Beauty poems
/ page 71 of 313 /
Comparison
© William Shenstone
'Tis by comparison we know
On every object to bestow
Its proper share of praise
Did each alike perfection bear,
What beauty, though divinely fair,
Could admiration raise?
The Prologue
© Anne Bradstreet
To sing of wars, of captains, and of kings,
Of cities founded, commonwealths begun,
For my mean pen are too superior things:
Or how they all, or each, their dates have run;
Let poets and historians set these forth,
My obscure lines shall not so dim their work.
The Eye of the Beholder
© James Lionel Michael
IF, as they tell in stories old,
The waters of Pactolus rolld
The Third Booke Of Qvodlibets
© Robert Hayman
Kings doe correct those that Rebellious are,
And their good Subjects worthily preferre:
Iust Epigrams reproue those that offend,
And those that vertuous are, she doth commend.
In Egypt
© Virna Sheard
All day the wife of Pharaoh had paced the palace hall
Or the long white pillared court that was open to the sky;
A passion of wild restlessness ensnared her in its thrall
While she fought a fear within her--a thing that would not die.
Ode to Walt Whitman
© Federico Garcia Lorca
By the East River and the Bronx
boys were singing, exposing their waists
with the wheel, with oil, leather, and the hammer.
Ninety thousand miners taking silver from the rocks
and children drawing stairs and perspectives.
Elegy XVI. He Suggests the Advantage of Birth To a Person of Merit
© William Shenstone
When genius, graced with lineal splendour, glows,
When title shines, with ambient virtues crown'd,
Like some fair almond's flowery pomp it shows,
The pride, the perfume, of the regions round.
Pelleas And Ettarre
© Alfred Tennyson
King Arthur made new knights to fill the gap
Left by the Holy Quest; and as he sat
In hall at old Caerleon, the high doors
Were softly sundered, and through these a youth,
Pelleas, and the sweet smell of the fields
Past, and the sunshine came along with him.
The Chapel Royal St. Jamess, On The 10th February, 1840
© Caroline Norton
But brightly to the last,
Fair Fortune shine, with calm and steady ray,
Upon the tenor of thy happy way;
A future like the past:
And every prayer by loyal subjects said,
Bring down a separate blessing on thy head!
The Star Of Bethlehem
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Where Time the measure of his hours
By changeful bud and blossom keeps,
And, like a young bride crowned with flowers,
Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps;
Book Eighth: Retrospect--Love Of Nature Leading To Love Of Man
© William Wordsworth
WHAT sounds are those, Helvellyn, that are heard
Up to thy summit, through the depth of air
Spring
© Madison Julius Cawein
First came the rain, loud, with sonorous lips;
A pursuivant who heralded a prince:
The Rose-Bush
© Anonymous
There was a rose-bush in a garden growing,
Its tender leaves unfolding day by day;
The sun looked-on, and his down-going
Left it amid the starlit dusk of nights of May.
The Curse of Mother Flood
© Henry Kendall
Wizened the wood is, and wan is the way through it;
White as a corpse is the face of the fen;
To Elsie Fogerty
© Robert Laurence Binyon
On living lips to mould and modulate
The shapes of sound, that each may mirror true
The mystery of the word and breathe it new
Into the entranced ear, warm and intimate;
The Lamp Post
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Laugh your best, O blazoned forests,
Me ye shall not shift or shame
With your beauty: here among you
Man hath set his spear of flame.
Book First [Introduction-Childhood and School Time]
© William Wordsworth
OH there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visitant that while it fans my cheek
On The Conduct Of The World Seeking Beauty Against Government
© Allen Ginsberg
Is that the only way we can become like Indians, like Rhinoceri,
like Quartz Crystals, like organic farmers, like what we imagine
