Great poems
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Commission
© Ezra Pound
Go, my songs, to the lonely and the unsatisfied,
Go also to the nerve-racked, go to the enslaved-by-convention,
Bear to them my contempt for their oppressors.
Go as a great wave of cool water,
Bear my contempt of oppressors.
1946-47
© Jibanananda Das
Thousands of Bengali villages, silent and powerless, sink into
hopelessness and lightlessness.
When the sun sets, a certain lovely haired darkness
Comes to fix her hair in-a bun-but by whose hands?
The Brothers
© Richard Monckton Milnes
'Tis true, that we can sometimes speak of Death,
Even of the Deaths of those we love the best,
Without dismay or terror; we can sit
In serious calm beneath deciduous trees,
The Hill Of San Sebastian
© William Henry Drummond
Good job I was cryin' quiet den, an' Louis
can't hear at all
But I kiss de poor feller an' laugh, an' never
say not'ing-me.
A Dream Of Death
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
WHERE shall we sail to-day?"--Thus said, methought,
A voice that only could be heard in dreams:
And on we glided without mast or oar,
A wondrous boat upon a wondrous sea.
Gold Leaves
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Lo! I am come to autumn,
When all the leaves are gold;
Grey hairs and golden leaves cry out
The year and I are old.
Business
© Sam Walter Foss
"How is business?" asks the young man of the Spirit of the Years;
"Tell me of the modern output from the factories of fate,
And what jobs are waiting for me, waiting for me and my peers.
What's the outlook? What's the prospect? Are the wages small or great?"
The Second Monarchy, being the Persian, began underCyrus, Darius being his Uncle and Father-in-la
© Anne Bradstreet
Cyrus Cambyses Son of Persia King,
Whom Lady Mandana did to him bring,
Tale XI
© George Crabbe
creed;
And those of stronger minds should never speak
(In his opinion) what might hurt the weak:
A man may smile, but still he should attend
His hour at church, and be the Church's friend,
What there he thinks conceal, and what he hears
The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part II: To Juliet: XXXVIII
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
TO ONE NOW ESTRANGED
Why did you love me? Was it not enough
That the world loved you, all the world and I?
Or was your heart of so sublime a stuff
At My Window After Sunset
© George MacDonald
Heaven and the sea attend the dying day,
And in their sadness overflow and blend-
Faint gold, and windy blue, and green and gray:
Far out amid them my pale soul I send.
A Picture Of Husbandry
© Confucius
The plants will ear; within their sheath confined,
The grains will harden, and be good in kind.
Nor darnel these, nor wolf's-tail grass infests;
The Four Seasons : Winter
© James Thomson
See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train;
Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,
These! that exalt the soul to solemn thought,
Sonnet 27: Because I Oft
© Sir Philip Sidney
Because I oft in dark abstracted guise
Seem most alone in greatest company,
With dearth of words, or answers quite awry,
To them that would make speech of speech arise,
On A Lady With A Foul Breath
© Thomas Parnell
Art thou alive? It cannot be,
There's so much Rottenness in Thee,
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 04:
© Conrad Aiken
She played this tune. And in the middle of it
Abruptly broke it off, letting her hands
Fall in her lap. She sat there so a moment,
With shoulders drooped, then lifted up a rose,
One great white rose, wide opened like a lotos,
And pressed it to her cheek, and closed her eyes.
Winter at St Andrews
© Robert Fuller Murray
Thus I unto my friend replied,
When, on a chill late autumn morn,
He pointed to the tree, and cried,
`The leaves are off Queen Mary's Thorn!'
