Good poems
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Our Country
© John Greenleaf Whittier
WE give thy natal day to hope,
O Country of our love and prayer!
Thy way is down no fatal slope,
But up to freer sun and air.
The Bishop of Rum-Ti-Foo
© William Schwenck Gilbert
From east and south the holy clan
Of Bishops gathered to a man;
Variations At Home And Abroad
© Kenneth Koch
It takes a lot of a person's life
To be French, or English, or American
Pharsalia - Book II: The Flight Of Pompeius
© Marcus Annaeus Lucanus
This was made plain the anger of the gods;
The universe gave signs Nature reversed
In monstrous tumult fraught with prodigies
Her laws, and prescient spake the coming guilt.
Little Miss Six OClock
© Edgar Albert Guest
JUST at the edge of the night and the morning,
Little Miss Six O'clock comes to my bed,
Sighs And Grones
© George Herbert
O do not use me
After my sinnes! look not on my desert,
But on thy glorie! then thou wilt reform,
And not refuse me: for thou onely art
The mighty God, but I a sillie worm:
O do not bruise me!
The Crusader
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Effigy mailed and mighty beneath thy mail
That liest asleep with hand upon carved sword--hilt
As ready to waken and strong to stand and hail
Death, where hosts are shaken and hot life spilt;
Employment [II]
© George Herbert
He that is weary, let him sit.
My soul would stirre
And trade in courtesies and wit
Quitting the furre
To cold complexions needing it.
Lines II
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
YE cannot add by any pile ye raise,
One jot or tittle to the statesman's fame;
That the world knows; to the far future days
Belongs his glory, and its radiant flame
An Indian Story
© William Cullen Bryant
"I know where the timid fawn abides
In the depths of the shaded dell,
Where the leaves are broad and the thicket hides,
With its many stems and its tangled sides,
From the eye of the hunter well.
A Bird From The West
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
At the grey dawn, amongst the falling leaves,
A little bird outside my window swung,
High on a topmost branch he trilled his song,
And " Ireland! Ireland! Ireland!" ever sung.
On Leaving Bath.
© Mary Barber
The Britons, in their Nature shy,
View Strangers with a distant Eye:
We think them partial and severe;
And judge their Manners by their Air:
Are undeceiv'd by Time alone;
Their Value rises, as they're known.
The Modest Couple
© William Schwenck Gilbert
When man and maiden meet, I like to see a drooping eye,
I always droop my own - I am the shyest of the shy.
I'm also fond of bashfulness, and sitting down on thorns,
For modesty's a quality that womankind adorns.
Alma; or, The Progress of the Mind. In Three Cantos. - Canto I.
© Matthew Prior
Without these aids, to be more serious,
Her power they hold had been precarious;
The eyes might have conspired her ruin,
And she not known what they were doing.
Foolish it had been and unkind
That they should see and she be blind.
The Tulip Bed At Greeley Square
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
That bright triangle of scented bloom
That lies surrounded by grime and gloom?
Storm, Momentary, Forever
© Boris Pasternak
Then summer said goodbye
to the station. Lifting its cap,
