All Poems
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Written for my Son ... upon his Master's First Bringing in a Rod
© Mary Barber
That sage was surely more discerning,
Who taught to play us into learning,
By graving letters on the dice :
May heav'n reward the kind device,
And crown him with immortal fame,
Who taught at once to read and game !
The Suicide's Argument
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Ere the birth of my life, if I wished it or no
No question was asked me--it could not be so!
If the life was the question, a thing sent to try
And to live on be YES; what can NO be? to die.
God of Mercy, God of Grace
© Henry Francis Lyte
God of mercy, God of grace,
Show the brightness of Thy face:
Shine upon us, Saviour, shine,
Fill Thy church with light Divine;
And Thy saving health extend,
Unto earth's remotest end.
Solitude
© Archibald Lampman
Sometimes a hawk screams or a woodpecker
Startles the stillness from its fixed mood
With his loud careless tap. Sometimes I hear
The dreamy white-throat from some far-off tree
Pipe slowly on the listening solitude
His five pure notes succeeding pensively.
One Day And Another: A Lyrical Eclogue - Inscription
© Madison Julius Cawein
TO
G. F. M.
THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED IN MEMORY
OF MANY DAYS.
Sonnet 48: Soul's Joy, Bend Not
© Sir Philip Sidney
Soul's joy, bend not those morning stars from me,
Where Virtue is made strong by Beauty's might,
Where Love is chasteness, Pain doth learn delight,
And Humbleness grows one with Majesty.
Breitmann As An Uhlan. III. Breitmann And Bouilli.
© Charles Godfrey Leland
Vot roombles down de Bergstrass?
Vot a grash ish in de air!
Mit a desberate gonfusion,
Und a gry of wild tespair,
O sleep, my babe
© Sara Coleridge
O sleep, my babe, hear not the rippling wave,
Nor feel the breeze that round thee ling'ring strays
Egypt Unvisited. Suggested by Mr. Roberts' Egyptian Sketches
© Alaric Alexander Watts
The poetry of earth is fading fast;
It hath no region it can call its own;
Certitude
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
There was a time when I was confident
That God's stupendous mystery of birth
The Trembling Tree
© Robert Laurence Binyon
On greenest grass the lace of lights
Beneath the shadowing tree
Trembles, as when eyes more than lips
Are smiling silently.
Lot In Sodom
© John Newton
How hurtful was the choice of Lot,
Who took up his abode
Because it was a fruitful spot
With them who feared not God!
An Anemone
© Madison Julius Cawein
"Teach me the wisdom of thy beauty, pray,
That, being thus wise, I may aspire to see
What beauty is, whence, why, and in what way
Immortal, yet how mortal utterly:
For, shrinking loveliness, thy brow of day
Pleads plaintive as a prayer, anemone.
What My Father Left Behind by Chris Forhan: American Life in Poetry #200 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laure
© Ted Kooser
Here's a fine poem by Chris Forhan of Indiana, about surviving the loss of a parent, and which celebrates the lives that survive it, that go on. I especially like the parachute floating up and away, just as the lost father has gone up and away.
What My Father Left Behind
Jam jar of cigarette ends and ashes on his workbench,
hammer he nailed our address to a stump with,
balsa wood steamship, half-finishedâ
Warbrides
© Nina Murdoch
There has been wrong done since the world began.
That young men should go out and die in war,
And lie face down in the dust for a brief span,
And be not good to look at anymore.
Elegy on the Death of a Frog
© David Lewis
Ya summer day when I were mowin',
When flooers of monny soorts were growin',
Which fast befoor my scythe fell bowin',
As I advance,
A frog I cut widout my knowin'-
A sad mischance.
Country At War
© Robert Graves
And what of home--how goes it, boys,
While we die here in stench and noise?
Neatness In Apparel
© Charles Lamb
In your garb and outward clothing
A reservëd plainness use;
By their neatness more distinguished
Than the brightness of their hues.
