Best poems
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Whitsunday
© George Herbert
Listen sweet Dove unto my song,
And spread thy golden wings in me;
Hatching my tender heart so long,
Till it get wing, and fly away with thee.
Sonnet (II)
© George Herbert
Sure Lord, there is enough in thee to dry
Oceans of Ink ; for, as the Deluge did
Cover the Earth, so doth thy Majesty :
Each Cloud distills thy praise, and doth forbid
The Pulley
© George Herbert
When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
Let us (said He) pour on him all we can:
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.
Albert Einstein To Archibald Macleish
© Delmore Schwartz
I should have been a plumber fixing drains.
And mending pure white bathtubs for the great Diogenes
(who scorned all lies, all liars, and all tyrannies),
The Poet
© Delmore Schwartz
The riches of the poet are equal to his poetry
His power is his left hand
It is idle weak and precious
His poverty is his wealth, a wealth which may destroy him
In the Holy Nativity of our Lord
© Richard Crashaw
CHORUS
Come we shepherds whose blest sight
Hath met love's noon in nature's night;
Come lift we up our loftier song
And wake the sun that lies too long.
Verses from the Shepherds' Hymn
© Richard Crashaw
WE saw Thee in Thy balmy nest,
Young dawn of our eternal day;
We saw Thine eyes break from the East,
And chase the trembling shades away:
We saw Thee, and we blest the sight,
We saw Thee by Thine own sweet light.
Wishes To His (Supposed) Mistress
© Richard Crashaw
Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me;
To Walt Whitman In America
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Send but a song oversea for us,
Heart of their hearts who are free,
Heart of their singer, to be for us
More than our singing can be;
At Sea
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
'Farewell and adieu' was the burden prevailing
Long since in the chant of a home-faring crew;
And the heart in us echoes, with laughing or wailing,
Farewell and adieu.
In a Lecture Room
© Arthur Hugh Clough
Away, haunt thou me not,
Thou vain Philosophy!
Little hast thou bestead,
Save to perplex the head,
An Orphan's Lament
© Anne Brontë
And thrice stern winter's icy hand
Has checked the river's flow,
And three times o'er the mountains thrown
His spotless robe of snow.
Strange Meeting
© Wilfred Owen
It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
The Beggar
© John Newton
Encouraged by thy word
Of promise to the poor;
Behold, a beggar, Lord,
Waits at thy mercy's door!
No hand, no heart, O Lord, but thine,
Can help or pity wants like mine.
The White Cliffs
© Alice Duer Miller
Yet I have loathed those voices when the sense
Of what they said seemed to me insolence,
As if the dominance of the whole nation
Lay in that clear correct enunciation.
To His Lute
© William Henry Drummond
My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow
With thy green mother in some shady grove,
When immelodious winds but made thee move,
And birds their ramage did on thee bestow.
Lucy Hooper
© John Greenleaf Whittier
They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead,
That all of thee we loved and cherished
The Song Of The Camp-Fire
© Robert William Service
Gather round me, boy and grey-beard, frontiersman of every kind.
Few are you, and far and lonely, yet an army forms behind:
By your camp-fires shall they know you, ashes scattered to the wind.
The Judgement
© Robert William Service
The Judge looked down, his face was grim,
He scratched his ear;
The gangster's moll looked up at him
With eyes of fear.
Bastard
© Robert William Service
The very skies wee black with shame,
As near my moment drew;
The very hour before you cam
I felt I hated you.
