Beauty poems
/ page 183 of 313 /
from Fanny
© Fitz-Greene Halleck
Dear to the exile is his native land,
In memory’s twilight beauty seen afar:
Dear to the broker is a note of hand,
Collaterally secured—the polar star
Is dear at midnight to the sailor’s eyes,
And dear are Bristed’s volumes at “half price;”
Silentium Amoris
© Oscar Wilde
. AS oftentimes the too resplendent sun
Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon
Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won
A single ballad from the nightingale,
So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,
And all my sweetest singing out of tune.
To The Lady Dursley
© Matthew Prior
Here reading how fond Adam was betray'd,
And how by sin Eve's blasted charms decay'd,
Our common loss unjustly you complain,
So small that part of it which you sustain.
From The French
© George Gordon Byron
ÆGLE, beauty and poet, has two little crimes;
She makes her own face, and does not make her rhymes.
from Jubilate Agno
© Christopher Smart
let elizur rejoice with the partridge
Let Elizur rejoice with the Partridge, who is a prisoner of state and is proud of his keepers.
Prince Athanase
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel,
Had grown quite weak and gray before his time;
Nor any could the restless griefs unravel
from The Botanic Garden, “The Economy of Vegetation”: Canto I
© Erasmus Darwin
Argument
The Genius of the place invites the Goddess of Botany, 1. She descends, is received by Spring, and the Elements, 59. Addresses the Nymphs of Fire. Star-light Night seen in the Camera Obscura, 81. I. Love created the Universe. Chaos explodes. All the Stars revolve. God, 97. II. Shooting Stars. Lightning. Rainbow. Colours of the Morning and Evening Skies. Exterior Atmosphere of inflammable Air. Twilight. Fire-balls. Aurora Borealis. Planets. Comets. Fixed Stars. Sun’s Orb, 115. III. 1. Fires of the Earth’s Centre. Animal Incubation, 137. 2. Volcanic Mountains. Venus visits the Cyclops, 149. IV. Heat confined on the Earth by the Air. Phosphoric lights in the Evening. Bolognian Stone. Calcined Shells. Memnon’s Harp, 173. Ignis fatuus. Luminous Flowers. Glow-worm. Fire-fly. Luminous Sea-insects. Electric Eel. Eagle armed with Lightning, 189. V. 1. Discovery of Fire. Medusa, 209. 2. The chemical Properties of Fire. Phosphorus. Lady in Love, 223. 3. Gunpowder, 237. VI. Steam-engine applied to Pumps, Bellows, Water-engines, Corn-mills, Coining, Barges, Waggons, Flying-chariots, 253. Labours of Hercules. Abyla and Calpe, 297. VII. 1. Electric Machine. Hesperian Dragon. Electric Kiss. Halo round the heads of Saints. Electric Shock. Fairy-rings, 335. 2. Death of Professor Richman, 371. 3. Franklin draws Lightning from the Clouds. Cupid snatches the Thunderbolt from Jupiter, 383. VIII. Phosphoric Acid and Vital Heat produced in the Blood. The great Egg of Night, 399. IX. Western Wind unfettered. Naiad released. Frost assailed. Whale attacked, 421. X. Buds and Flowers expanded by Warmth, Electricity, and Light. Drawings with colourless sympathetic Inks; which appear when warmed by the Fire, 457. XI. Sirius. Jupiter and Semele. Nothern Constellations. Ice-Islands navigated into the Tropic Seas. Rainy Monsoons, 497. XII. Points erected to procure Rain. Elijah on Mount Carmel, 549. Departure of the Nymphs of Fire like Sparks from artificial Fireworks, 587.
The Birch Tree
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Touched with beauty, I stand still and gaze
In the autumn twilight. Yellow leaves and brown
The grass enriching, gleam, or waver down
From lime and elm: far--glimmering through the haze
The quiet lamps in order twinkle; dumb
And fair the park lies; faint the city's hum.
A Poem For The Birth-Day Of The Right Honble The Lady Catharine Tufton
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
'Tis fit SERENA shou'd be sung.
High-born SERENA, Fair and Young,
A Dream Of A Blessed Spirit
© William Butler Yeats
All the heavy days are over;
Leave the body's coloured pride
Underneath the grass and clover,
With the feet laid side by side.
Jerusalem Delivered - Book 05 - part 04
© Torquato Tasso
XLIX
"If then you scorn to be in prison pent,
The Day of Wrath / Dies Iræ
© Ambrose Bierce
Day of Satan's painful duty!
Earth shall vanish, hot and sooty;
So says Virtue, so says Beauty.
Close Of Our Summer At Frascati
© Frances Anne Kemble
The end is come: in thunder and wild rain
Autumn has stormed the golden house of Summer.
Forest And Field
© Madison Julius Cawein
I
GREEN, watery jets of light let through
The rippling foliage drenched with dew;
And golden glimmers, warm and dim,
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
© André Breton
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
Acon and Rhodope; or, Inconstancy
© Heather Fuller
First of those
Who visited upon this solemn day
The Hamadryad’s oak, were Rhodope
And Acon; of one age, one hope, one trust.
Graceful was she as was the nymph whose fate
She sorrowed for: he slender, pale, and first
A Broken Prayer
© George MacDonald
I am a denseness 'twixt me and the light;
1 cannot round myself; my purest thought,
Ere it is thought, hath caught the taint of earth,
And mocked me with hard thoughts beyond my will.
To Mr. Henry Lawes
© Katherine Philips
Nature, which is the vast creation’s soul,
That steady curious agent in the whole,
from Dante Études: Book Three: In My Youth Not Unstaind
© Robert Duncan
Now, upon old age: “Our life
has a fixt course and a simple path”
I would not avoid, “that of our right nature”
—then Dante adds, himself quoting:
“and in every part of our life
place is given for certain things”:
Sir Peter Harpdon's End
© William Morris
John Curzon
Of those three prisoners, that before you came
We took down at St. John's hard by the mill,
Two are good masons; we have tools enough,
And you have skill to set them working.
