Fear poems
/ page 242 of 454 /Yom Kippur 1984
© Adrienne Rich
I drew solitude over me, on the long shore.
—Robinson Jeffers, “Prelude”
For whoever does not afflict his soul through this day, shall be
cut off from his people.
Love's Nocturn
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Master of the murmuring courts
Where the shapes of sleep convene!—
Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Think not this paper comes with vain pretense
To move your pity, or to mourn th offense.
The Sorcerer: Act I
© William Schwenck Gilbert
For to-day young Alexis-young Alexis Pointdextre
Is betrothed to Aline-to Aline Sangazure,
And that pride of his sex is-of his sex is to be next her
At the feast on the green-on the green, oh, be sure!
Love Sonnet LVIII
© Zora Bernice May Cross
As midnight drinks a message from the moon
And morning takes her orders from the sun,
So let our bodies to our souls submit
And live for ever in their still high-noon,
Where morn and midnight gather into one,
And only angels on their missions flit.
The Test of Fantasy
© Joanne Kyger
It unfolds and ripples like a banner, downward. All the stories
come folding out. The smells and flowers begin to come back, as
the tapestry is brightly colored and brocaded. Rabbits and violets.
Influence of Natural Objects in Calling Forth and Strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth
© André Breton
Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
To The Belgians
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Yet when the challenge rang,
" The War-Lord comes ; give room ! "
Fearless to arms you sprang
Against the odds of doom.
Beneath A Photoraph
© Francis Thompson
Phoebus, who taught me art divine,
Here tried his hand where I did mine;
Innocence
© Thomas Traherne
But that which most I wonder at, which most
I did esteem my bliss, which most I boast,
And ever shall enjoy, is that within
I felt no stain, nor spot of sin.
Bird Parliament (translation of)
© Edward Fitzgerald
And first, with Heart so full as from his Eyes
Ran weeping, up rose Tajidar the Wise;
The mystic Mark upon whose Bosom show'd
That He alone of all the Birds THE ROAD
Had travell'd: and the Crown upon his Head
Had reach'd the Goal; and He stood forth and said:
Mother Night
© James Weldon Johnson
So when my feeble sun of life burns out,
And sounded is the hour for my long sleep,
I shall, full weary of the feverish light,
Welcome the darkness without fear or doubt,
And heavy-lidded, I shall softly creep
Into the quiet bosom of the Night.
November Cotton Flower
© Jean Toomer
Boll-weevil’s coming, and the winter’s cold,
Made cotton-stalks look rusty, seasons old,
The Bear Hunt
© Abraham Lincoln
A wild-bear chace, didst never see?
Then hast thou lived in vain.
Thy richest bump of glorious glee,
Lies desert in thy brain.
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.
Eliza Harris
© Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Like a fawn from the arrow, startled and wild,
A woman swept by us, bearing a child;
In her eye was the night of a settled despair,
And her brow was o’ershaded with anguish and care.
Pictures From Theocritus
© William Lisle Bowles
Goat-herd, how sweet above the lucid spring
The high pines wave with breezy murmuring!
So sweet thy song, whose music might succeed
To the wild melodies of Pan's own reed.
The Canon Of Aughrim
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
You ask me of English honour, whether your Nation is just?
Justice for us is a word divine, a name we revere,
Alas, no more than a name, a thing laid by in the dust.
The world shall know it again, but not in this month or year.
The Prime of Life
© Henry Lawson
OH, the strength of the toil of those twenty years, with father, and master, and men!
And the clearer brain of the business man, who has held his own for ten:
Oh, the glorious freedom from business fears, and the rest from domestic strife!
The past is dead, and the future assured, and Im in the prime of life!