Great poems
/ page 279 of 549 /
W.h.
© Louise Imogen Guiney
1778-1830
Between the wet trees and the sorry steeple,
Keep, Time, in dark Soho, what once was Hazlitt,
Seeker of Truth, and finder oft of Beauty;
from To Alexis In Answer to His Poem Against Fruition
© Aphra Behn
Since man with that inconstancy was born,
To love the absent, and the present scorn
Why do we deck, why do we dress
For such short-lived happiness?
Why do we put attraction on,
Since either way tis we must be undone?
Laodamia
© André Breton
"With sacrifice before the rising morn
Vows have I made by fruitless hope inspired;
And from the infernal Gods, 'mid shades forlorn
Of night, my slaughtered Lord have I required:
Celestial pity I again implore;—
Restore him to my sight—great Jove, restore!"
The Errancy
© Jorie Graham
Then the cicadas again like kindling that won’t take.
The struck match of some utopia we no longer remember
A Map of the Western Part of the County of Essex in England
© Denise Levertov
Something forgotten for twenty years: though my fathers
and mothers came from Cordova and Vitepsk and Caernarvon,
After the Pleasure Party: Lines Traced Under an Image of Amor Threatening
© Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Fear me, virgin whosoever
Taking pride from love exempt,
Fear me, slighted. Never, never
Brave me, nor my fury tempt:
Downy wings, but wroth they beat
Tempest even in reason's seat.
from The Rape of Lucrece
© William Shakespeare
Her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under,
Cozening the pillow of a lawful kiss;
Homage to H & the Speedway Diner
© Bernadette Mayer
It’s alot like a cave full of pictures
& black & white checked flags
The Temper (I)
© George Herbert
How should I praise thee, Lord! How should my rhymes
Gladly engrave thy love in steel,
If what my soul doth feel sometimes,
My soul might ever feel!
An Anatomy of the World
© John Donne
(excerpt)
AN ANATOMY OF THE WORLD
Wherein,
by occasion of the untimely death of Mistress
The Great Blue Heron
© John Betjeman
M.A.K. September, 1880-September, 1955
As I wandered on the beach
from The Seasons: Spring
© James Thomson
As rising from the vegetable World
My Theme ascends, with equal Wing ascend,
Sunt Leones
© Stevie Smith
The lions who ate the Christians on the sands of the arena
By indulging native appetites played what has now been seen a
The Rebel
© Hilaire Belloc
There is a wall of which the stones
Are lies and bribes and dead men's bones.
And wrongfully this evil wall
Denies what all men made for all,
And shamelessly this wall surrounds
Our homesteads and our native grounds.
At Mass
© Roald Dahl
No doubt to-morrow I will hide
My face from you, my King.
Let me rejoice this Sunday noon,
And kneel while gray priests sing.
Lines to Mr. Hodgson Written on Board the Lisbon Packet
© Lord Byron
Huzza! Hodgson, we are going,
Our embargo's off at last;
