Experience poems
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How Good Fortune Surprises Us by Jackson Wheeler: American Life in Poetry #144 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet
© Ted Kooser
I'd guess you've heard it said that the reason we laugh when somebody slips on a banana peel is that we're happy that it didn't happen to us. That kind of happiness may be shameful, but many of us have known it. In the following poem, the California poet, Jackson Wheeler, tells us of a similar experience.
How Good Fortune Surprises Us
I was hauling freight
out of the Carolinas
up to the Cumberland Plateau
when, in Tennessee, I saw
from the freeway, at 2 am
a house ablaze.
A New Year's Morning Song
© Anna Laetitia Waring
Thanksgiving and the voice of melody,
This new year's morning, call me from my sleep;
The Little Old Lady In Lavender Silk
© Dorothy Parker
I was seventy-seven, come August,
I shall shortly be losing my bloom;
I've experienced zephyr and raw gust
And (symbolical) flood and simoom.
Old Woman in a Housecoat by Georgiana Cohen: American Life in Poetry #14 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laure
© Ted Kooser
Often everyday experiences provide poets with inspiration. Here Georgiana Cohen observes a woman looking out her window and compares the woman to the sunset. The woman's "slumped" chin, the fence that separates them, and the "beached" cars set the poem's tone; this is clearly not a celebration of the neighborhood. Yet by turning to clouds, sky, and breath, Cohen underscores the scene's fragile grace.
Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D.
© Jonathan Swift
Dear honest Ned is in the gout,
Lies rack'd with pain, and you without:
How patiently you hear him groan!
How glad the case is not your own!
Book Ninth [Residence in France]
© William Wordsworth
EVEN as a river,--partly (it might seem)
Yielding to old remembrances, and swayed
The Progress Of Refinement. Part I.
© Henry James Pye
Rous'd by those honors cull'd by Glory's hand
To dress the Victor on the Olympic sand,
With active toil each ardent stripling tries
To bind his forehead with the immortal prize;
Hence strength and beauty deck the Grecian race,
And manly labor gives them manly grace.
Tale VII
© George Crabbe
view,
A useful lass,--you may have more to do."
Dreadful were these commands; but worse than
Reflections
© George Crabbe
Beware then, Age, that what was won,
If life's past labours, studies, views,
Be lost not, now the labour's done,
When all thy part is,--not to lose:
When thou canst toil or gain no more,
Destroy not what was gain'd before.
Content, To My Dearest Lucasia
© Katherine Philips
Content, the false World's best disguise,
The search and faction of the Wise,
Is so abstruse and hid in night,
That, like that Fairy Red-cross Knight,
Who trech'rous Falshood for clear Truth had got,
Men think they have it when they have it not.
A Familiar Epistle To A Friend
© James Russell Lowell
Yes, this _is_ life! And so the bard
Through briny deserts, never scarred
Since Noah's keel, a subject seeks,
And lies upon the watch for weeks;
That once harpooned and helpless lying,
What follows is but weary trying.
Woodmanship
© George Gascoigne
My worthy Lord, I pray you wonder not
To see your woodman shoot so oft awry,
The Contented Man's Morice
© George Wither
False world, thy malice I espie
With what thou hast designed;
And therein with thee to comply,
Who likewise are combined:
But, do thy worst, I thee defie,
Thy mischiefs are confined.
Tale XIII
© George Crabbe
hall,
Sires, sons, and sons of sons, were buried all,
She then abounded, and had wealth to spare
For softening grief she once was doom'd to share;
Thus train'd in misery's school, and taught to
Madame Of Dreams
© William Stanley Braithwaite
To John Russell Hayes
KNOW a household made of pure delight,
Within and Without: Part III: A Dramatic Poem
© George MacDonald
SCENE I.-Night. London. A large meanly furnished room; a single
candle on the table; a child asleep in a little crib. JULIAN
sits by the table, reading in a low voice out of a book. He looks
older, and his hair is lined with grey; his eyes look clearer.
The Dunciad: Book IV
© Alexander Pope
She mounts the throne: her head a cloud conceal'd,
In broad effulgence all below reveal'd;
('Tis thus aspiring Dulness ever shines)
Soft on her lap her laureate son reclines.
An Ode For The Fourth Of July
© James Russell Lowell
Entranced I saw a vision in the cloud
That loitered dreaming in yon sunset sky,
The Four Ages. A Brief Fragment Of An Extensive Projected Poem
© William Cowper
"I could be well content, allowed the use
Of past experience, and the wisdom gleaned
From worn-out follies, now acknowledged such,
To recommence life's trial, in the hope
