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Home›Traditions›Traditional

Traditional Illustrations

The orthodox, historical consensus of biblical interpretation.

Key question: “What is the most widely accepted and historically grounded understanding of this text?”

25,889 sermon illustrations through the Traditional lens

Poetry

On Leaving London for Wales

Hail to thee, Cambria!

Universal

Percy Bysshe Shelley

242 words

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Poetry

Light Shining out of Darkness

God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable mines Of never-failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs, And works His sovereign will.

Universal

William Cowper

107 words

Poetry

Translation From Anacreon. Ode 3

'Twas now the hour when Night had driven Her car half round yon sable heaven; Boötes, only, seem'd to roll His Arctic charge around the Pole; While mortals, lost in gentle sleep, Forgot to smile, or ceas'd to weep: At...

Universal

George Gordon, Lord Byron

263 words

Poetry

Let such pure hate still underprop

"Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers." Let such pure hate still underprop Our love, that we may be Each other's conscience, And have our sympathy Mainly from thence.

264. Song—On a Bank of Flowers

ON a bank of flowers, in a summer day, For summer lightly drest, The youthful, blooming Nelly lay, With love and sleep opprest; When Willie, wand’ring thro’ the wood, Who for her favour oft had sued; He gaz’d, he wish’d...

THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD

This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms; But front their silent pipes no anthem pealing Startles the villages with strange alarms.

Universal

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

311 words

Poetry

If This Were Faith

God, if this were enough, That I see things bare to the buff And up to the buttocks in mire; That I ask nor hope nor hire, Nut in the husk, Nor dawn beyond the dusk, Nor life beyond death: God, if this were faith!

Universal

Robert Louis Stevenson

218 words

Poetry

This Chasm, Sweet, upon my life

This Chasm, Sweet, upon my life I mention it to you, When Sunrise through a fissure drop The Day must follow too. If we demur,...

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as spring— When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to...

Universal

Gerard Manley Hopkins

125 words

Poetry

The Aziola

'Do you not hear the Aziola cry?

The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers

The breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast, And the woods, against a stormy sky, Their giant branches tost; And the heavy night hung dark The hills and water o'er, When a band of exiles moored their...

Universal

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

204 words

Poetry

The Frightened Ploughman

I went in the fields with the leisure I got, The stranger might smile but I heeded him not, The hovel was ready to screen from a shower, And the book in my pocket was read in an hour.

Sonnet 83: I never saw that you did painting need

I never saw that you did painting need, And therefore to your fair no painting set; I found, or thought I found, you did exceed That barren tender of a poet's debt: And therefore have I slept in your report,...

Hope Holds to Christ

. . . . . . . . Hope holds to Christ the mind’s own mirror out To take His lovely likeness more and more....

Universal

Gerard Manley Hopkins

110 words

Poetry

Song

I peeled bits of straws and I got switches too From the grey peeling willow as idlers do, And I switched at the flies as I sat all alone Till my flesh, blood, and marrow was turned to dry bone.

A Birthday

My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water'd shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea;...

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, And, faith, he’ll prent it: If in your bounds...

Nature

Full of rebellion, I would die, Or fight, or travel, or deny That thou has aught to do with me. O tame my heart; It is thy highest art To captivate strong holds to thee.

I'm sorry for the Dead -- Today --

I'm sorry for the Dead -- Today -- It's such congenial times Old Neighbors have at fences -- It's time o' year for Hay. And...

Sonnet 119: What potions have I drunk of Siren tears

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within, Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears, Still losing when I saw myself to win! What wretched errors hath my heart committed, Whilst it...

Since Thou Hast Given Me This Good Hope, O God

SINCE thou hast given me this good hope, O God, That while my footsteps tread the flowery sod And the great woods embower me, and...

Universal

Robert Louis Stevenson

123 words

Poetry

Fragment of the Elegy on the Death of Adonis

PROM THE GREEK OF BION. I mourn Adonis dead--loveliest Adonis-- Dead, dead Adonis--and the Loves lament. Sleep no more, Venus, wrapped in purple woof-- Wake violet-stoled queen, and weave the crown Of Death,--'tis Misery calls,--for he is dead.

The Yellowhammer

When shall I see the white-thorn leaves agen, And yellowhammers gathering the dry bents By the dyke side, on stilly moor or fen, Feathered with love and nature's good intents? Rude is the tent this architect invents, Rural the place,...

Sonnet 07 - The face of all the world is changed, I think

The face of all the world is changed, I think, Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink Of obvious death, where I,...

Universal

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

115 words