Good poems

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Life Is A Dream - Act III

© Denis Florence MacCarthy

FIRST SOLDIER [within]. He is here within this tower.
Dash the door from off its hinges;
Enter all

I drink the gall of skies in autumn, tuberoses'
Sweet bitterness in your betrayals burning stream;
I drink the gall of nights, of crowded parties' noises,
Of sobbing virgin verse, and of a throbbing dream.

After A Parting

© Alice Meynell

Farewell has long been said; I have forgone thee;
I never name thee even.
But how shall I learn virtues and yet shun thee?
For thou art so near Heaven
That Heavenward meditations pause upon thee.

I've Seen Again The One Child

© Paul Verlaine

I've seen again the One child: verily,
I felt the last wound open in my breast,
The last, whose perfect torture doth attest
That on some happy day I too shall die!

A Small Moment by Cornelius Eady: American Life in Poetry #197 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2

© Ted Kooser

I suspect that one thing some people have against reading poems is that they are so often so serious, so devoid of joy, as if we poets spend all our time brooding about mutability and death and never having any fun. Here Cornelius Eady, who lives and teaches in Indiana, offers us a poem of pure pleasure.

Ballad of Reading Gaol - I

© Oscar Wilde

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

To Mistress Isabell Pennell

© John Skelton

By saint Mary, my lady,

Your mammy and your daddy

Leavetaking

© Ibn Jakh

On the morning they left
we said goodbye
filled with sadness
for the absence to come.

The Wind(Four fragments concerning Blok)

© Boris Pasternak

1

Wholl be honoured and praised,

Conscience And Remorse

© Paul Laurence Dunbar

"GOOD-BYE," I said to my conscience

"Good-bye for aye and aye,"

Masnawi

© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

In the prologue to the Masnavi Rumi hailed Love and its sweet madness that heals all infirmities, and he exhorted the reader to burst the bonds to silver and gold to be free. The Beloved is all in all and is only veiled by the lover. Rumi identified the first cause of all things as God and considered all second causes subordinate to that. Human minds recognize the second causes, but only prophets perceive the action of the first cause. One story tells of a clever rabbit who warned the lion about another lion and showed the lion his own image in a well, causing him to attack it and drown. After delivering his companions from the tyrannical lion, the rabbit urges them to engage in the more difficult warfare against their own inward lusts. In a debate between trusting God and human exertion, Rumi quoted the prophet Muhammad as saying, "Trust in God, yet tie the camel's leg."8 He also mentioned the adage that the worker is the friend of God; so in trusting in providence one need not neglect to use means. Exerting oneself can be giving thanks for God's blessings; but he asked if fatalism shows gratitude.

God is hidden and has no opposite, not seen by us yet seeing us. Form is born of the formless but ultimately returns to the formless. An arrow shot by God cannot remain in the air but must return to God. Rumi reconciled God's agency with human free will and found the divine voice in the inward voice. Those in close communion with God are free, but the one who does not love is fettered by compulsion. God is the agency and first cause of our actions, but human will as the second cause finds recompense in hell or with the Friend. God is like the soul, and the world is like the body. The good and evil of bodies comes from souls. When the sanctuary of true prayer is revealed to one, it is shameful to turn back to mere formal religion. Rumi confirmed Muhammad's view that women hold dominion over the wise and men of heart; but violent fools, lacking tenderness, gentleness, and friendship, try to hold the upper hand over women, because they are swayed by their animal nature. The human qualities of love and tenderness can control the animal passions. Rumi concluded that woman is a ray of God and the Creator's self.

In The Days Of Crinoline

© Thomas Hardy

A plain tilt-bonnet on her head
She took the path across the leaze.
- Her spouse the vicar, gardening, said,
'Too dowdy that, for coquetries,
So I can hoe at ease.'

A Lancashire Doxology

"PRAISE God from whom all blessings flow."

Praise Him who sendeth joy and woe.

The Starling

Ah starling! Most welcome, you bird of good cheer!

Are we to have all your pranks again here?

Cromwell

This too remember well
I learned it late: None but a tyrant makes
That good prevail that is not in men's hearts,
And tyranny is questionable good.
Therefore must all men learn by liberty,
And with what pain their doings on them bring.

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: A Satire

These are the themes that claim our plaudits now;
These are the bards to whom the muse must bow;
While Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot,
Resign their hallow'd bays to Walter Scott.