Beauty poems
/ page 191 of 313 /
The Village: Book I
© George Crabbe
The village life, and every care that reigns
O'er youthful peasants and declining swains;
The Minks
© Toi Derricotte
In the backyard of our house on Norwood,
there were five hundred steel cages lined up,
On the Great Atlantic Rainway
© Kenneth Koch
I set forth one misted white day of June
Beneath the great Atlantic rainway, and heard:
Dawn
© Francis Ledwidge
Quiet miles of golden sky,
And in my heart a sudden flower.
I want to clap my hands and cry
For Beauty in her secret bower.
Sonnet LXV: Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
© William Shakespeare
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
But sad mortality oer-sways their power,
Candles
© Sylvia Plath
They are the last romantics, these candles:
Upside-down hearts of light tipping wax fingers,
And the fingers, taken in by their own haloes,
Grown milky, almost clear, like the bodies of saints.
It is touching, the way they'll ignore
Haymaking
© Edward Thomas
Aftear night’s thunder far away had rolled
The fiery day had a kernel sweet of cold,
To Joanna
© William Wordsworth
AMID the smoke of cities did you pass
The time of early youth; and there you learned,
Bathsheba's Song
© George Peele
Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air,
Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair.
Chamber Thicket
© Sharon Olds
As we sat at the feet of the string quartet,
in their living room, on a winter night,
Sonnet LIII: "What is your substance, whereof are you made"
© William Shakespeare
What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
The Black Destrier. A Ballad Of The Third Crusade
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
FIRST 'mid the lion Richard's host,
Sir Aymer fought in Holy Land;
And they loved him well for his honest heart,
And they feared, for his stalwart hand.
The Birth Place of Pleasure
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
At the creation of the Earth
Pleasure, that divinest birth,
From the soil of Heaven did rise,
Wrapped in sweet wild melodies--
Chant d'automne (Song Of Autumn)
© Charles Baudelaire
Bientôt nous plongerons dans les froides ténèbres;
Adieu, vive clarté de nos étés trop courts!
J'entends déjà tomber avec des chocs funèbres
Le bois retentissant sur le pavé des cours.
A Song: Ask me no more where Jove bestows
© Thomas Carew
Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty’s orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.
The Picture
© Madison Julius Cawein
Above her, pearl and rose the heavens lay:
Around her, flowers flattered earth with gold,
Or down the path in insolence held sway-
Like cavaliers who ride the king's highway-
Scarlet and buff, within a garden old.
