Freedom poems
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In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII [all 133 poems]
© Alfred Tennyson
[Preface] Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace,Believing where we cannot prove;
Gitanjali 35
© Rabindranath Tagore
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;Where knowledge is free;Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;Where words come out from the depth of truth;Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action --Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
The Girl from Zlot
© Stallworthy Jon
Four gray walls, and four gray towers Overlook a space of flowers,And the silent isle embowers The Lady of Shalott.
Shakespeare's Sonnets: Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war
© William Shakespeare
Mine eye and heart are at a mortal warHow to divide the conquest of thy sight
A Song of Renunciation
© Seaman Owen
In the days of my season of salad, When the down was as dew on my cheek,And for French I was bred on the ballad, For Greek on the writers of Greek,--Then I sang of the rose that is ruddy, Of "pleasure that winces and stings,"Of white women and wine that is bloody, And similar things
Lest We Forget
© Scott Francis Reginald
The British troops at the DardanellesWere blown to bits by British shells
A Prayer for Yeats's Son
© Rowley Rosemarie
Once more the mob is howling and half hidUnder the cupola of the dustbin lidMy child screams on: there is no obstacleSave Paul's edict and the seven bare hillsWhereby the television, and unrestBred in the church for centuries, can be stayedAnd for an hour I have walked and prayedBecause there is no room for my kind
Flight into Reality
© Rowley Rosemarie
Dedicated to the memory of my best friend Georgina, (1942-74)and to her husband Alex Burns and their childrenNulles laides amours ne belles prison -Lord Herbert of Cherbury
Ave! (An Ode for the Shelley Centenary, 1892)
© Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
I Wide marshes ever washed in clearest air,Whether beneath the sole and spectral star The dear severity of dawn you wear,Or whether in the joy of ample day And speechless ecstasy of growing JuneYou lie and dream the long blue hours away Till nightfall comes too soon,Or whether, naked to the unstarred night,You strike with wondering awe my inward sight, --
II Go forth to you with longing, though the yearsThat turn not back like your returning streams And fain would mist the memory with tears,Though the inexorable years deny My feet the fellowship of your deep grass,O'er which, as o'er another, tenderer sky, Cloud phantoms drift and pass, --You know my confident love, since first, a child,Amid your wastes of green I wandered wild
White Flock
© Anna Akhmatova
Copyright Anna Akhmatova
Copyright English translation by Ilya Shambat (ilya_shambat@yahoo.com)
Origin: http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat/akhmatova.html
Squirrel
© Reibetanz John
All around him November rainhisses like a thousand snakes -- around himand on him and almost through him untilhe is little more than a knotted skeinof sodden hair.
A Satire, in Imitation of the Third of Juvenal
© John Oldham
Though much concern'd to leave my dear old friend,I must however his design commendOf fixing in the country: for were IAs free to choose my residence, as he;The Peak, the Fens, the Hundreds, or Land's End,I would prefer to Fleet Street, or the Strand
Song for a Fishing Party near Burlington, on the Delaware, in 1776
© Odell Jonathan
How sweet is the season, the sky how serene;On Delaware's banks how delightful the scene;The Prince of the Rivers, his waves all asleep,In silence majestic glides on to the Deep.
Ode for the New Year
© Odell Jonathan
When rival Nations first descried,Emerging from the boundless MainThis Land by Tyrants yet untried,On high was sung this lofty strain:Rise Britannia beaming far!Rise bright Freedom's morning star!
Living
© O'Reilly John Boyle
To toil all day and lie worn-out at night;To rise for all the years to slave and sleep,And breed new broods to do no other thingIn toiling, bearing, breeding -- life is thisTo myriad men, too base for man or brute
The Sailing of the Long-ships
© Newbolt Henry John
They saw the cables loosened, they saw the gangways cleared,They heard the women weeping, they heard the men that cheered;Far off, far off, the tumult faded and died away,And all alone the sea-wind came singing up the Bay
Sonnet XII: I did but Prompt the Age to Quit their Clogs
© John Milton
I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs By the known rules of ancient liberty, When straight a barbarous noise environs me Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes and dogs:As when those hinds that were transform'd to frogs Rail'd at Latona's twin-born progeny Which after held the sun and moon in fee
Paradise Regain'd: Book III (1671)
© John Milton
SO spake the Son of God, and Satan stoodA while as mute confounded what to say,What to reply, confuted and convinc'tOf his weak arguing, and fallacious drift;At length collecting all his Serpent wiles,With soothing words renew'd, him thus accosts
