Art poems
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Three Odes To My Friend.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[These three Odes are addressed to a certain
Behrisch, who was tutor to Count Lindenau, and of whom Goethe gives
an odd account at the end of the Seventh Book of his Autobiography.]
Nature
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Because out of corruption burns the rose,
And to corruption lovely cheeks descend;
Because with her right hand she heals the woes
Her left hand wrought, loth nor to wound nor mend;
To An Aeolian Harp
© Sara Teasdale
The winds have grown articulate in thee,
And voiced again the wail of ancient woe
That smote upon the winds of long ago:
The cries of Trojan women as they flee,
The Idea Of Order At Key West
© Wallace Stevens
For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
On the Earl of Essex
© Henry King
Essex twice made unhappy by a Wife,
Yet Marry'd worse unto the Peoples strife:
He who by two Divorces did untie
His Bond of Wedlock and of Loyalty:
Millenial Hymn to Lord Shiva
© Kathleen Raine
Earth no longer
hymns the Creator,
the seven days of wonder,
the Garden is over
Reynard the Fox - Part 1
© John Masefield
Poor Polly's dying struck him queer,
He was a darkened man thereafter,
Cowed, silent, he would wince at laughter
And be so gentle it was strange
Even to see. Life loves to change.
In An Artist's Studio
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
One face looks out from all his canvasses,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans;
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
The Shower
© James Whitcomb Riley
The landscape, like the awed face of a child,
Grew curiously blurred; a hush of death
Fell on the fields, and in the darkened wild
The zephyr held its breath.
The Song of Australia
© Henry Lawson
The centuries found me to nations unknown
My people have crowned me and made me a throne;
My royal regalia is love, truth, and light
A girl called Australia I've come to my right.
Australian Engineers
© Henry Lawson
Ah, well! but the case seems hopeless, and the pen might write in vain;
The Artist. (Sonnet I.)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Nothing the greatest artist can conceive
That every marble block doth not confine
Matthew Arnold On Hearing Him Read His Poems In Boston
© Katharine Lee Bates
A stranger, schooled to gentle arts,
He stept before the curious throng;
At The Close
© George Meredith
To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal,
Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou know'st;
May-Day
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world rolls round,--mistrust it not,--
Befalls again what once befell;
All things return, both sphere and mote,
And I shall hear my bluebird's note,
And dream the dream of Auburn dell.
A Story At Dusk
© Ada Cambridge
An evening all aglow with summer light
And autumn colour-fairest of the year.
Wants
© Philip Larkin
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone:
However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards
However we follow the printed directions of sex
However the family is photographed under the flag-staff -
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.
