Good poems
/ page 177 of 545 /Fishing Song: To J.A. Froude and Tom Hughes
© Charles Kingsley
Oh, Mr. Froude, how wise and good,
To point us out this way to glory-
They're no great shakes, those Snowdon Lakes,
And all their pounders myth and story.
Blow Snowdon! What's Lake Gwynant to Killarney,
Or spluttering Welsh to tender blarney, blarney, blarney?
Fit The Second - The Bellman's Speech
© Lewis Carroll
"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
"They are merely conventional signs!
To His Royal Highness The Prince Of Wales
© James Thomson
While secret-leaguing nations frown around,
Ready to pour the long-expected storm;
While she, who wont the restless Gaul to bound,
Britannia, drooping, grows an empty form;
While on our vitals selfish parties prey,
And deep corruption eats our soul away;
Andrew Rykmans Prayer
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Andrew Rykman's dead and gone;
You can see his leaning slate
In the graveyard, and thereon
Read his name and date.
To The Queen Of England
© Edith Nesbit
COME forth! the world's aflame with flags and flowers,
The shout of bells fills full the shattered air,
Sonnet 10
© Richard Barnfield
Thus was my loue, thus was my Ganymed,
(Heauens ioy, worlds wonder, natures fairest work,
An Attempt To Remember The "Grandmother's Apology"
© Horace Smith
And Willie, my eldest born, is gone, you say, little Anne,
Ruddy and white, and strong on his legs, he looks like a man;
He was only fourscore years, quite young, when he died;
I ought to have gone before, but must wait for time and tide.
To An Infant
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
To anger rapid and as soon appeased,
For trifles mourning and by trifles pleased;
Break friendship's mirror with a tetchy blow,
Yet snatch what coals of fire on pleasure's altar glow!
Face To Face
© Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
Oh, face to face with trouble,
friend, I have often stood,
Henry The Hermit
© Robert Southey
It was a little island where he dwelt,
Or rather a lone rock, barren and bleak,
Little Bateese
© William Henry Drummond
Off on de fiel' you foller de plough
Den w'en you're tire you scare de cow
Sickin' de dog till dey jomp de wall
So de milk ain't good for not'ing at all-
An' you're only five an' a half dis fall,
Leetle Bateese!
Epistle (to the author of The Three Impostors)
© Voltaire
I see from afar that era coming, those happy days,
When philosophy, enlightening humanity,
Must lead them in peace to the feet of the common master;
Frightful fanaticism will tremble to appear there:
There will be less dogma with more virtue.
Poem For The Two Hundred And Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Founding Of Harvard College
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Thou whose bold flight would leave earth's vulgar crowds,
And like the eagle soar above the clouds,
Must feel the pang that fallen angels know
When the red lightning strikes thee from below!
A Panegyric Of The Dean In The Person Of A Lady In The North
© Jonathan Swift
Resolved my gratitude to show,
Thrice reverend Dean, for all I owe,
Too long I have my thanks delay'd;
Your favours left too long unpaid;
The Broomstick Train; Or, The Return Of The Witches
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
I don't feel sure of his being good,
But he happened to be in a pleasant mood,--
As fiends with their skins full sometimes are,--
(He'd been drinking with "roughs" at a Boston bar.)
So what does he do but up and shout
To a graybeard turnkey, "Let 'em out!"
"Little Jack Janitor"
© James Whitcomb Riley
Then he tried
And rapped the little drawer in the side,
And called out sharply "Are you in there, Jack?"
And then a little, squeaky voice came back,--
"_Of course I'm in here--ain't you got the key
Turned on me!_"
The Bestiary: or Orpheuss Procession
© Guillaume Apollinaire
Admire the vital power
And nobility of line:
Its the voice that the light made us understand here
That Hermes Trismegistus writes of in Pimander.