Beauty poems
/ page 170 of 313 /
Balcony
© Charles Baudelaire
MOTHER of memories, mistress of mistresses,
O thou, my pleasure, thou, all my desire,
Thou shalt recall the beauty of caresses,
The charm of evenings by the gentle fire,
The Living Flame
© Charles Baudelaire
THEY pass before me, these Eyes full of light,
Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise;
The holy brothers pass before my sight,
And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes.
Reversibility
© Charles Baudelaire
ANGEL of gaiety, have you tasted grief?
Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite,
And the vague terrors of the fearful night
That crush the heart up like a crumpled leaf?
The Dance Of Death
© Charles Baudelaire
CARRYING bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves,
Proud of her height as when she lived, she moves
With all the careless and high-stepping grace,
And the extravagant courtesan's thin face.
The Eyes Of Beauty
© Charles Baudelaire
YOU are a sky of autumn, pale and rose;
But all the sea of sadness in my blood
Surges, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose,
Salt with the memory of the bitter flood.
The Temptation
© Charles Baudelaire
THE Demon, in my chamber high,
This morning came to visit me,
And, thinking he would find some fault,
He whispered: "I would know of thee
Beauty
© Charles Baudelaire
I AM as lovely as a dream in stone,
And this my heart where each finds death in turn,
Inspires the poet with a love as lone
As clay eternal and as taciturn.
I Love The Naked Ages Long Ago
© Charles Baudelaire
I love the naked ages long ago
When statues were gilded by Apollo,
When men and women of agility
Could play without lies and anxiety,
Beacons
© Charles Baudelaire
Reubens, river of forgetfulness, garden of sloth,
Pillow of wet flesh that one cannot love,
But where life throngs and seethes without cease
Like the air in the sky and the water in the sea.
Victor Hugo
© Henry Van Dyke
Heart of France for a hundred years,
Passionate, sensitive, proud, and strong,
Quick to throb with her hopes and fears,
Fierce to flame with her sense of wrong!
The White Bees
© Henry Van Dyke
Long ago Apollo called to Aristæus,
youngest of the shepherds,
Saying, "I will make you keeper of my bees."
Golden were the hives, and golden was the honey;
golden, too, the music,
Where the honey-makers hummed among the trees.
The Heavenly Hills of Holland
© Henry Van Dyke
The heavenly hills of Holland,--
How wondrously they rise
Above the smooth green pastures
Into the azure skies!
Sicily, December 1908
© Henry Van Dyke
Is Nature, then, a strife of jealous powers,
And man the plaything of unconscious fate?
Not so, my troubled heart! God reigns above
And man is greatest in his darkest hours:
Walking amid the cities desolate,
The Son of God appears in human love.
Portrait and Reality
© Henry Van Dyke
But when I see thee near, I recognize
In every dear familiar way some strange
Perfection, and behold in April guise
The magic of thy beauty that doth range
Through many moods with infinite surprise,--
Never the same, and sweeter with each change.
Milton
© Henry Van Dyke
Lover of Liberty at heart wast thou,
Above all beauty bright, all music clear:
To thee she bared her bosom and her brow,
Breathing her virgin promise in thine ear,
And bound thee to her with a double vow, --
Exquisite Puritan, grave Cavalier!
Love's Reason
© Henry Van Dyke
But for a something in thy form and face,
Thy looks and ways, of primal harmony;
A certain soothing charm, a vital grace
That breathes of the eternal womanly,
And makes me feel the warmth of Nature's breast,
When in her arms, and thine, I sink to rest.
Keats
© Henry Van Dyke
Yet thou hast won the gift Tithonus missed:
Never to feel the pain of growing old,
Nor lose the blissful sight of beauty's truth,
But with the ardent lips that music kissed
To breathe thy song, and, ere thy heart grew cold,
Become the Poet of Immortal Youth.
Echoes From the Greek Mythology
© Henry Van Dyke
With two bright eyes, my star, my love,
Thou lookest on the stars above:
Ah, would that I the heaven might be
With a million eyes to look on thee.
The Nightjar
© Sir Henry Newbolt
We loved our nightjar, but she would not stay with us.
We had found her lying as dead, but soft and warm,
Under the apple tree beside the old thatched wall.
Two days we kept her in a basket by the fire,
Camma
© Oscar Wilde
And yet - methinks I'd rather see thee play
That serpent of old Nile, whose witchery
Made Emperors drunken, - come, great Egypt, shake
Our stage with all thy mimic pageants! Nay,
I am grown sick of unreal passions, make
The world thine Actium, me thine Anthony!
