Courage poems
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Metamorphoses: Book The Twelfth
© Ovid
The End of the Twelfth Book.
Translated into English verse under the direction of
Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison,
William Congreve and other eminent hands
The Substitute
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
How say'st, thou? die to-morrrow? Oh! my friend!
The bitter, bitter doom!
What hast thou done to tempt this ghastly end--
This death of shame and gloom?
Non Dolet!
© Edith Wharton
So weary a world it lies, forlorn of day,
And yet not wholly dark,
Since evermore some soul that missed the mark
Calls back to those agrope
In the mad maze of hope,
Courage, my brothersI have found the way!
Disappointment
© Robert Laurence Binyon
And were they but for this, those passionate schemes
Of joy, that I have nursed? indeed for this
That longings, day and night, have filled my dreams?
Now it has come, the hour of bliss,
How different it seems!
Sed Non Satiata (Unslakeable Lust)
© Charles Baudelaire
Bizarre déité, brune comme les nuits,
Au parfum mélangé de musc et de havane,
Oeuvre de quelque obi, le Faust de la savane,
Sorcière au flanc d'ébène, enfant des noirs minuits,
The Beasts In The Tower
© Charles Lamb
Within the precincts of this yard,
Each in his narrow confines barred,
Pharsalia - Book X: Caesar In Egypt
© Marcus Annaeus Lucanus
Caesar's ears in vain
Had she implored, but aided by her charms
The wanton's prayers prevailed, and by a night
Of shame ineffable, passed with her judge,
She won his favour.
Italy : 5. The Descent
© Samuel Rogers
My mule refreshed -- and, let the truth be told,
He was nor dull nor contradictory,
But patient, diligent, and sure of foot,
Shunning the loose stone on the precipice,
Our Atlas
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Not Atlas, with his shoulders bent beneath the weighty world,
Bore such a burden as this man, on whom the Gods have hurled
The evils of old festering lands-yea, hurled them in their might
And left him standing all alone, to set the wrong things right.
The Stealing Of The Mare - II
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Said the Narrator:
And when Abu Zeyd had made an end of speaking, and the Kadi Diab and the Sultan and Rih, and all had happened as hath been said, then the Emir Abu Zeyd mounted his running camel and bade farewell to the Arabs and was gone; and all they who remained behind were in fear thinking of his journey. But Abu Zeyd went on alone, nor stayed he before he came to the pastures of the Agheylat. And behold, in the first of their vallies as he journeyed onward the slaves of the Agheylat saw him and came upon him, threatening him with their spears, and they said to him, ``O Sheykh, who and what art thou, and what is thy story, and the reason of thy coming?'' And he said to them, ``O worthy men of the Arabs, I am a poet, of them that sing the praise of the generous and the blame of the niggardly.'' And they answered him, ``A thousand welcomes, O poet.'' And they made him alight and treated him with honour until night came upon their feasting, nor did he depart from among them until the night had advanced to a third, but remained with them, singing songs of praise, and reciting lettered phrases, until they were stirred by his words and astonished at his eloquence. And at the end of all he arrived at the praise of the Agheyli Jaber. Then stopped they him and said: ``He of whom thou speakest is the chieftain of our people, and he is a prince of the generous. Go thou, therefore, to him, and he shall give thee all, even thy heart's desire.'' And he answered them, ``Take ye care of my camel and keep her for me while I go forward to recite his praises, and on my return we will divide the gifts.'' And he left them. And as he went he set himself to devise a plan by which he might enter into the camp and entrap the Agheyli Jaber.
And the Narrator singeth of Abu Zeyd and of the herdsmen thus:
Little Lotties Grievance
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
MAMA'S in heaven! and so, you see
My sister Bet's mamma to me.
Oh! yes, I love her!--that's to say,
I love her well the whole bright day;
Bayonet Song
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
For till you show me the Sacred Word
I'm for Peter and his good sword,
Only I hope if we'd drilled him here
He'd not have missed the head for the ear.
Paradise Lost : Book VI.
© John Milton
All night the dreadless Angel, unpursued,
Through Heaven's wide champain held his way; till Morn,
The Hand In The Dark
© Ada Cambridge
How calm the spangled city spread below!
How cool the night! How fair the starry skies!
How sweet the dewy breezes! But I know
What, under all their seeming beauty, lies.
The Rule Of Life Expanded
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
And people then will alter their mind.
If courage is gone-then all is gone!
'Twere better that thou hadst never been born.
The Sleep of Sigismund
© Jean Ingelow
The doom'd king pacing all night through the windy fallow.
'Let me alone, mine enemy, let me alone,'
Never a Christian bell that dire thick gloom to hallow,
Or guide him, shelterless, succourless, thrust from his own.
Show The Flag
© Edgar Albert Guest
Show the flag and let it wave
As a symbol of the brave
Let it float upon the breeze
As a sign for each who sees
That beneath it, where it rides,
Loyalty to-day abides.
The Song
© Charles Mair
Here me, ye smokeless skies and grass-green earth,
Since by your sufferance still I breathe and live!
How Salvator Won
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
The gate was thrown open, I rode out alone,
More proud than a monarch who sits on a throne.
I am but a jockey, yet shout upon shout
Went up from the people who watched me ride out;
And the cheers that rang forth from that warm-hearted crowd,
Were as earnest as those to which monarch e'er bowed.
