Good poems
/ page 312 of 545 /
First Name Friends
© Edgar Albert Guest
Though some may yearn for titles great, and seek the frills of fame,
I do not care to have an extra handle to my name.
I am not hungry for the pomp of life's high dignities,
I do not sigh to sit among the honored LL. D.'s.
I shall be satisfied if I can be unto the end,
To those I know and live with here, a simple, first-name friend.
The Good Old Concertina
© Henry Lawson
TWAS merry when the hut was full
Of jolly girls and fellows.
From “Odi Barbare”
© Geoffrey Hill
xxiv
What is far hence led to the den of making:
Moves unlike wildfire | not so simple-happy
Ploughman hammers ploughshare his durum dentem
Digging the Georgics
Rosalie's Good Eats Cafe
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
It's two in the mornin' on Saturday night
At Rosalie's Good Eats Café.
To Penshurst
© Benjamin Jonson
Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show,
Of touch or marble; nor canst boast a row
Convict Once - Part First.
© James Brunton Stephens
I.
FREE again! Free again! eastward and westward, before me, behind me,
Wide lies Australia! and free are my feet, as my soul is, to roam!
Oh joy unwonted of space undetermined! No limit assigned me!
Freedom conditioned by nought save the need and desire of a home!
The bright blessed day with joy we see
© Nicolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig
The bright blessed day with joy we see
Rise out of the sea at dawning;
It lightens the sky unceasingly,
Our gain and delight adorning!
As children of light we sense that soon
Dark night will give way to morning!
To The Reader
© John Bunyan
The title page will show, if there thou look,
Who are the proper subjects of this book.
They're boys and girls of all sorts and degrees,
Song of Myself
© Walt Whitman
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
Sabbath lie
© John Wesley
On Friday, at twilight of a summer day
While the smells of food and prayer rose from every house
And the sound of the Sabbath angels’ wings was in the air,
While still a child I started to lie to my father:
“I went to another synagogue.”
From The Wreck
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
"Turn out, boys!" - "What's up with our super. to-night?
The man's mad - Two hours to daybreak I'd swear -
Stark mad - why, there isn't a glimmer of light."
"Take Bolingbroke, Alec, give Jack the young mare;
The Gouler's Requiem
© Thomas Chatterton
Mie boolie entes, adiewe: ne more the syghte
Of guilden merke shalle mete mie joieous eyne;
The Times
© Charles Churchill
The time hath been, a boyish, blushing time,
When modesty was scarcely held a crime;
The Legends Of The Rhine
© Francis Bret Harte
Beetling walls with ivy grown,
Frowning heights of mossy stone;
Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle upon the Restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the Estates and Honours of his Ancestors
© André Breton
High in the breathless Hall the Minstrel sate,
And Emont's murmur mingled with the Song.—
The words of ancient time I thus translate,
A festal strain that hath been silent long:—
Town Eclogues: Monday; Roxana or the Drawing-Room
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
ROXANA from the court retiring late,
Sigh'd her soft sorrows at St. JAMES's gate:
Such heavy thoughts lay brooding in her breast,
Not her own chairmen wth more weight opprest;
They groan the cruel load they're doom'd to bear ;
She in these gentler sounds express'd her care.
The Burning Babe
© Robert Southwell
As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
