Fear poems
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How The Cat Was Belled
© Carolyn Wells
The poor rats were at their wits' end
Their homes and families to defend;
And as a last resort
They took the case to court.
Ode to Borrowdale
© Amelia Opie
Hail , Derwent's beauteous pride!
Whose charms rough rocks in threatening grandeur guard,
Whose entrance seems to mortals barred,
But to the Genius of the storm thrown wide.
Wolf Knife
© Donald Hall
In the mid August, in the second year
of my First Polar Expedition, the snow and ice of winter
almost upon us, Kantiuk and I
attempted to dash the sledge
The Wanderer: A Vision: Canto I
© Richard Savage
The solar fires now faint and wat'ry burn,
Just where with ice Aquarius frets his urn!
If thaw'd, forth issue, from its mouth severe,
Raw clouds, that sadden all th' inverted year.
Hudibras: Part 2 - Canto III
© Samuel Butler
Doubtless the pleasure is as great
Of being cheated as to cheat;
As lookers-on feel most delight,
That least perceive a jugler's slight;
And still the less they understand,
The more th' admire his slight of hand.
The Sea-Child
© Eliza Cook
HE crawls to the cliff and plays on a brink
Where every eye but his own would shrink;
No music he hears but the billows noise,
And shells and weeds are his only toys.
The Waggoner - Canto Fourth
© William Wordsworth
THUS they, with freaks of proud delight,
Beguile the remnant of the night;
And many a snatch of jovial song
Regales them as they wind along;
Visions for the Entertainment and Instruction of Younger Minds: Happiness
© Nathaniel Cotton
Ye ductile youths, whose rising sun
Hath many circles still to run;
December 27, 1879
© George MacDonald
Every time would have its song
If the heart were right,
Seeing Love all tender-strong
Fills the day and night.
"Cease smilng, Dear! a little while be sad "
© Ernest Christopher Dowson
Cease smiling, Dear! a little while be sad,
Here in the silence, under the wan moon;
Sweet are thine eyes, but how can I be glad,
Knowing they change so soon?
Gentleness Stirred
© Nimah Nawwab
Hey, you there! thunders across the parking lot
You with the black boots the tone is raised
Oh, oh, reluctantly she turns,
Fear stirs,
Flinching,
Watches wrath unleashed.
Objector
© William Stafford
I bow and cross my fork and spoon: somewhere
other citizens more fearfully bow
in a place terrorized by their kind of oppressive state.
Our signs both mean, "You hostages over there
will never be slaughtered by my act." Our vows
cross: never to kill and call it fate.
For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid
© William Stafford
There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot--air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
The Yukon
© Joaquin Miller
THE moon resumed all heaven now,
She shepherded the stars below
Along her wide, white steeps of snow,
Nor stooped nor rested, where or how.
How Fear Came
© Rudyard Kipling
The stream is shrunk-the pool is dry,
And we be comrades, thou and I;
Book Sixth [Cambridge and the Alps]
© William Wordsworth
A passing word erewhile did lightly touch
On wanderings of my own, that now embraced
With livelier hope a region wider far.
Fifth Amendment
© David Lehman
The fear of perjuring herself turned into a tacit
Admission of her guilt. Yet she had the skill
And the luck to elude her implacable pursuers.
God was everywhere like a faceless guard in a gallery.
To Mrs. Norton
© Frances Anne Kemble
I never shall forget thee'tis a word
Thou oft nust hear, for surely there be none
Paradise Lost : Book XII.
© John Milton
As one who in his journey bates at noon,
Though bent on speed; so here the Arch-Angel paused
Elegy I
© Henry James Pye
O Happiness! thou wish of every mind,
Whose form, more subtle than the fleeting air,
