Great poems
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The Devil's Walk. A Ballad
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
I.
Once, early in the morning, Beelzebub arose,
With care his sweet person adorning,
He put on his Sunday clothes.
On Sanazar's Being Honoured With Six hundred Duckets By The
© Richard Lovelace
Twas a blith prince exchang'd five hundred crowns
For a fair turnip. Dig, dig on, O clowns
But how this comes about, Fates, can you tell,
This more then Maid of Meurs, this miracle?
An Elegy Upon The Death Of Dr. Donne, Dean Of Paul's
© Thomas Carew
Here lies a king, that rul'd as he thought fit
The universal monarchy of wit;
Here lie two flamens, and both those, the best,
Apollo's first, at last, the true God's priest.
Inscription For A Moss-House In The Shrubbery At Weston
© William Cowper
Here, free from riot's hated noise,
Be mine, ye calmer, purer joys,
The Forester
© Madison Julius Cawein
I met him here at Ammendorf one Spring.
It was the end of April and the Harz,
The Cloudberry
© Muriel Stuart
Give me no coil of daemon flowers-
Pale Messalines that faint and brood
Through the spent and secret twilight hours
On their strange feasts of blood.
On William Francis Bartlett
© Francis Bret Harte
O poor Romancer--thou whose printed page,
Filled with rude speech and ruder forms of strife,
Was given to heroes in whose vulgar rage
No trace appears of gentler ways and life!--
Goya
© Conrad Aiken
Goya drew a pig on a wall.
The five-year-old hairdressers son
Saw, graved on a silver tray,
The lion; and sunsets were begun.
To All Angels And Saints
© George Herbert
Oh glorious spirits, who after all your bands
See the smooth face of God, without a frown
Or strict commands;
Where ev'ry one is king, and hath his crown,
If not upon his head, yet in his hands:
On A Corkscrew
© Jonathan Swift
Though I, alas! a prisoner be,
My trade is prisoners to set free.
No slave his lord's commands obeys
With such insinuating ways.
France--December 1870
© George Meredith
Henceforth of her the Gods are known,
Open to them her breast is laid.
Inveterate of brain, heart-valiant,
Never did fairer creature pant
Before the altar and the blade!
XV: To Heaven
© Benjamin Jonson
Good, and great God, can I not think of thee,
But it must, straight, my melancholy bee?
Life Is A Dream
© Pedro Calderon de la Barca
We live, while we see the sun,
Where life and dreams are as one;
And living has taught me this,
Man dreams the life that is his,
The Gift Of Harun Al-Rashid
© William Butler Yeats
KUSTA BEN LUKA is my name, I write
To Abd Al-Rabban; fellow-roysterer once,
Now the good Caliph's learned Treasurer,
And for no ear but his.
The Instructiphone
© Carolyn Wells
There was a youthful genius once, a boy of thirteen years,
Named Cyrus Franklin Edison Lavoisier De Squeers.
To study he was not inclined, for fun he had a bent;
But there was just one article he wanted to invent.
Robert E. Lee
© Stephen Vincent Benet
The man was loved, the man was idolized,
The man had every just and noble gift.
He took great burdens and he bore them well,
Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament
© Andrew Lang
Balow, my boy, ly still and sleep,
It grieves me sore to hear thee weep,
Nebuchadnezzar's Fall
© Robert Graves
Frowning over the riddle that Daniel told,
Down through the mist hung garden, below a feeble sun,
The King of Persia walked: oh, the chilling cold!
His mind was webbed with a grey shroud vapour-spun.
A Shrine In The Pantheon
© Henry Van Dyke
FOR THE UNNAMED SOLDIERS WHO DIED IN FRANCE
Universal approval has been accorded the proposal made in the French Chamber that the ashes of an unnamed French soldier, fallen for his country, shall be removed with solemn ceremony to the Pantheon. In this way it is intended to honor by a symbolic ceremony the memory of all who lie in unmarked graves.
