Experience poems
/ page 30 of 36 /Festina Lente
© James Russell Lowell
But vain was all their hoarsest bass,
Their old experience out of place,
And spite of croaking and entreating,
The vote was carried in marsh-meeting.
Upon His Majesty's Happy Return
© Edmund Waller
The rising sun complies with our weak sight,
First gilds the clouds, then shows his globe of light
At such a distance from our eyes, as though
He knew what harm his hasty beams would do.
On The Death Of A Friend's Child
© James Russell Lowell
Death never came so nigh to me before,
Nor showed me his mild face: oft had I mused
Little Lucy Landman
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Oh, the day has set me dreaming
In a strange, half solemn way
"Daddy" Warbucks
© Anne Sexton
In MemoriamWhat's missing is the eyeballs
in each of us, but it doesn't matter
because you've got the bucks, the bucks, the bucks.
You let me touch them, fondle the green faces
The Granny Grey, a Love Tale
© Mary Darby Robinson
The DAME was silent; for the Lover
Would, when she spoke,
She fear'd, discover
Her envious joke:
And she was too much charm'd to be
In haste,--to end the Comedy!
A Humble Appeal
© Jessie Pope
SHE was a pretty, nicely mannered mare,
The children's pet, the master's pride and care,
Until a man in khaki came one day,
Looked at her teeth, and hurried her away.
The Scholar Gypsy
© Matthew Arnold
But, 'mid their drink and clatter, he would fly.
And I myself seem half to know thy looks,
And put the shepherds, wanderer! on thy trace;
And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks
I ask if thou hast passed their quiet place;
Boris Godunov
© Alexander Pushkin
Boyars, The People, Inspectors, Officers, Attendants, Guests,
a Boy in attendance on Prince Shuisky, a Catholic Priest, a
Polish Noble, a Poet, an Idiot, a Beggar, Gentlemen, Peasants,
Guards, Russian, Polish, and German Soldiers, a Russian
Prisoner of War, Boys, an old Woman, Ladies, Serving-women.
Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine
© Hilaire Belloc
But since I would not, since I could not stay,
Let me remember even in this my day
How, when the ephemeral vision's lure is past
All, all, must face their Passion at the last
L'Envoy of Chaucer to Bukton
© Geoffrey Chaucer
My Master Bukton, when of Christ our King
Was asked, What is truth or soothfastness?
The Borough. Letter VII: Professions--Physic
© George Crabbe
power;"
"I fear to die;"--"Let not your spirits sink,
You're always safe, while you believe and drink."
How strange to add, in this nefarious trade,
That men of parts are dupes by dunces made:
That creatures, nature meant should clean our
Faringdon Hill. Book I
© Henry James Pye
What various objects scatter'd round us lie,
And charm on every side the curious eye!
Amidst such ample stores, how shall the Muse
Know where to turn her sight, and which to choose?
The Deepest Sensuality
© David Herbert Lawrence
The profoundest of all sensualities
is the sense of truth
and the next deepest sensual experience
is the sense of justice.
Thought
© David Herbert Lawrence
Thought, I love thought.
But not the juggling and twisting of already existent ideas
I despise that self-important game.
Thought is the welling up of unknown life into consciousness,
Beautiful Old Age
© David Herbert Lawrence
It ought to be lovely to be old
to be full of the peace that comes of experience
and wrinkled ripe fulfilment.
Invitation To The Redbreast
© William Cowper
Sweet bird, whom the winter constrains--
And seldom another it can--
Silence
© Edgar Lee Masters
I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence of the sick