life.
Let’s get straight to it!
My #1 Favorite Poem About Redemption
“Grace.” by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
Ill-wrought life we look at as we die!
Mistaken, selfish, meagre, and unmeet;
So graven on the hearts that cruelly
We have deprived of many an hour sweet:
O ill-wrought life we look at as we die!
O day of God we look at as we die!
Grace, like a river flowing toward our feet;
Wide pardon blowing with the breezes by;
Love telling us bright tales of the Complete; –
While listening, hoping, thanking, lo, we die!
Short Poems About Redemption
“Conversion” by T. E. Hulme
Lighthearted I walked into the valley wood
In the time of hyacinths,
Till beauty like a scented cloth
Cast over, stifled me. I was bound
Motionless and faint of breath
By loveliness that is her own eunuch.
Now pass I to the final river
Ignominiously, in a sack, without sound,
As any peeping Turk to the Bosphorus.
“The Convert” by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.
The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.
“Forgiveness” by John Greenleaf Whittier
My heart was heavy, for its trust had been
Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;
So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men,
One summer Sabbath day I strolled among
The green mounds of the village burial-place;
Where, pondering how all human love and hate
Find one sad level; and how, soon or late,
Wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face,
And cold hands folded over a still heart,
Pass the green threshold of our common grave,
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none depart,
Awed for myself, and pitying my race,
Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave,
Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave
“Forgiveness” by George MacDonald
God gives his child upon his slate a sum–
To find eternity in hours and years;
With both sides covered, back the child doth come,
His dim eyes swollen with shed and unshed tears;
God smiles, wipes clean the upper side and nether,
And says, “Now, dear, we’ll do the sum together!”
Poems About Sin and Redemption
“Forgiveness of Sins a Joy Unknown to Angels” by Augustus Lucas Hillhouse
Trembling before thine awful throne,
O Lord! in dust my sins I own:
Justice and Mercy for my life
Contend!—Oh, smile, and heal the strife!
The Saviour smiles! Upon my soul
New tides of hope tumultuous roll:
His voice proclaims my pardon found,
Seraphic transport wings the sound!
Earth has a joy unknown in heaven,—
The new-born peace of sin forgiven!
Tears of such pure and deep delight,
Ye angels! never dimmed your sight.
Ye saw of old on chaos rise
The beauteous pillars of the skies;
Ye know where morn exulting springs,
And evening folds her drooping wings.
Bright heralds of the Eternal Will,
Abroad his errands ye fulfil;
Or, throned in floods of beamy day,
Symphonious in his presence play.
Loud is the song,—the heavenly plain
Is shaken with the choral strain;
And dying echoes, floating far,
Draw music from each chiming star.
But I amid your choirs shall shine,
And all your knowledge shall be mine;
Ye on your harps must lean to hear
A secret chord that mine will bear!
“Redemption” by A. E. R.
I have redemption through His blood, that precious blood once spilt;
Forgiveness for my every sin,a pardon for my guilt;
And now to-day I stand in Him accepted, washed and free;
Rejoicing in that blessed hope, the glory yet to be.
But while my soul is now redeemed, my body suffers still
From weakness and infirmity, and many a mortal ill;
I’m waiting for that coming day when in its perfect sense
I’ll know what full redemption means, and taste its blessedness.
When spirit, soul and body shall know its fullest power,
Till then I’d daily pray this prayer: Lord, hasten Thou the hour,
For then, oh, glorious prospect, I shall be just like my Lord,
Having a body like His own, according to His word.
A body which will feel never feel another ill or pain,
A soul which nevermore will sin and grieve my Lord again,
A spirit which most fully can enjoy the things of God,
Unhampered by the flesh and sense of any earthen clod.
Creation, too, shall share our joy; together now we wait
The glory yet to be revealed, the liberty so great.
The earth, now cursed by sin and yet so wonderfully fair,
Shall bloom and blossom as the rose, with beauty everywhere.
No thorn shall prick, no thistle bruise, nothing shall know decay;
No tempest howl, no earthquake shake, no beauty fade away;
Redemption! ’tis a wonderous word—we know some of its power,
But never shall we fully know until the coming hour.
“Atonement.” by Charles Hamilton Musgrove
You were a red rose then, I know,
Red as her wine–yea, redder still,–
Say rather her blood; and ages ago
(You know how destiny hath its will)
I placed you deep in her gorgeous hair,
And left you to wither there.
Wine and blood and a red, red rose,–
Feast and song and a long, long sleep;–
And which of us dreamed at the drama’s close
That the unforgetful years would keep
Our sin and their vengeance laid away
As a gift to this bitter day?
Now you are white as the mountain snow,
White as the hand that I fold you in,
And none but the angels of God may know
That either has once been stained with sin;
It was blood and wine in the old, old years,
But now it is only tears.
And so at the end of our several ways
We have met once more, and the truth is clear
That our heart’s own blood no surer pays
For our sin in the past than atonement here;
But the end has come as God knows best:
Now we shall be at rest.
“Redemption” by Frederick William Orde Ward
All living creatures’ pain,
The suffering of the lowliest thing that creeps
Or flies a moment ere it sinks and sleeps,
Are too Redemption’s tears and not in vain—
For nothing idly weeps.
Earth is through these fulfilling that it must
As in Christ’s own eternal Passion chain,
And flowering from the dust.
The driven and drudging ass
Crushed by the bondage of its bitter round,
Repeats the Gospel in that narrow bound;
God is reflected in the blade of grass,
And there is Calvary’s ground.
O not an insect or on leaf or sod
But in its measure is a looking-glass,
And shows Salvation’s God.
All thus are carrying on,
And do work out, the one Redemption’s tale;
Each is a little Christ on hill or dale,
The hell where Mercy’s light has never shone
Is with that Mercy pale,
And though flesh turns from agony they dread,
Even as they groan and travail it is gone—
Love riseth from the dead.
Poems About Redemption and Forgiveness
“Forgiven.” by Charles Hamilton Musgrove
I might have met his anger with a smile
For so it was that I had set my heart
To mask deception with a wanton’s guile,
And save the tears that now begin to start.
I might have worn my guilty crown of thorn,–
Yea, even worn it gladly like a prize;
But, oh! more bitter than his rage or scorn,
He left me with forgiveness in his eyes.
“Forgiveness” by George William Russell
At dusk the window panes grew grey;
The wet world vanished in the gloom;
The dim and silver end of day
Scarce glimmered through the little room.
And all my sins were told; I said
Such things to her who knew not sin–
The sharp ache throbbing in my head,
The fever running high within.
I touched with pain her purity;
Sin’s darker sense I could not bring:
My soul was black as night to me:
To her I was a wounded thing.
I needed love no words could say;
She drew me softly nigh her chair,
My head upon her knees to lay,
With cool hands that caressed my hair.
She sat with hands as if to bless,
And looked with grave, ethereal eyes;
Ensouled by ancient quietness,
A gentle priestess of the Wise
“Asking Forgiveness” by John Frederick Freeman
I did not say, “Yes, we had better part
Since love is over or must be suppressed.”
I did not say, “I’ll hold you in my heart
Saint-like, and in the thought of your thought rest,
And pray for you and wish you happiness
In a better love than mine.”
I was another man to another woman,
Tears falling or burnt dry were nothing then.
I struck your heart, I struck your mind; inhuman,
Future and past I stabbed and stabbed again,
Cursing the very thought of your happiness
In another love than mine:
–Then left you sick to death, and I like death.
It was a broken body bore me away–
A broken mind–poisoned by my own breath,
And love self-poisoned…. Was it but yesterday?
–Forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive, Forgive!
Poems About Guilt and Redemption
“Apology” by Edward Shanks
Have I slept and failed to hear you calling?
Cry again, belov’d; for sleep is heavy,
Curtaining away the golden sunlight,
Shutting out the blue sky and the breezes,
Sealing up my ears to all you tell me.
Cry again! your voice shall pierce the clumsy
Leaden folds that sleep has wrapt about me,
Cry again! accomplish what the singing,
Hours old now on all the trees and bushes,
And the wind and sun could not accomplish.
Lo! I waste good hours of love and kisses
While the sun and you have spilt your glory
Freely on me lying unregarding.
In the happy islands, where no sunset
Stains the waters with a morbid splendour,
Where the open skies are blue for ever,
I might stay for years and years unsleeping,
Living for divinest conversation,
Music, colour, scent and sense unceasing,
Entering by eye and ear and nostril.
Ah, but flesh is flesh and I am mortal!
Cry again and do not leave me sleeping.
“A Man’s Repentance” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
To-night when I came from the club at eleven,
Under the gaslight I saw a face –
A woman’s face! and I swear to heaven
It looked like the ghastly ghost of – Grace!
And Grace? why, Grace was fair; and I tarried,
And loved her a season as we men do.
And then – but pshaw! why, of course, she is married,
Has a husband, and doubtless a babe or two.
She was perfectly calm on the day we parted;
She spared me a scene, to my great surprise.
“She wasn’t the kind to be broken-hearted,”
I remember she said, with a spark in her eyes.
I was tempted, I know, by her proud defiance,
To make good my promise there and then.
But the world would have called it a mesalliance!
I dreaded the comments and sneers of men.
So I left her to grieve for a faithless lover,
And to hide her heart from the cold world’s sight
As women do hide them, the wide earth over;
My God! was it Grace that I saw to-night?
I thought of her married, and often with pity,
A poor man’s wife in some dull place.
And now to know she is here in the city,
Under the gaslight, and with that face!
Yet I knew it at once, in spite of the daubing
Of paint and powder, and she knew me;
She drew a quick breath that was almost sobbing
And shrank in the shade so I should not see.
There was hell in her eyes! She was worn and jaded
Her soul is at war with the life she has led.
As I looked on that face so strangely faded
I wonder God did not strike me dead.
While I have been happy and gay and jolly,
Received by the very best people in town,
That girl whom I led in the way to folly,
Has gone on recklessly down and down.
* * * * * * * *
Two o’clock, and no sleep has found me;
That face I saw in the street-lamp’s light
Peers everywhere out from the shadows around me –
I know how a murderer feels to-night.
Poems About Redemption by a Famous Poet
“The Apology” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Think me not unkind and rude
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.
Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.
Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.
There was never mystery
But ’tis figured in the flowers;
Was never secret history
But birds tell it in the bowers.
One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield,
Which I gather in a song.
“A Hymn to God the Father” by John Donne
Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
For I have more.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sins their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallow’d in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I’ve spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by Thyself that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as He shines now and heretofore:
And having done that, Thou hast done;
I fear no more.
“Sin and Redemption” by Dante Alighieri (Henry Francis Cary, Translator)
What I have heard,
Is plain, thou say’st: but wherefore God this way
For our redemption chose, eludes my search.
“Brother! no eye of man not perfected,
Nor fully ripened in the flame of love,
May fathom this decree. It is a mark,
In sooth, much aimed at, and but little kenned:
And I will therefore show thee why such way
Was worthiest. The celestial love, that spurns
All envying in its bounty, in itself
With such effulgence blazeth, as sends forth
All beauteous things eternal. What distils
Immediate thence, no end of being knows;
Bearing its seal immutably imprest.
Whatever thence immediate falls, is free,
Free wholly, uncontrollable by power
Of each thing new: by such conformity
More grateful to its author, whose bright beams,
Though all partake their shining, yet in those
Are liveliest, which resemble him the most.
These tokens of pre-eminence on man
Largely bestowed, if any of them fail,
He needs must forfeit his nobility,
No longer stainless. Sin alone is that,
Which doth disfranchise him, and make unlike
To the chief good; for that its light in him
Is darkened. And to dignity thus lost
Is no return; unless, where guilt makes void,
He for ill pleasure pay with equal pain.
Your nature, which entirely in its seed
Transgressed, from these distinctions fell, no less
Than from its state in Paradise; nor means
Found on recovery (search all methods out
As strictly as thou may) save one of these,
The only fords were left through which to wade:
Either, that God had of his courtesy
Released him merely; or else, man himself
For his own folly by himself atoned.
“Fix now thine eye, intently as thou canst,
On the everlasting counsel; and explore,
Instructed by my words, the dread abyss.
“Man in himself had ever lacked the means
Of satisfaction, for he could not stoop
Obeying, in humility so low,
As high, he, disobeying, thought to soar:
And, for this reason, he had vainly tried,
Out of his own sufficiency, to pay
The rigid satisfaction. Then behoved
That God should by his own ways lead him back
Unto the life, from whence he fell, restored:
By both his ways, I mean, or one alone.
But since the deed is ever prized the more,
The more the doer’s good intent appears;
Goodness celestial, whose broad signature
Is on the universe, of all its ways
To raise ye up, was fain to leave out none.
Nor aught so vast or so magnificent,
Either for him who gave or who received,
Between the last night and the primal day,
Was or can be. For God more bounty showed,
Giving himself to make man capable
Of his return to life, than had the terms
Been mere and unconditional release.
And for his justice, every method else
Were all too scant, had not the Son of God
Humbled himself to put on mortal flesh.”
“Intercession and Redemption” by John Milton
Thus they, in lowliest plight, repentant stood
Praying; for from the mercy-seat above
Prevenient grace descending had removed
The stony from their hearts, and made new flesh
Regenerate grow instead; that sighs now breathed
Unutterable; which the spirit of prayer
Inspired, and winged for Heaven with speedier flight
Than loudest oratory: yet their port
Not of mean suitors; nor important less
Seemed their petition, than when the ancient pair
In fables old, less ancient yet than these,
Deucalion and chaste Pyrrha, to restore
The race of mankind drowned, before the shrine
Of Themis stood devout. To Heaven their prayers
Flew up, nor missed the way, by envious winds
Blown vagabond or frustrate: in they passed
Dimensionless through heavenly doors; then clad
With incense, where the golden altar fumed,
By their great Intercessor, came in sight
Before the Father’s throne: them the glad Son
Presenting, thus to intercede began.
“See, Father, what first-fruits on Earth are sprung
From thy implanted grace in Man; these sighs
And prayers, which in this golden censer, mixed
With incense, I thy priest before thee bring;
Fruits of more pleasing savor, from thy seed
Sown with contrition in his heart, than those
Which, his own hand manuring, all the trees
Of Paradise could have produced ere fallen
From innocence. Now, therefore, bend thine ear
To supplication; hear his sighs, though mute;
Unskilful with what words to pray, let me
Interpret for him; me, his advocate
And propitiation; all his works on me,
Good, or not good, ingraft; my merit those
Shall perfect, and for these my death shall pay.
Accept me; and, in me, from these receive
The smell of peace toward mankind: let him live
Before thee reconciled, at least his days
Numbered though sad; till death his doom (which I
To mitigate thus plead, not to reverse,)
To better life shall yield him: where with me
All my redeemed may dwell in joy and bliss;
Made one with me, as I with thee am one.”
To whom the Father, without cloud, serene,
“All thy request for Man, accepted Son,
Obtain; all thy request was my decree:
But, longer in that Paradise to dwell,
The law I gave to Nature him forbids:
Those pure immortal elements, that know
No gross, no unharmonious mixture foul,
Eject him, tainted now; and purge him off,
As a distemper, gross, to air as gross,
And mortal food; as may dispose him best
For dissolution wrought by sin, that first
Distempered all things, and of incorrupt
Corrupted. I, at first, with two fair gifts
Created him endowed; with happiness,
And immortality: that fondly lost,
This other served but to eternize woe;
Till I provided death: so death becomes
His final remedy; and, after life,
Tried in sharp tribulation, and refined
By faith and faithful works, to second life,
Waked in the renovation of the just,
Resigns him up with Heaven and Earth renewed.”
“For Thine Own Sake, O My God.” by Christina Georgina Rossetti
Wearied of sinning, wearied of repentance,
Wearied of self, I turn, my God, to Thee;
To Thee, my Judge, on Whose all-righteous sentence
Hangs mine eternity:
I turn to Thee, I plead Thyself with Thee, –
Be pitiful to me.
Wearied I loathe myself, I loathe my sinning,
My stains, my festering sores, my misery:
Thou the Beginning, Thou ere my beginning
Didst see and didst foresee
Me miserable, me sinful, ruined me, –
I plead Thyself with Thee.
I plead Thyself with Thee Who art my Maker,
Regard Thy handiwork that cries to Thee;
I plead Thyself with Thee Who wast partaker
Of mine infirmity,
Love made Thee what Thou art, the love of me, –
I plead Thyself with Thee.
Famous Poems About Redemption
“Good Friday” by Christina Georgina Rossetti
Am I a stone and not a sheep
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy Cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon –
I, only I.
Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.
“Your Redemption Draweth Nigh” by A. E. R.
Here’s a word of cheer, my brother, as you journey on your way,
Wondering when night be over, watching for the break of day;
Though the darkness seems increasing and you sometimes sigh and cry,
Courage yet a little longer: your redemption draweth nigh.
God is watching, knowing all things, He has sealed you for His own,
Sealed you with His Holy Spirit, joint-heir of His realm, His throne:
Sealed till that day long promised, when, descending from the sky,
He will own you His forever; your redemption draweth nigh.
Lift your head! Why are you downcast? God your Father loves and knows;
Not one trial too much shall touch you—trust Him till His plans disclose
Your redemption, heir of glory, destined to a place on high,
Bought with blood, sealed with the Spirit, your redemption draweth nigh.
Just a little more of sorrow, just a little more of care,
Just a little more of suffering, just a little more to bear;
Then the triumph and the glory, seated with your Lord on high,
For He’s coming soon to claim you: your redemption draweth nigh
The redemption of your body, in which now you sometimes groan;
Then ’twill be made fair and glorious, evermore just His own;
Now ’tis frail, and weak, and sinful; then made perfect, ne’er to die.
When you see Him, you’ll be like Him: your redemption draweth nigh.
All creation cursed and blighted then shall share your liberty,
And earth’s deserts shall be fruitful, beautiful and fair to see.
Lo, the Morning Star is rising, soon will glow the eastern sky;
Earth’s long night and yours be over, for redemption draweth nigh.
“The Doxology of Redemption” by Samuel Francis Smith
Redeemed from death! redeemed from sin!
Redeemed from ills without, within!
Redeemed what new light gilds the skies!
What glories on the soul arise!
Glory to Him whose love unknown
Reached man’s abyss from Heaven’s high throne;
Like some new star its radiance beamed,
A new key rang, – redeemed! redeemed!
As ocean’s billows swell and break,
The mighty tide of praise shall wake;
Thy love, Lord, like the unmeasured sea,
Shall waft a world, redeemed, to Thee.
Redeemed creation, joyful, brings
Its tribute to the King of kings;
Redeemed earth’s million voices raise
One sounding anthem to His praise.
“The Redemption” by Mrs. George Brooke
Great was the agony Thous didst endure,
Thou meek, thou guileless Son of the Most High;
Thou didst take upon Thee to ensure
Man’s full redemption from sin’s tyranny.
Methinks the assembly of the spirits bright,
Which, like the stars, encircle the white throne,
Would gaze, aghast, with wonder and affright,
When Thou didst make man’s trespass all Thy own.
Well may the universe with praises ring,
Sounding the love of such stupendous act,
Till each revolving sphere unceasing sing,
In Heaven’s bright ether dome the glorious fact.
Well might the stars with joy bring into birth
That new resplendent gem of eastern skies;
Whose duty ’twas to lead the sages forth
To where the God-man in His cradle lies!