Envy poems
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Wyatt Resteth Here
© Henry Howard
Wyatt resteth here, that quick could never rest;
Whose heavenly gifts increased by disdain,
And virtue sank the deeper in his breast;
Such profit he of envy could obtain.
Paradise Lost: Book I
© Patrick Kavanagh
So spake th' apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but rack'd with deep despair.
And him thus answer'd soon his bold compeer:
Perspectives
© Ronald Stuart Thomas
They were bearded
like the sea they came
from; rang stone bells
for their stone hearers.
Psalm 55
© Mary Sidney Herbert
My God, most glad to look, most prone to hear,
An open ear, oh, let my prayer find,
Emily Hardcastle, Spinster
© Pindar
We shall come tomorrow morning, who were not to have her love,
We shall bring no face of envy but a gift of praise and lilies
To the stately ceremonial we are not the heroes of.
To His Mistress Going to Bed
© John Donne
Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
Holy Sonnets: I am a little world made cunningly
© John Donne
I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite,
Epigrams: On my First Son
© Benjamin Jonson
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Beowulf (modern English translation)
© Pierre Reverdy
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
Constantinople
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Greiv'd at a view which strikes vpon my Mind
The short liv'd Vanity of Human kind
In Gaudy Objects I indulge my Sight,
And turn where Eastern Pomp gives gay delight.
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
© Thomas Gray
Ye distant spires, ye antique tow'rs,
That crown the wat'ry glade,
Jordan (I)
© George Herbert
Who says that fictions only and false hair
Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?
Is all good structure in a winding stair?
May no lines pass, except they do their duty
Not to a true, but painted chair?
An Elegy
© Benjamin Jonson
THOUGH beauty be the mark of praise,
And yours of whom I sing be such
As not the world can praise too much,
Yet 'tis your Virtue now I raise.
In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 27
© Alfred Tennyson
I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:
The Properly Scholarly Attitude
© Adelaide Crapsey
The poet pursues his beautiful theme;
The preacher his golden beatitude;
Etiquette
© William Schwenck Gilbert
The BALLYSHANNON foundered off the coast of Cariboo,
And down in fathoms many went the captain and the crew;
Down went the owners - greedy men whom hope of gain allured:
Oh, dry the starting tear, for they were heavily insured.
The Purgatory Of St. Patrick - Act I
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
KING. Yes, from this rocky height,
Nigh to the sun, that with one starry light
Its rugged brow doth crown,
Headlong among the salt waves leaping down
Let him descend who so much pain perceives;
There let him raging die who raging lives.
The cat’s song
© Marge Piercy
Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts.
