A micro-anthology of devotion poems

1. Man and Wife, Robert Lowell, 'blossoms on our magnolia ignite/the morning with their murderous five days' white'. (Lowell was a master of the three-part-line)

2. What is there to say, Jack Gilbert, 'there is this stubborn provincial singing in me'

3. The Muse, Anna Akhmatova, 'When in the night I await her coming/my life seems stopped.'

4. Psalm 143, King James Version, 'Quicken me, O Lord, for thy name's sake: for thy righteousness' sake bring my soul out of trouble.' (Purcell, 'Thy Word is a Lantern')

5. Sonnet, Robert Hass, 'Outside, white,/patient animals, and tangled vines, and rain.'

6. The Eve of St Agnes, John Keats, 'A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,/ All garlanded with carven imag'ries/ Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,/ And diamonded with panes of quaint device...'

7. The toome road, Seamus Heaney, 'O charioteers, above your dormant guns,/It stands here still, stands vibrant as you pass,/The visible, untoppled omphalos.'

8. By Night when Others Soundly Slept, Ann Bradstreet, 'I sought him whom my Soul did Love,/With tears I sought him earnestly.'

9. To John Keats, Amy Lowell, 'A youth who trudged the highroad we tread now/Singing the miles behind him.'

10. The Orange, Wendy Cope, 'And that orange, it made me so happy,/As ordinary things often do/Just lately.'

11. Upon Julia's Clothes, Robert Herrick, 'Whenas in silks my Julia goes,/Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows/That liquefaction of her clothes.'

12. Psalm 57, KJV, 'in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast' (Purcell version)