Experience poems
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Paracelsus: Part II: Paracelsus Attains
© Robert Browning
Ay, my brave chronicler, and this same hour
As well as any: now, let my time be!
Envoy
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Clear was the night: the moon was young:
The larkspurs in the plots
Mingled their orange with the gold
Of the forget-me-nots.
Squire Hawkins's Story
© James Whitcomb Riley
He sized it all; and Patience laid
Her hand in John's, and looked afraid,
And waited. And a stiller set
O' folks, I KNOW, you never met
In any court room, where with dread
They wait to hear a verdick read.
Dead Butterfly by Ellen Bass: American Life in Poetry #164 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Was it the year her brother was born?
Was this her own too-fragile baby
that had livedâso brieflyâin its glassed world?
Or the year she refused to go to her father's house?
Was this the holding-her-breath girl she became there?
Posthumous Fame
© Kostas Karyotakis
Our death is needed by the boundless nature all around
and is craved by the purple mouths of flowers.
If Spring were again to come, it will again leave us,
and then we shall not even be shadows of other shadows.
The Art Of War. Book III.
© Henry James Pye
Your footsteps now the arsenals have trod
Where lie the treasures of the warrior God;
Yet 'midst his ranks to serve is little fame,
Little avails the soldier's ardent flame,
Unless to all the heights of art you climb,
And reach of martial skill the true sublime.
PARADOX. That it is best for a Young Maid to marry an Old Man
© Henry King
Fair one, why cannot you an old man love?
He may as useful, and more constant prove.
Experience shews you that maturer years
Are a security against those fears
The Child Of The Islands - Opening
© Caroline Norton
I.
OF all the joys that brighten suffering earth,
What joy is welcomed like a new-born child?
What life so wretched, but that, at its birth,
The Columbiad: Book IX
© Joel Barlow
Shrouded in deeper darkness now he veers
The vast gyration of a thousand years,
Strikes out each lamp that would illume his way,
Disputes his food with every beast of prey;
Imbands his force to fence his trist abodes,
A wretched robber with his feudal codes.
Hope, An Allegorical Sketch
© William Lisle Bowles
I am the comforter of them that mourn;
My scenes well shadowed, and my carol sweet,
To Vittoria Colonna. (Sonnet V.)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Lady, how can it chance--yet this we see
In long experience--that will longer last
The Eighth Olympic Ode Of Pindar
© Henry James Pye
To Alcimedon, on his Olympic Victory; Timosthenes, on his Nemean Victory; and Melesias, their Preceptor. ARGUMENT. Though this is called an Olympic Ode, the Poet does not confine himself to Alcimedon, who won the Prize in those Games, but celebrates his Brother Timosthenes, for his success at Nemea, and Melesias, their Instructor. The Ode opens with an invocation to the place where the Games were held. Pindar then, after praising Timosthenes for his early victory in the Nemean Games, mentions Alcimedon, and extols him for his dexterity and strength, his beauty, and his country Ægina; which he celebrates for it's hospitality, and for it's being under the government of the Dorians after the death of Æacus; on whom he has a long digression, giving an account of his assisting the Gods in the building of Troy. Then returning to his subject, he mentions Melesias as skilled himself in the Athletic Exercises, and therefore proper to instruct others; and, enumerating his Triumphs, congratulates him on the success of his Pupil Alcimedon; which, he says, will not only give satisfaction to his living Relations, but will delight the Ghosts of those deceased. The Poet then concludes with a wish for the prosperity of him and his family.
STROPHE I.
"Behold! I am not one that goes to Lectures "
© Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
Behold! I am not one that goes to Lectures or the pow-wow of
Professors.
The elementary laws never apologise: neither do I apologise.
I find letters from the Dean dropt on my tableand every one is
To----
© James Russell Lowell
We, too, have autumns, when our leaves
Drop loosely through the dampened air,
When all our good seems bound in sheaves,
And we stand reaped and bare.
The Task: Book V. -- The Winter Morning Walk
© William Cowper
Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires the horizon; while the clouds,
What Calls Us by David Bengtson: American Life in Poetry #42 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
Here is a poem by David Bengtson, a Minnesotan, about the simple pleasure of walking through deep snow to the mailbox to see what's arrived. But, of course, the pleasure is not only in picking up the mail with its surprises, but in the complete experience—being fully alive to the clean cold air and the sound of the wind around the mailbox door.
Thirty Years After
© Robert Fuller Murray
Two old St. Andrews men, after a separation of nearly thirty years, meet by chance at a wayside inn. They interchange experiences; and at length one of them, who is an admirer of Mr. Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, speaks as follows:
If you were now a bejant,
And I a first year man,
We'd grind and grub together
The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part II: To Juliet: XLVIII
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
THE SAME CONTINUED
I think there never was a dearer woman,
A better, kinder, truer than you were,
A gentler spirit more divinely human
The Wisdom Of Eld
© George Meredith
We spend our lives in learning pilotage,
And grow good steersmen when the vessel's crank!
