Great poems
/ page 214 of 549 /
Odysseus to Telemachus
© Joseph Brodsky
My dear Telemachus,
The Trojan War
is over now; I don't recall who won it.
The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave
Eclogue 3: Menalcas Daemoetas Palaemon
© Publius Vergilius Maro
DAMOETAS
Nay, they are Aegon's sheep, of late by him
Committed to my care.
The Song Of Hiawatha XII: The Son Of The Evening Star
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Can it be the sun descending
O'er the level plain of water?
What Is To Come
© William Ernest Henley
What is to come we know not. But we know
That what has been was good--was good to show,
Better to hide, and best of all to bear.
We are the masters of the days that were:
We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered . . . even so.
Psalm IV.
© John Milton
Answer me when I call
God of my righteousness;
In straights and in distress
Thou didst me disinthrall
And set at large; now spare,
Now pity me, and hear my earnest prai'r.
On A Picture Of The Finding Of Moses By Pharoah's Daughter
© Charles Lamb
This picture does the story express
Of Moses in the bulrushes.
How livelily the painter's hand
By colours makes us understand!
Ode On Lord Hay's BirthDay
© James Beattie
A Muse, unskill'd in venal praise,
Unstain'd with flattery's art;
Who loves simplicity of lays
Breathed ardent from the heart;
A Serious Question
© Carolyn Wells
A kitten went a-walking
One morning in July,
And idly fell a-talking
With a great big butterfly.
One Talent
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In a napkin smooth and white,
Hidden from all mortal sight,
My one talent lies to-night.
The Passing Of Cadieux
© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
'Fresh is love in May
When the Spring is yearning,
Life is but a lay,
Love is quick in learning.
All For The Best
© Edgar Albert Guest
Things mostly happen for the best.
However hard it seems to-day,
To R A A
© Katharine Tynan
Was it not a great end?
Wrote your Philip, with a story
Of a great deed, a great death--
Not foreseeing his own glory
And his budding laurel-wreath--
In the last words he should send.
Maenad
© Sylvia Plath
Once I was ordinary:
Sat by my father's bean tree
Eating the fingers of wisdom.
The birds made milk.
When it thundered I hid under a flat stone.
Night Thoughts In Age
© John Hall Wheelock
Light, that out of the west looked back once more
Through lids of cloud, has closed a sleepy eye;
Bowed With a Sense of Sin
© Augustus Montague Toplady
Bowed with a sense of sin, I faint
Beneath the complicated load;
Father, attend my deep complaint,
I am Thy creature, Thou my God.
Seven Laments For The War-Dead
© Yehuda Amichai
1
Mr. Beringer, whose son
fell at the Canal that strangers dug
so ships could cross the desert,
crosses my path at Jaffa Gate.
The Limitations Of Greatness
© Edgar Albert Guest
NO MAN really knows enough
To be hateful to his brother,
None is rich enough to cuff
And be cruel to another;
None so clever that he can
Justly wrong his fellow man.
Unwritten Books
© Henry Lawson
It always seems the same old story
No matter what grand heights are won
We die with out best work unwritten,
We die with out best work undone.
