Good poems
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Don't Drink
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Don't drink, boys, don't!
There is nothing of happiness, pleasure, or cheer,
In brandy, in whiskey, in rum, ale, or beer.
If they cheer you when drunk, you are certain to pay
In headaches and crossness the following day.
Don't drink, boys, don't!
Sonnet 144: Two loves I have, of comfort and despair
© William Shakespeare
Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
The Vain Question
© Ada Cambridge
Why should we court the storms that rave and rend,
Safe at our household hearth?
Why, starved and naked, without home or friend,
Unknowing whence we came or where we wend,
Follow from no beginning to no end
An uncrowned martyr's path?
A Vision of Poesy - Part 01
© Henry Timrod
In a far country, and a distant age,
Ere sprites and fays had bade farewell to earth,
A boy was born of humble parentage;
The stars that shone upon his lonely birth
Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame -
Yet no tradition hath preserved his name.
Sonnet 14: Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck
© William Shakespeare
Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
The Tragedy
© Richard Harris Barham
Quæque ipse miserrima vidi.- VIRGIL.
Catherine of Cleves was a Lady of rank,
Last Night
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
Where were you last night? I watched at the gate;
I went down early, I stayed down late.
Were you snug at home, I should like to know,
Or were you in the coppice wheedling Kate?
Sonnet 124: If my dear love were but the child of state
© William Shakespeare
If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune's bastard be unfathered,
As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.
Sonnet 118: Like as to make our appetite more keen
© William Shakespeare
Like as to make our appetite more keen
With eager compounds we our palate urge,
As to prevent our maladies unseen,
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge.
Sonnet 112: Your love and pity doth th' impression fill
© William Shakespeare
Your love and pity doth th' impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'ergreen my bad, my good allow?
Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck (Sonnet 14)
© William Shakespeare
Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy;
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
When You Wake In Your Crib
© William Ernest Henley
When you wake in your crib,
You, an inch of experience -
Fairy Land ii
© William Shakespeare
YOU spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong;
Come not near our fairy queen.
More With Us Than With Them
© John Newton
Alas! Elisha's servant cried,
When he the Syrian army spied,
But he was soon released from care,
In answer to the prophet's prayer.
Affliction (I)
© George Herbert
When first thou didst entice to thee my heart,
I thought the service brave;
So many joyes I writ down for my part,
Besides what I might have
Out of my stock of naturall delights,
Augmented with thy gracious benefits.
A Lover's Complaint
© William Shakespeare
FROM off a hill whose concave womb reworded
A plaintful story from a sistering vale,
My spirits to attend this double voice accorded,
And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale;
The Vanity of Human Wishes (excerpts)
© Samuel Johnson
45 Yet still one gen'ral cry the skies assails,
46 And gain and grandeur load the tainted gales,
47 Few know the toiling statesman's fear or care,
48 Th' insidious rival and the gaping heir.
Sordello: Book the Third
© Robert Browning
Whereat he rose.
The level wind carried above the firs
Clouds, the irrevocable travellers,
Onward.
Metropolitan Nightmare
© Stephen Vincent Benet
Until, one day, a somnolent city-editor
Gave a new cub the termite yarn to break his teeth on.
The cub was just down from Vermont, so he took the time.
He was serious about it. He went around.
He read all about termites in the Public Library
And it made him sore when they fired him.
adventure
© Rg Gregory
just as the dusk comes hooting
down through the shivering black leaves
of the swinging trees we (the brave ones
swaggering like marshalls through a lynch-mob)
crash-bang our way to the door
of the so-called haunted house
