Great poems
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Book Of Hafis - The Unlimited
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THAT thou can't never end, doth make thee great,
And that thou ne'er beginnest, is thy fate.
Tenebrae
© Emile Verhaeren
A moon, with vacant, chilling eye, stares
At the winter, enthroned vast and white upon the hard ground;
The night is an entire and translucent azure;
The wind, a blade of sudden presence, stabs.
Songs of the Spring Nights
© George MacDonald
The flush of green that dyed the day
Hath vanished in the moon;
Flower-scents float stronger out, and play
An unborn, coming tune.
Love Faithful In The Absence Of The Beloved
© William Cowper
In vain ye woo me to your harmless joys,
Ye pleasant bowers, remote from strife and noise;
Your shades, the witnesses of many a vow,
Breathed forth in happier days, are irksome now;
Denied that smile 'twas once my heaven to see,
Such scenes, such pleasures, are all past with me.
O Night O Trembling Night
© Stephen Spender
O night O trembling night O night of sighs
O night when my body was a rod O night
When my mouth was a vague animal cry
Pasturing on her flesh O night
When the close darkness was a nest
Made of her hair and filled with my eyes
Italy : 11. Bergamo
© Samuel Rogers
The song was one that I had heard before,
But where I knew not. It inclined to sadness;
And, turning round from the delicious fare
My landlord's little daughter Barbara
The Labourer
© George Meredith
For a Heracles in his fighting ire there is never the glory that
follows
From Mythology
© Zbigniew Herbert
First there was a god of night and tempest, a black idol without eyes, before whom they leaped, naked and smeared with blood. Later on, in the times of the republic, there were many gods with wives, children, creaking beds, and harmlessly exploding thunderbolts. At the end only superstitious neurotics carried in their pockets little statues of salt, representing the god of irony. There was no greater god at that time.
Then came the barbarians. They too valued highly the little god of irony. They would crush it under their heels and add it to their dishes.
AN ELEGY Upon the death of Mr. Edward Holt
© Henry King
VVhether thy Fathers, or diseases rage,
More mortal prov'd to thy unhappy age,
Our sorrow needs not question; since the first
Is known for length and sharpness much the worst.
The Old Year
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
O good old Year! this night's your last.
And must you go? With you I've passed
Some days that bear revision.
For these I'd thank you, ere you make
To Edward Dowden: On Receiving From Him A Copy Of "The Life Of Shelley"
© William Watson
First, ere I slake my hunger, let me thank
The giver of the feast. For feast it is,
Isabella; Or, The Pot Of Basil: A Story From Boccaccio
© John Keats
I.
Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel!
Tour Abroad of Wilfrid the Great
© Alexander MacGregor Rose
W'en Queen Victoria calls her peup's
For mak' some Jubilee,
She sen' for men from all de worl' -
And from her colonie.
The Crown Of Thorns
© Ada Cambridge
In bitterest sorrow did the ground bring forth
Its fatal seed. Thine eye beheld the birth-
Beheld the travail of accursèd earth;
E'en then, O Lord! in greater love than wrath!
Lines. Oh! To Some Distant Scene
© William Cowper
Oh! to some distant scene, a willing exile
From the wild roar of this busy world,
Seven Poems
© John Masefield
VI
I went into the fields, but you were there
Waiting for me, so all the summer flowers
Were only glimpses of your starry powers;
Beautiful and inspired dust they were.
Preparatory Meditations - Second Series: 12
© Edward Taylor
Dull, dull indeed! What, shall it e'er be thus?
And why? Are not Thy promises, my Lord,
Rich, quick'ning things? How should my full cheeks blush
To find me thus? And those a lifeless word?
My heart is heedless: unconcerned hereat:
I find my spirits spiritless and flat.
