Good poems
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No Resurrection
© Robinson Jeffers
Friendship, when a friend meant a helping sword,
Faithfulness, when power and life were its fruits, hatred, when
the hated
Held steel at your throat or had killed your children, were more
than metaphors.
Life and the world were as bright as knives.
Seventeenth Sunday After Trinity
© John Keble
Stately thy walls, and holy are the prayers
Which day and night before thine altars rise:
Not statelier, towering o'er her marble stairs,
Flashed Sion's gilded dome to summer skies,
Not holier, while around him angels bowed,
From Aaron's censer steamed the spicy cloud,
Of The Nature Of Things: Book V - Part 06 - Origins And Savage Period Of Mankind
© Lucretius
But mortal man
Was then far hardier in the old champaign,
Birdofredum Sawin; Esq., To Mr. Hosea Biglow
© James Russell Lowell
I hed it on my min' las' time, when I to write ye started,
To tech the leadin' featurs o' my gittin' me convarted;
Stage Love
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
WHEN the game began between them for a jest,
He played king and she played queen to match the best;
Laughter soft as tears, and tears that turned to laughter,
These were things she sought for years and sorrowed after.
I Would I Were A Child
© George MacDonald
I would I were a child,
That I might look, and laugh, and say, My Father!
And follow thee with running feet, or rather
Be led through dark and wild!
Genesis BK XI
© Caedmon
ll. 442-460) Then God's enemy began to make him ready, equipped
in war-gear, with a wily heart. He set his helm of darkness on
Ma And The Auto
© Edgar Albert Guest
Before we take an auto ride Pa says to Ma: "My dear,
Now just remember I don't need suggestions from the rear.
If you will just sit still back there and hold in check your fright,
I'll take you where you want to go and get you back all right.
Remember that my hearing's good and also I'm not blind,
And I can drive this car without suggestions from behind."
The Road to Avernus, Scene XI 'Ten Paces Off'
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
I've won the two tosses from Prescot;
Now hear me, and hearken and heed,
And pull that vile flower from your waistcoat,
And throw down that beast of a weed;
Persuasions to Enjoy
© Thomas Carew
If the quick spirits in your eye
Now languish and anon must die;
Nathan The Wise - Act V
© Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Here lies the money still, and no one finds
The dervis yet--he's probably got somewhere
Over a chess-board. Play would often make
The man forget himself, and why not, me.
Patience--Ha! what's the matter.
The Complacent Slacker
© Edgar Albert Guest
When he was just a lad in school,
He used to sit around and fool
sonnet XXXII. Life And Death. 4.
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
IF at one door stands life to cheat our trust,
And at another, death, to mock because
We thought life's promise good; if all that was
And is and should be ends in fume and dust
Drops of his Heart's Blood
© Shams al-Din Hafiz
I had not castled, and the time is gone.
What shall I play? Upon the chequered floor
Of Night and Day, Death won the game-forlorn
And careless now, Hafiz can lose no more.
Imitation of The Olden Poets
© Edward Lear
Time is a taper waning fast!
Use it, man, well whilst it doth last:
Lest burning downwards it consume away,
Before thou hast commenced the labour of the day.
The Voice
© Rupert Brooke
Safe in the magic of my woods
I lay, and watched the dying light.
Faint in the pale high solitudes,
And washed with rain and veiled by night,
Old Spense
© Isabella Valancy Crawford
You've seen his place, I reckon, friend?
'Twas rather kind ov tryin'.
The way he made the dollars fly,
Such gimcrack things a-buyin'--
He spent a big share ov a fortin'
On pesky things that went a snortin'
The Last Of The Flock
© William Wordsworth
I
IN distant countries have I been,
And yet I have not often seen
A healthy man, a man full grown,
The Priesthood
© George Herbert
Blest Order, which in power dost so excell,
That with th' one hand thou liftest to the sky,
And with the other throwest down to hell
In thy just centures; fain would I draw nigh,
Fain put thee on, exchanging my lay-sword
For that of th' holy word.
