Future poems
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Weep
© George Moses Horton
Weep for the country in its present state,
And of the gloom which still the future waits;
The proud confederate eagle heard the sound,
And with her flight fell prostrate to the ground!
Beowulf
© Charles Baudelaire
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
The Rope-Maker
© Emile Verhaeren
Of old--as one in sleep, life, errant, strayed
Its wondrous morns and fabled evenings through;
When God's right hand toward far Canaan's blue
Traced golden paths, deep in the twilight shade.
Sonnets from The River Duddon: After-Thought
© André Breton
I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
Who Understands Me but Me
© James Russell Lowell
They turn the water off, so I live without water,
they build walls higher, so I live without treetops,
Immigrants in Our Own Land
© James Russell Lowell
We are born with dreams in our hearts,
looking for better days ahead.
The Dream
© Caroline Norton
Ah! bless'd are they for whom 'mid all their pains
That faithful and unalter'd love remains;
Who, Life wreck'd round them,--hunted from their rest,--
And, by all else forsaken or distress'd,--
Claim, in one heart, their sanctuary and shrine--
As I, my Mother, claim'd my place in thine!
The Dream of Freedom
© Owen Suffolk
'Twas night, and the moonbeams palely fell
On the gloomy walls of a cheerless cell,
Torment
© Daisy Fried
“I fucked up bad”: Justin cracks his neck,
talking to nobody. Fifteen responsible children,
Tristram And Iseult
© Matthew Arnold
Tristram. Is she not come? The messenger was sure
Prop me upon the pillows once again
Raise me, my page! this cannot long endure.
Christ, what a night! how the sleet whips the pane!
What lights will those out to the northward be?
Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain
© Louis Simpson
. . . life which does not give the preference to any other life, of any
previous period, which therefore prefers its own existence . . .
Ortega y Gasset
The Doubt of Future Foes
© Queen Elizabeth I
The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,
And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy;
The Troubadour. Canto 1
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
There is a light step passing by
Like the distant sound of music's sigh;
It is that fair and gentle child,
Whose sweetness has so oft beguiled,
Like sunlight on a stormy day,
His almost sullenness away.
Pentatina for Five Vowels
© Louis Zukofsky
Today is a trumpet to set the hounds baying.
The past is a fox the hunters are flaying.
Nothing unspoken goes without saying.
Love’s a casino where lovers risk playing.
The future’s a marker our hearts are prepaying.
Song #12.
© Robert Crawford
I have brought thee all the faith
That a man can give,
I have sheltered thee with love,
O life's fugitive!
To The Lady Elizabeth Harley, Since Marchioness Of Carmarthen, On A Column Of Her Drawing
© Matthew Prior
When future ages shall with wonder view
These glorious lines which Harley's daughter drew,
They shall confess that Britain could not raise
A fairer column to the father's praise.
If? See No End In Is
© Frank Bidart
What none knows is when, not if.
Now that your life nears its end
when you turn back what you see
is ruin. You think, It is a prison. No,
it is a vast resonating chamber in
which each thing you say or do is
I Am an Atheist Who Says His Prayers
© Ishmael Reed
I am an atheist who says his prayers.
I am an anarchist, and a full professor at that. I take the loyalty oath.
