Beauty poems
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Songs from The Beggars Opera: Air IV-Cotillion
© John Gay
Act II, Scene iv, Air IVCotillion
Youths the season made for joys,
Guinevere
© Alfred Tennyson
`Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
In Time of Plague [Adieu, farewell, earth’s bliss]
© Thomas Nashe
Adieu, farewell, earth’s bliss;
This world uncertain is;
The Brown Dwarf of Rugen
© John Greenleaf Whittier
And when beneath his door-yard trees the father met his child,
The bells rung out their merriest peal, the folks with joy ran wild.
Piazza Piece
© Pindar
—I am a lady young in beauty waiting
Until my truelove comes, and then we kiss.
But what grey man among the vines is this
Whose words are dry and faint as in a dream?
Back from my trellis, Sir, before I scream!
I am a lady young in beauty waiting.
Oh, How the Hand the Lover Ought to Prize
© Aphra Behn
Oh, how the hand the lover ought to prize
Bove any one peculiar grace!
While he is dying for the eyes
And doting on the lovely face,
The unconsidring little knows
How much he to this beauty owes.
An Essay on Criticism: Part 2
© Alexander Pope
Thus critics, of less judgment than caprice,
Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts
(As most in manners) by a love to parts.
The Pleasures of Imagination: Book The Fourth
© Mark Akenside
One effort more, one cheerful sally more,
Our destin'd course will finish. and in peace
Sonnet CVI: When in the Chronicle of Wasted Time
© William Shakespeare
When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
Venus And Adonis
© William Shakespeare
TO THE
RIGHT HONORABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY,
EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, AND BARON OF TICHFIELD.
RIGHT HONORABLE,
In Memoriam W.M & E.B.J.
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Mad are we all, maids, men, young fools alike and old,
All we that wander blind and want the with to dare.
Dark through the world we go, dazed sheep, across life's wold,
Edged from the flowers we loved by our herd's crook of care.
Chrysalis
© Wole Soyinka
Corpses push up through thawing permafrost
as I scrape salmon skin off a pan at the sink;
The Pleasures of Hope: Part 1
© Thomas Campbell
At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering bills below,
Nabokovs Blues
© William Matthews
The wallful of quoted passages from his work,
with the requisite specimens pinned next
to their literary cameo appearances, was too good
All through eternity
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
They have together
since the beginning of time-
Side by side, step by step.
Rotting Symbols
© Eileen Myles
Soon I shall take more
I will get more light
and I'll know what I think
about that
Paradise Lost: Book XI (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
He added not, for Adam at the newes
Heart-strook with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discover'd soon the place of her retire.
Paradise Lost: Book IX
© Patrick Kavanagh
So gloz'd the Tempter, and his proem tun'd.
Into the heart of Eve his words made way,
Though at the voice much marvelling; at length,
Not unamaz'd, she thus in answer spake:
Valeries Confession. To A Friend.
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
THEY declare that I'm gracefully pretty,
The very best waltzer that whirls;
They say I am sparkling and witty,
The pearl, the queen rose-bud of girls.
