Great poems
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Asoka
© Robert Laurence Binyon
I
Gentle as fine rain falling from the night,
The first beams from the Indian moon at full
Steal through the boughs, and brighter and more bright
Homer's Hymn To Minerva
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
I sing the glorious Power with azure eyes,
Athenian Pallas! tameless, chaste, and wise,
Tritogenia, town-preserving Maid,
Revered and mighty; from his awful head
Lepanto
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade. . .
The Song Of Hiawatha VIII: Hiawatha's Fishing
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Forth upon the Gitche Gumee,
On the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Nina's Reply (Les Reparties De Nina)
© Arthur Rimbaud
HE - Your breast on my breast,
Eh ? We could go,
With our nostrils full of air,
Into the cool light
Widows
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
The world was widowed by the death of Christ:
Vainly its suffering soul for peace has sought
And found it not.
For nothing, nothing, nothing has sufficed
To bring back comfort to the stricken house
From whence has gone the Master and the Spouse.
Elegy On The Death Of Mr. Phillips
© Thomas Chatterton
No more I hail the morning's golden gleam,
No more the wonders of the view I sing;
Friendship requires a melancholy theme,
At her command the awful lyre I string!
The Message Of The March Wind
© William Morris
Fair now is the springtide, now earth lies beholding
With the eyes of a lover, the face of the sun;
Long lasteth the daylight, and hope is enfolding
The green-growing acres with increase begun.
Jerusalem Delivered - Book 04 - part 04
© Torquato Tasso
XLIX
"Three times the shape of my dear mother came,
The Rosciad
© Charles Churchill
Unknowing and unknown, the hardy Muse
Boldly defies all mean and partial views;
With honest freedom plays the critic's part,
And praises, as she censures, from the heart.
The Stealing Of The Mare - VI
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Said the Narrator:
And when the Emir Abu Zeyd had departed with the mare, and had taken his leave of the Princess Alia, and had passed into the outer pastures, then remained the Princess a long while weeping at his going, and in doubt how she should meet her people, and in fear of what might come to her through the stealing of the mare. And she returned to her tent, and threw herself upon her bed, weeping with both eyes. This for her. But as to the Emir Abu Zeyd, he too fell adoubting as he rode; and he said, ``If I go back now to the Arabs, mine own people, and to my business, nor take thought of Alia, it will certainly happen that our doings will be made known, and her father will slay her; and, on the other hand, if I should return to her, it will be a matter of long duration, and I shall be a great while withheld from my people and my affairs. Now, therefore, it were better I should go see that which is happening among them.'' And he stopped at a fountain of water, and he drank of it, and he gave his mare to drink. And he sat him down to think over all his plan, and he remembered the day of judgment, and the oath that he had taken to Alia that he would return to her before going to his own people. And this is what happened in the case of the Emir Abu Zeyd.
And at this point the Narrator began once more to sing, and it was in the following verses:
The Song of The Little Baltung: A.D. 395
© Charles Kingsley
A harper came over the Danube so wide,
And he came into Alaric's hall,
And he sang the song of the little Baltung
To him and his heroes all.
The Oak And The Broom
© William Wordsworth
A Pastoral
I
HIS simple truths did Andrew glean
Beside the babbling rills;
The Captain's Wife
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
I do not say the day is long and weary,
For while thou art content to be away,
Living in thee, oh Love, I live thy day,
And reck not if mine own be sad and dreary.
Le Cygne (The Swan)
© Charles Baudelaire
Andromaque, je pense à vous! Ce petit fleuve,
Pauvre et triste miroir où jadis resplendit
L'immense majesté de vos douleurs de veuve,
Ce Simoïs menteur qui par vos pleurs grandit,
Concepcion De Arguello
© Francis Bret Harte
Looking seaward, o'er the sand-hills stands the fortress, old and
quaint,
By the San Francisco friars lifted to their patron saint,--
Two Hours In Reservoir
© Joseph Brodsky
I am an anti-fascist... anti-Faust
Ich liebe life and I admire chaos
Ich bin to wish, Genosse Offizieren,
Dem Zeit zum Faust for a while spazieren.
2
Admonition
© Emil Aarestrup
This blue that is called azure-blue,
This scoop of water, clump of earth,
This foolish nonsense of no worth,
Called good and evil by some pedants too
Ursula
© Robert Fuller Murray
Upon the northern hill-top, looking down,
Like some sequestered saint upon the town,
Stands the great convent.
