Good poems
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To Hester On The Stair
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Hester, creature of my love,
What is this? You love not me?
On the stair you stand above,
Looking down distrustfully
Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of 1825 in Bowdoin College
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.
Ovid, Fastorum, Lib. vi.
"O Cæsar, we who are about to die
Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry
In the arena, standing face to face
With death and with the Roman populace.
Wishes
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
I wish we could live as the flowers live,
To breathe and to bloom in the summer and sun;
Dirty Jim
© Ann Taylor
THERE was one little Jim,
'Tis reported of him,
And must be to his lasting disgrace,
That he never was seen
With hands at all clean,
Nor yet ever clean was his face.
To the Right Honourable The Countess Dowager Of Devonshire, On A Piece Of Wiessen's
© Matthew Prior
Wiessen and nature held a long contest
If she created or he painted best;
I Wasn’t One of the Six Million: And What Is My Life Span? Open Closed Open
© John Wesley
3
And what is my life span? I’m like a man gone out of Egypt:
the Red Sea parts, I cross on dry land,
two walls of water, on my right hand and on my left.
Pharaoh’s army and his horsemen behind me. Before me the desert,
perhaps the Promised Land, too. That is my life span.
Volpone: Come my Celia, let us prove
© Benjamin Jonson
Come my Celia, let us prove,
While we may, the sports of love.
Ode V: On Love Of Praise
© Mark Akenside
I.
Of all the springs within the mind
Which prompt her steps in fortune's maze,
From none more pleasing aid we find
Than from the genuine love of praise.
Sonnet 109: "O! never say that I was false of heart,..."
© William Shakespeare
O! never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify,
Sonnet 24: Rich Fools There Be
© Sir Philip Sidney
Rich fools there be, whose base and filthy heart
Lies hatching still the goods wherein they flow:
And damning their own selves to Tantal's smart,
Wealth breeding want, more blist more wretched grow.
Kissing Stieglitz Good-Bye
© Gerald Stern
Every city in America is approached
through a work of art, usually a bridge
but sometimes a road that curves underneath
or drops down from the sky. Pittsburgh has a tunnel—
Gareth And Lynette
© Alfred Tennyson
To whom the mother said,
'True love, sweet son, had risked himself and climbed,
And handed down the golden treasure to him.'
When de Co'n Pone's Hot
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dey is times in life when Nature
Seems to slip a cog an' go,
The Fat Old Couple Whirling Around
© Robert Bly
The drum says that the night we die will be a long night.
It says the children have time to play. Tell the grownups
They can pull the curtains around the bed tonight.
Praise For Thee, Lord, in Zion Waits
© Henry Francis Lyte
Praise for Thee, Lord, in Zion waits;
Prayer shall besiege Thy temple gates;
All flesh shall to Thy throne repair,
And find through Christ salvation there.
