Fear poems
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To A Young Gentleman In Love. A Tale
© Matthew Prior
From publick Noise and factious Strife,
From all the busie Ills of Life,
Schemhammphorasch
© Rose Terry Cooke
‘This is the key which was given by the angel Michael to Pali, and by Pali to Moses. If “thou canst read it, then shalt thou understand the words of men, … the whistling of birds, the language of date-trees, the unity of hearts, ... nay, even the thoughts of the rains.”’
Gleanings after the Talmud
My mother’s body
© Marge Piercy
The dark socket of the year
the pit, the cave where the sun lies down
and threatens never to rise,
when despair descends softly as the snow
covering all paths and choking roads:
Eclogue 4: Pollio
© Publius Vergilius Maro
Muses of Sicily, essay we now
A somewhat loftier task! Not all men love
Coppice or lowly tamarisk: sing we woods,
Woods worthy of a Consul let them be.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
© Edwin Muir
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
To Sir George Howland Beaumont, Bart From the South-West Coast Or Cumberland 1811
© William Wordsworth
FAR from our home by Grasmere's quiet Lake,
From the Vale's peace which all her fields partake,
Here on the bleakest point of Cumbria's shore
We sojourn stunned by Ocean's ceaseless roar;
The Pet-Lamb
© William Wordsworth
THE dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink;
I heard a voice; it said, "Drink, pretty creature, drink!"
And, looking o'er the hedge, before me I espied
A snow-white mountain-lamb with a Maiden at its side.
Birth Story -- English Translation
© Rabindranath Tagore
The kid asks his mum,
From where did I come,
To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship
© Katherine Philips
I did not live until this time
Crowned my felicity,
When I could say without a crime,
I am not thine, but thee.
Our Casuarina Tree
© Toru Dutt
LIKE a huge Python, winding round and round
The rugged trunk, indented deep with scars,
Mortal Enemy
© Dorothy Parker
Let another cross his way-
She's the one will do the weeping!
Little need I fear he'll stray
Since I have his heart in keeping-
Interrupted Meditation
© Robert Hass
Little green involute fronds of fern at creekside.
And the sinewy clear water rushing over creekstone
The Affliction (I)
© George Herbert
When first thou didst entice to thee my heart,
I thought the service brave;
So many joys I writ down for my part,
Besides what I might have
Out of my stock of natural delights,
Augmented with thy gracious benefits.
The Mariner's Cave
© Jean Ingelow
Once on a time there walked a mariner,
That had been shipwrecked;-on a lonely shore,
And the green water made a restless stir,
And a great flock of mews sped on before.
He had nor food nor shelter, for the tide
Rose on the one, and cliffs on the other side.
The Magyar's New-Year-Eve
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
By Temèsvar I hear the clarions call:
The year dies. Let it die. It lived in vain.
Gun booms to gun along the looming wall,
Another year advances o'er the plain.
The Despot hails it from his bannered keep:
Ah, Tyrant, is it well to break a bondsman's sleep?
An Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland, Considered as the Subject of Poetry
© William Taylor Collins
Home, thou return'st from Thames, whose Naiads long
Have seen thee ling'ring, with a fond delay,
from The Shepheardes Calender: April
© Edmund Spenser
THENOT & HOBBINOLL
Tell me good Hobbinoll, what garres thee greete?
What? hath some Wolfe thy tender Lambes ytorne?
Or is thy Bagpype broke, that soundes so sweete?
Or art thou of thy loved lasse forlorne?
Though I Am Young and Cannot Tell
© Benjamin Jonson
Though I am young, and cannot tell
Either what Death or Love is well,
