Experience poems
/ page 13 of 36 /The Vision Of Piers Plowman - Part 18
© William Langland
Wolleward and weetshoed wente I forth after
As a recchelees renk that [reccheth of no wo],
Paracelsus: Part III: Paracelsus
© Robert Browning
Paracelsus.
Heap logs and let the blaze laugh out!
Love
© Joseph Brodsky
Twice I awoke this night, and went
to the window. The streetlamps were
a fragment of a sentence spoken in sleep,
leading to nothing, like omission points,
The Lord of the Isles: Canto I.
© Sir Walter Scott
Here pause we, gentles, for a space;
And, if our tale hath won your grace,
Grant us brief patience, and again
We will renew the minstrel strain.
Black Messengers (Translation of Los Heraldos Negros)
© Cesar Vallejo
There are in life such hard blows . . . I don't know!
Blows seemingly from God's wrath; as if before them
the undertow of all our sufferings
is embedded in our souls . . . I don't know!
Joys of Spring
© Kristijonas Donelaitis
The climbing sun again was wakening the world
And laughing at the wreck of frigid winter's trade.
Sonnet XXIII. Beethovens Fifth Symphony.
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
THE mind's deep history here in tones is wrought,
The faith, the struggles of the aspiring soul,
The confidence of youth, the chill control
Of manhood's doubts by stern experience taught;
The Bagman's Dog: Mr. Peters's Story
© Richard Harris Barham
It was a litter, a litter of five,
Four are drown'd and one left alive,
He was thought worthy alone to survive;
And the Bagman resolved upon bringing him up,
To eat of his bread, and to drink of his cup,
He was such a dear little cock-tail'd pup.
Phi Beta Kappa Poem
© Bliss William Carman
Harvard, 1914
SIR, friends, and scholars, we are here to serve
A high occasion. Our New England wears
All her unrivalled beauty as of old;
Coombe-Ellen
© William Lisle Bowles
Call the strange spirit that abides unseen
In wilds, and wastes, and shaggy solitudes,
1946-47
© Jibanananda Das
Thousands of Bengali villages, silent and powerless, sink into
hopelessness and lightlessness.
When the sun sets, a certain lovely haired darkness
Comes to fix her hair in-a bun-but by whose hands?
The Brothers
© Richard Monckton Milnes
'Tis true, that we can sometimes speak of Death,
Even of the Deaths of those we love the best,
Without dismay or terror; we can sit
In serious calm beneath deciduous trees,
My Son the Man by Sharon Olds: American Life in Poetry #70 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
As a man I'll never gain the wisdom Sharon Olds expresses in this poem about motherhood, but one of the reasons poetry is essential is that it can take us so far into someone else's experience that we feel it's our own.
My Son the Man
An Essay On The Different Stiles Of Poetry
© Thomas Parnell
I hate the Vulgar with untuneful Mind,
Hearts uninspir'd, and Senses unrefin'd.
Hence ye Prophane, I raise the sounding String,
And Bolingbroke descends to hear me sing.
Naucratia; Or Naval Dominion. Part I
© Henry James Pye
By love of opulence and science led,
Now Commerce wide her peaceful empire spread,
And seas, obedient to the pilot's art,
But join'd the regions which they seem'd to part;
Free intercourse disarm'd the barbarous mind,
Tam'd savage hate, and humaniz'd mankind.
My thankfull heart with glorying Tongue
© Anne Bradstreet
My thankfull heart with glorying Tongue
Shall celebrate thy Name,
Don Juan: Canto The Third
© George Gordon Byron
The isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.
OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII (Entire)
© Alfred Tennyson
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.