Are you searching for poems that beautifully capture the essence of spiritual faith and inspire your soul?
Poetry has a way of speaking directly to the heart, offering solace, strength, and a deeper connection to the divine.
Here are 10 timeless verses written by renowned poets that resonate with your beliefs, uplift your spirit, and celebrate the faith of women like you.
Let’s get straight to it!
My favorite poem about spiritual faith for religious women
#1 “Crossing the Bar” by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have cross’d the bar.
“Crossing the Bar” by Alfred Lord Tennyson stands as a masterpiece that touches the deepest chords of spiritual faith.
Its serene imagery of the sea, twilight, and a journey home captures the universal longing for peace and divine reunion.
The poem reflects hope, trust in God, and an acceptance of life’s final passage, offering a comforting perspective for religious women seeking meaning in their spiritual journey.
9 more poems about spiritual faith for religious women
#2 “Faith” by Arthur Caswell Parker
There is a faith that weakly dies
When overcast by clouds of doubt,
That like a blazing wisp of straw
A vagrant breeze will flicker out.
Be mine the faith whose living flame
Shall pierce the clouds and banish night,
Whose glow the hurricanes increase
To match the gleams of heaven’s night.
#3 “Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness” by John Donne
Since I am coming to that Holy room,
Where, with Thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made Thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before;
Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
That this is my south-west discovery,
Per fretum febris, by these straits to die;
I joy, that in these straits I see my west;
For, though those currents yield return to none,
What shall my west hurt me? As west and east
In all flat maps—and I am one—are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection.
Is the Pacific sea my home? Or are
The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar?
All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.
We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ’s cross and Adam’s tree, stood in one place;
Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.
So, in His purple wrapp’d, receive me, Lord;
By these His thorns, give me His other crown;
And as to others’ souls I preach’d Thy word,
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own,
“Therefore that He may raise, the Lord throws down.”
#4 “Prayer” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Lord, let us pray.
Give us the open mind, O God,
The mind that dares believe
In paths of thought as yet untrod;
The mind that can conceive
Large visions of a wider way
Than circumscribes our world to-day.
May tolerance temper our own faith,
However great our zeal;
When others speak of life and death,
Let us not plunge a steel
Into the heart of one who talks
In terms we deem unorthodox.
Help us to send our thoughts through space,
Where worlds in trillions roll,
Each fashioned for its time and place,
Each portion of the whole;
Till our weak minds may feel a sense
Of Thy Supreme Omnipotence.
Let us not shame Thee with a creed
That builds a costly church,
But blinds us to a brother’s need
Because he dares to search
For truth in his own soul and heart
And finds his church in home and mart.
Give us the faith that makes us kind,
Give us the open sight and mind –
O God, the often mind
That lifts itself to meet the Ray
Of the New Dawning Day:
Lord, let us pray.
#5 “Tears” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Thank God, bless God, all ye who suffer not
More grief than ye can weep for. That is well—
That is light grieving! lighter, none befell,
Since Adam forfeited the primal lot.
Tears! what are tears? The babe weeps in its cot,
The mother singing; at her marriage bell
The bride weeps; and before the oracle
Of high-faned hills, the poet has forgot
Such moisture on his cheeks. Thank God for grace,
Ye who weep only! If, as some have done,
Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place,
And touch but tombs,—look up! Those tears will run
Soon in long rivers down the lifted face,
And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.
#6 “Faith in God” by Henry Kendall
Have faith in God. For whosoever lists
To calm conviction in these days of strife,
Will learn that in this steadfast stand exists
The scholarship severe of human life.
This face to face with doubt! I know how strong
His thews must be who fights and falls and bears,
By sleepless nights and vigils lone and long,
And many a woeful wraith of wrestling prayers.
Yet trust in Him! Not in an old man throned
With thunders on an everlasting cloud,
But in that awful Entity enzoned
By no wild wraths nor bitter homage loud.
When from the summit of some sudden steep
Of speculation you have strength to turn
To things too boundless for the broken sweep
Of finer comprehension, wait and learn
That God hath been His own interpreter
From first to last. So you will understand
The tribe who best succeed, when men most err,
To suck through fogs the fatness of the land.
One thing is surer than the autumn tints
We saw last week in yonder river bend
That all our poor expression helps and hints,
However vaguely, to the solemn end
That God is truth; and if our dim ideal
Fall short of fact so short that we must weep
Why shape specific sorrows, though the real
Be not the song which erewhile made us sleep?
Remember, truth draws upward. This to us
Of steady happiness should be a cause
Beyond the differential calculus
Or Kant’s dull dogmas and mechanic laws.
A man is manliest when he wisely knows
How vain it is to halt and pule and pine;
Whilst under every mystery haply flows
The finest issue of a love divine.
#7 “The Faith We Need” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Too tall our structures, and too swift our pace;
Not so we mount, not so we gain the race.
Too loud the voice of commerce in the land;
Not so truth speaks, not so we understand.
Too vast our conquests, and too large our gains;
Not so comes peace, not so the soul attains.
But the need of the world is a faith that will live anywhere;
In the still dark depths of the woods, or out in the sun’s full glare.
A faith that can hear God’s voice, alike in the quiet glen,
Or in the roar of the street, and over the noises of men.
And the need of the world is a creed that is founded on joy;
A creed with the turrets of hope and trust, no winds can destroy;
A creed where the soul finds rest, whatever this life bestows,
And dwells undoubting and unafraid, because it knows, it knows.
And the need of the world is love that burns in the heart like flame;
A love for the Giver of Life, in sorrow or joy the same;
A love that blazes a trail to Go through the dark and the cold,
Or keeps the pathway that leads to Him clean, through glory and gold.
For the faith that can only thrive or grow in the solitude,
And droops and dies in the marts of men, where sights and sounds are rude;
That is not a faith at all, but a dream of a mystic’s heart;
Our faith should point as the compass points, whatever be the chart.
Our faith must find its centre of peace in a babel of noise;
In the changing ways of the world of men it must keep its poise;
And over the sorrowing sounds of earth it must hear God’s call;
And the faith that cannot do all this, that is not faith at all.
#8 “Farewell” by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Tie the strings to my life, my Lord,
Then I am ready to go!
Just a look at the horses —
Rapid! That will do!
Put me in on the firmest side,
So I shall never fall;
For we must ride to the Judgment,
And it’s partly down hill.
But never I mind the bridges,
And never I mind the sea;
Held fast in everlasting race
By my own choice and thee.
Good-by to the life I used to live,
And the world I used to know;
And kiss the hills for me, just once;
Now I am ready to go!
#9 “The Lamb” by William Blake
Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Little lamb, I’ll tell thee;
Little lamb, I’ll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild,
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little lamb, God bless thee!
Little lamb, God bless thee!
#10 “The Soul’s Desire” by Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada
I live, but yet I live not in myself,
For since aspiring to a life more high
I ever die because I do not die.
This mystic union of Love divine,
The bond whereby alone my soul doth live,
Hath made of God my Captive—but to me
True liberty of heart the while doth give.
And yet my spirit is so sorely pained
At gazing on my Lord by me enchained,
That still I die because I do not die.
Alas, how wearisome a waste is life!
How hard a fate to bear! In exile here
Fast locked in iron fetters lies my soul,
A prisoner in earth’s mournful dungeon drear.
But yet the very hope of some relief
Doth wound my soul with such tormenting grief,
That still I die because I do not die.
No life so bitter, none so sad as mine
While exiled from my Lord my days are spent,
For though to love be sweet, yet hope deferred
Is wearisome: from life’s long banishment,
O God, relieve me! from this mournful freight
Which crushes with a more than leaden weight,
So that I die because I do not die.
I live, since death must surely come at last;—
Upon that hope alone my trust I build,
For when this mortal life shall die, at length
My longings then will wholly be fulfilled.
Come, Death, come, bring life’s certainty to me,
O tarry thou no more !—I wait for thee,
And ever die because I do not die.