Good poems
/ page 435 of 545 /
Solomon on the Vanity of the World, A Poem. In Three Books. - Pleasure. Book II.
© Matthew Prior
My full design with vast expense achieved,
I came, beheld, admired, reflected, grieved:
I chid the folly of my thoughtless haste,
For, the work perfected, the joy was past.
A Letter
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dear Miss Lucy: I been t'inkin' dat I 'd write you long fo' dis,
But dis writin' 's mighty tejous, an' you know jes' how it is.
The Devil And The Governor
© William Forster
A Dramatic Sketch.
SceneAn Office. Governor discovered seated at a writing-table.
The Commercial Traveler
© Christopher Morley
Then, when the sudden tears had ceased to blind
Your pansied eyes, I wonder if you could
Remember rightly, and forget aright?
Remember just your lad, uncouthly good,
Forgetting what he failed in spleen or spite?
Could you remember him as always kind?
The Noble Moringer
© Sir Walter Scott
I.
O, will you hear a knightly tale of old Bohemian day,
It was the noble Moringer in wedlock bed he lay;
He halsed and kiss'd his dearest dame, that was as sweet as May,
And said, "Now, lady of my heart, attend the words I say.
Ale
© William Henry Davies
Now do I hear thee weep and groan,
Who hath a comrade sunk at sea?
Then quaff thee of my good old ale,
And it will raise him up for thee;
Thoul't think as little of him then
As when he moved with living men.
A Greeting
© William Henry Davies
Good morning, Life--and all
Things glad and beautiful.
My pockets nothing hold,
But he that owns the gold,
The Sun, is my great friend--
His spending has no end.
There's Nothing Like A Ship At Sea
© Harry Kemp
There's nothing like a ship at sea with all her sails full-spread
And the ocean thundering backward 'neath her mounting figurehead
And the bowsprit plunging starward and the nosing deep again.
"There's nothing like a ship at sea," sing ho, ye sailormen.
Aechdeacon Barbour
© John Greenleaf Whittier
THROUGH the long hall the shuttered windows shed
A dubious light on every upturned head;
On locks like those of Absalom the fair,
On the bald apex ringed with scanty hair,
Mycerinus
© Matthew Arnold
'Not by the justice that my father spurn'd,
Not for the thousands whom my father slew,
Altars unfed and temples overturn'd,
Cold hearts and thankless tongues, where thanks are due;
Fell this dread voice from lips that cannot lie,
Stern sentence of the Powers of Destiny.
The Lost Legion
© Rudyard Kipling
There's a Legion that never was 'listed,
That carries no colours or crest,
But, split in a thousand detachments,
Is breaking the road for the rest.
Thyrsis, a Monody
© Matthew Arnold
How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,
Sohrab and Rustum
© Matthew Arnold
"Ferood, and ye, Persians and Tartars, hear!
Let there be truce between the hosts to-day.
But choose a champion from the Persian lords
To fight our champion Sohrab, man to man."
The Scholar Gypsy
© Matthew Arnold
But, 'mid their drink and clatter, he would fly.
And I myself seem half to know thy looks,
And put the shepherds, wanderer! on thy trace;
And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks
I ask if thou hast passed their quiet place;
A Cook
© Geoffrey Chaucer
They had a cook with them who stood alone
For boiling chicken with a marrow-bone,
To A Lady Who Commanded Me To Send Her An Account In Verse
© Mary Barber
How I succeed, you kindly ask;
Yet set me on a grievous Task,
When you oblige me to rehearse,
The Censures past upon my Verse.
With brutus in st. jo
© Eugene Field
Of all the opry-houses then obtaining in the West
The one which Milton Tootle owned was, by all odds, the best;
Milt, being rich, was much too proud to run the thing alone,
So he hired an "acting manager," a gruff old man named Krone--
Winfreda
© Eugene Field
When to the dreary greenwood gloam
Winfreda's husband strode that day,
The fair Winfreda bode at home
To toil the weary time away;
"While thou art gone to hunt," said she,
"I'll brew a goodly sop for thee."
