Good poems
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The Boy Crusader.
© James Brunton Stephens
OH father, is that Jerusalem
Those walls and towers so strong?"
My Education
© James Kenneth Stephen
At school I sometimes read a book,
And learned a lot of lessons;
Some small amount of pains I took,
And showed much acquiescence
For a Girl in a Book
© Benjamin Jonson
Kim, composite of all my loves,
less real than most, more real than all;
Youth In Memory
© George Meredith
Days, when the ball of our vision
Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun;
Advice To Lovers
© Robert Graves
I knew an old man at a Fair
Who made it his twice-yearly task
To clamber on a cider cask
And cry to all the yokels there:--
Music
© Charles Harpur
Like sunrise when its conquering glow
Smites through the vapours cold,
Till all their ragged inlets flow
With floods of burning gold.
Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 2. The Musician's Tale; The Ballad of Carmilhan - I.
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
At Stralsund, by the Baltic Sea,
Within the sandy bar,
At sunset of a summer's day,
Ready for sea, at anchor lay
The good ship Valdemar.
Sumner
© John Greenleaf Whittier
O Mother State! the winds of March
Blew chill o'er Auburn's Field of God,
Where, slow, beneath a leaden arch
Of sky, thy mourning children trod.
Mutton
© Jonathan Swift
Gently stir and blow the fire,
Lay the mutton down to roast,
Dress it quickly, I desire,
In the dripping put a toast,
The Pimlico Pavilion
© William Makepeace Thackeray
Ye pathrons of janius, Minerva and Vanius,
Who sit on Parnassus, that mountain of snow,
Descind from your station and make observation
Of the Prince's pavilion in sweet Pimlico.
The Battle of Sempach
© Sir Walter Scott
'Twas when among our linden-trees
The bees had housed in swarms,
(And grey-hair'd peasants say that these
Betoken foreign arms),
Scherzo
© James Russell Lowell
When the down is on the chin
And the gold-gleam in the hair,
When the birds their sweethearts win
And champagne is in the air,
Love is here, and Love is there,
Love is welcome everywhere.
Men
© John Crowe Ransom
"How many goodly creatures are there here!"
Miranda doted on the sight of seamen,
Jolly Jack
© William Makepeace Thackeray
When fierce political debate
Throughout the isle was storming,
The Plate Of Gold
© James Henry Leigh Hunt
One day there fell in great Benares' temple-court
A wondrous plate of gold, whereon these words were writ;
"To him who loveth best, a gift from Heaven."
Thereat.
The Ring And The Book - Chapter VI - Giuseppe Caponsacchi
© Robert Browning
Again the morning found me. I will work,
Tie down my foolish thoughts. Thank God so far!
I have saved her from a scandal, stopped the tongues
Had broken else into a cackle and hiss
Around the noble name. Duty is still
Wisdom: I have been wise. So the day wore.
The Bethlehem Nursing Home by Rodney Torreson: American Life in Poetry #25 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Lau
© Ted Kooser
Emily Dickinson said that poems come at the truth at a slant. Here a birdbath and some overturned chairs on a nursing home lawn suggest the frailties of old age. Masterful poems choose the very best words and put them in the very best places, and Michigan poet Rodney Torreson has deftly chosen "ministers" for his first verb, an active verb that suggests the good work of the nursing home's chaplain.
From The Gulf
© William Henry Ogilvie
Store cattle from Nelanjie! The mob goes feeding past,
With half-a-mile of sandhill 'twixt the leaders and the last;
