Great poems
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Capital Punishment
© Edgar Albert Guest
PROUD is the state of its millions of men,
And proud is the state of its name;
Idyll XI. The Giant's Wooing
© Theocritus
"The blame's my mother's; she is false to me;
Spake thee ne'er yet one sweet word for my sake,
Though day by day she sees me pine and pine.
I'll feign strange throbbings in my head and feet
To anguish her--as I am anguished now."
Fragment: "Amor Aeternus"
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
Wealth and dominion fade into the mass
Of the great sea of human right and wrong,
When once from our possession they must pass;
But love, though misdirected, is among
The things which are immortal, and surpass
All that frail stuff which will be--or which was.
The Burial Of Moses
© Cecil Frances Alexander
By Nebo's lonely mountain,
On this side Jordan's wave,
Dawn in the Mountains
© Charles Harpur
It is the morning star, arising slow
Out of yon hills dark bulk, as she were born
From The Building of the Ship
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Republic
THOU, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Maha-Bharata, The Epic Of Ancient India - Book I - Astra Darsana (The Tournament)
© Romesh Chunder Dutt
The scene of the Epic is the ancient kingdom of the Kurus which
flourished along the upper course of the Ganges; and the historical
fact on which the Epic is based is a great war which took place
between the Kurus and a neighbouring tribe, the Panchalas, in the
thirteenth or fourteenth century before Christ.
An Invitation
© James Russell Lowell
Nine years have slipt like hour-glass sand
From life's still-emptying globe away,
Since last, dear friend, I clasped your hand,
And stood upon the impoverished land,
Watching the steamer down the bay.
Paradise Regain'd : Book IV.
© John Milton
Perplexed and troubled at his bad success
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his hope
So oft, and the persuasive rhetoric
Berthas Eyes
© Charles Baudelaire
You can scorn more illustrious eyes,
sweet eyes of my child, through which there takes flight
something as good or as tender as night.
Turn to mine your charmed shadows, sweet eyes!
On His Grotto at Twickenham
© Alexander Pope
Thou who shalt stop, where Thames' translucent wave
Shines a broad Mirror thro' the shadowy Cave;
Eccentricity
© Washington Allston
Who next appears thus stalking by his side?
Why that is one who'd sooner die than-ride!
No inch of ground can maps unheard of show
Untrac'd by him, unknown to every toe:
As if intent this punning age to suit,
The globe's circumf'rence meas'ring by the foot.
The Progress Of Refinement. Part II.
© Henry James Pye
CONTENTS OF PART II. Introduction.Sketch of the Northern barbarians.Feudal system.Origin of Chivalry.Superstition.Crusades. Hence the enfranchisement of Vassals, and Commerce encouraged. The Northern and Western Europeans, struck with the splendor of Constantinople, and the superior elegance of the Saracens.Origin of Romance. The remains of Science confined to the monasteries, and in an unknown language.Hence the distinction of learning.Discovery of the Roman Jurisprudence, and it's effects.Classic writers begin to be admiredArts revive in Italy.Greek learning introduced there, on the taking of Constantinople by the Turks.That event lamented.Learning encouraged by Leo X.Invention of Printing.The Reformation.It's effects, even on those countries that retained their old Religion. It's establishment in Britain.Age of Elizabeth. Arts and Literature flourish.Spenser.Shakespear. Milton.Dryden.The Progress of the Arts checked by the Civil War.Patronized in France. Age of Lewis XIV.Taste hurt in England during the profligate reign of Charles II.Short and turbulent reign of his Successor.King William no encourager of the Arts.Age of Queen Anne.Manners.Science and Literature flourish.Neglected by the first Princes of the House of Brunswick.Patronage of Arts by his present Majesty.Poetry not encouraged.Address to the King.General view of the present state of Refinement. Among the European Nations.France. Britain.Italy.Spain.Holland and Germany. Increasing Influence of French manners. Russia.Greece.Asia.China.Africa. America.Newly discovered islands.European Colonies.
Chant Royal Of High Virtue
© Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
Who lives in suit of armour pent
And hides himself behind a wall,
Ode To The Setting Sun
© Francis Thompson
Alpha and Omega, sadness and mirth,
The springing music, and its wasting breath--
Heartsease And Rue: Friendship
© James Russell Lowell
Natures benignly mixed of air and earth,
Now with the stars and now with equal zest
Tracing the eccentric orbit of a jest.
Caricatures
© Henry Lawson
There are writers great and writers small
And writers on the spree;
And writers short and writers tall,
And bards of low degree.
In Sutton Woods
© Alfred Austin
There-peace once more; the restless roar
Of troubled cities dies away.
``Welcome to our broad shade once more,''
The dear old woodlands seem to say.
Rejoicing After The Battle Of Inkerman
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
Rejoice! the fearful day is oer
For the victors and the slain;
