Good poems
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To The University Of Cambridge, In New-England
© Phillis Wheatley
WHILE an intrinsic ardor prompts to write,
The muses promise to assist my pen;
'Twas not long since I left my native shore
The land of errors, and Egyptain gloom:
An Hymn To Humanity (To S.P.G. Esp)
© Phillis Wheatley
O! for this dark terrestrial ball
Forsakes his azure-paved hall
A prince of heav'nly birth!
Divine Humanity behold,
What wonders rise, what charms unfold
At his descent to earth!
Who Bides His Time
© James Whitcomb Riley
Who bides his time, and day by day
Faces defeat full patiently,
And lifts a mirthful roundelay,
However poor his fortunes be,--
Ike Walton's Prayer
© James Whitcomb Riley
I crave, dear Lord,
No boundless hoard
Of gold and gear,
Nor jewels fine,
A Parting Guest
© James Whitcomb Riley
What delightful hosts are they --
Life and Love!
Lingeringly I turn away,
This late hour, yet glad enough
Little Orphant Annie
© James Whitcomb Riley
To all the little children: -- The happy ones; and sad ones;
The sober and the silent ones; the boisterous and glad ones;
The good ones -- Yes, the good ones, too; and all the lovely bad ones.
Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
(The Dry Salvagespresumably les trois sauvagesis a small
group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E. coast of Cape Ann,
Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced to rhyme with assuages.
Groaner: a whistling buoy.)
Sweeney Erect
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
And the trees about me,
Let them be dry and leafless; let the rocks
Groan with continual surges; and behind me
Make all a desolation. Look, look, wenches!
The Ad-Dressing Of Cats
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
You've read of several kinds of Cat,
And my opinion now is that
You should need no interpreter
To understand their character.
Four Quartets 2: East Coker
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.
The Old Gumbie Cat
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;
Her coat is of the tabby kind, with tiger stripes and leopard spots.
All day she sits upon the stair or on the steps or on the mat;
She sits and sits and sits and sits--and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat!
Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
IMidwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
Ash Wednesday
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.
The Garden Shukkei-en
© Carolyn Forche
It is the river she most
remembers, the living
and the dead both crying for help.
The Song Of The Widow
© Rainer Maria Rilke
That was not his fault nor mine
since both of us had nothing but patience;
but death has none.
I saw him coming (how rotten he looked),
and I watched him as he took and took:
and nothing was mine.
Growing Old
© Rainer Maria Rilke
In some summers there is so much fruit,
the peasants decide not to reap any more.
Not having reaped you, oh my days,
my nights, have I let the slow flames
of your lovely produce fall into ashes?
Childhood
© Rainer Maria Rilke
It would be good to give much thought, before
you try to find words for something so lost,
for those long childhood afternoons you knew
that vanished so completely --and why?
To A Young Lady
© John Trumbull
From me, not famed for much goodnature,
Expect not compliment, but satire;
To draw your picture quite unable,
Instead of fact accept a Fable.
M'Fingal - Canto IV
© John Trumbull
"For me, before that fatal time,
I mean to fly th' accursed clime,
And follow omens, which of late
Have warn'd me of impending fate.
M'Fingal - Canto III
© John Trumbull
By this, M'Fingal with his train
Advanced upon th' adjacent plain,
And full with loyalty possest,
Pour'd forth the zeal, that fired his breast.
