Great poems
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Which Is The Favourite?
© Charles Lamb
Brothers and sisters I have many:
Though I know there is not any
Life Is A Dream - Act III
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
FIRST SOLDIER [within]. He is here within this tower.
Dash the door from off its hinges;
Enter all
This Will Not Win Him
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
Soul says,
How can I ever win him
When all I have is already his?
Wingless Victory
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Worms feed upon the bodies of the brave
Who bled for us: but we bewildered see
Viler worms gnaw the things they died to save.
Old clouds of doubt and weariness oppress.
Happy the dead, we cry, not now to be
In the day of this dissolving littleness!
Fragments
© Robert Louis Stevenson
Or rather to behold her when
She plies for me the unresting pen,
And when the loud assault of squalls
Resounds upon the roof and walls,
And the low thunder growls and I
Raise my dictating voice on high.
Ballad of Reading Gaol - I
© Oscar Wilde
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
The Way of Wooing
© William Schwenck Gilbert
A maiden sat at her window wide,
Pretty enough for a Prince's bride,
Love Increased By Suffering
© William Cowper
"I love the Lord," is still the strain
This heart delights to sing:
But I reply--your thoughts are vain,
Perhaps 'tis no such thing.
Andrew Marvell
© Charles Harpur
Spirit, that lookest from the starry fold
Of truths white flock, next to thy Milton there
Granny
© Ada Cambridge
Here, in her elbow chair, she sits
A soul alert, alive,
A poor old body shrunk and bent-
The queen-bee of the hive.
Masnawi
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
In the prologue to the Masnavi Rumi hailed Love and its sweet madness that heals all infirmities, and he exhorted the reader to burst the bonds to silver and gold to be free. The Beloved is all in all and is only veiled by the lover. Rumi identified the first cause of all things as God and considered all second causes subordinate to that. Human minds recognize the second causes, but only prophets perceive the action of the first cause. One story tells of a clever rabbit who warned the lion about another lion and showed the lion his own image in a well, causing him to attack it and drown. After delivering his companions from the tyrannical lion, the rabbit urges them to engage in the more difficult warfare against their own inward lusts. In a debate between trusting God and human exertion, Rumi quoted the prophet Muhammad as saying, "Trust in God, yet tie the camel's leg."8 He also mentioned the adage that the worker is the friend of God; so in trusting in providence one need not neglect to use means. Exerting oneself can be giving thanks for God's blessings; but he asked if fatalism shows gratitude.
God is hidden and has no opposite, not seen by us yet seeing us. Form is born of the formless but ultimately returns to the formless. An arrow shot by God cannot remain in the air but must return to God. Rumi reconciled God's agency with human free will and found the divine voice in the inward voice. Those in close communion with God are free, but the one who does not love is fettered by compulsion. God is the agency and first cause of our actions, but human will as the second cause finds recompense in hell or with the Friend. God is like the soul, and the world is like the body. The good and evil of bodies comes from souls. When the sanctuary of true prayer is revealed to one, it is shameful to turn back to mere formal religion. Rumi confirmed Muhammad's view that women hold dominion over the wise and men of heart; but violent fools, lacking tenderness, gentleness, and friendship, try to hold the upper hand over women, because they are swayed by their animal nature. The human qualities of love and tenderness can control the animal passions. Rumi concluded that woman is a ray of God and the Creator's self.
Italy : 6. Jorasse
© Samuel Rogers
Jorasse was in his three-and-twentieth year;
Graceful and active as a stag just roused;
Gentle withal, and pleasant in his speech,
Yet seldom seen to smile. He had grown up
The Saddest Hour
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
The saddest hour of anguish and of loss
Is not that season of supreme despair
When we can find no least light anywhere
To gild the dread, black shadow of the Cross;
I Call That True Love
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
You gotta wake up every mornin', tip toe in the
kitchen cook me great T-bone steak
Serve it to me in bed go down the street and hustle
bring me back all the money you make
The Triumph of Dead : Chap. 2
© Mary Sidney Herbert
That night, which did the dreadful hap ensue
That quite eclips'd, nay, rather did replace
Widow
© Sylvia Plath
Widow. The word consumes itself --
Body, a sheet of newsprint on the fire
Levitating a numb minute in the updraft
Over the scalding, red topography
That will put her heart out like an only eye.
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: A Satire
© George Gordon Byron
These are the themes that claim our plaudits now;
These are the bards to whom the muse must bow;
While Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot,
Resign their hallow'd bays to Walter Scott.
The Rail Road
© Jones Very
Thou great proclaimer to the outward eye
Of what the spirit too would seek to tell,
In June
© Madison Julius Cawein
Deep in the West a berry-coloured bar
Of sunset gleams; against which one tall fir
Ghosts In England
© Robinson Jeffers
At East Lulworth the dead were friendly and pitiful, I saw them
peek from their ancient earthworks on the coast hills
