Great poems
/ page 298 of 549 /
from Fanny
© Fitz-Greene Halleck
Dear to the exile is his native land,
In memory’s twilight beauty seen afar:
Dear to the broker is a note of hand,
Collaterally secured—the polar star
Is dear at midnight to the sailor’s eyes,
And dear are Bristed’s volumes at “half price;”
The Song of the Birds
© Pierre Reverdy
At the sight of
the great light dawning
in that glad night,
small birds come singing
to celebrate him
with their sweet voices.
Idylls of the King: Song from The Marriage of Geraint
© Alfred Tennyson
Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel, and lower the proud;
Turn thy wild wheel thro' sunshine, storm, and cloud;
Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.
The Death of Allegory
© Billy Collins
I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions
that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings
and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance
displaying their capital letters like license plates.
At San Giovanni Del Lago
© Alfred Austin
I leaned upon the rustic bridge,
And watched the streamlet make
Its chattering way past zigzag ridge
Down to the silent lake.
from Jubilate Agno
© Christopher Smart
let elizur rejoice with the partridge
Let Elizur rejoice with the Partridge, who is a prisoner of state and is proud of his keepers.
Love Is Master Still
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Since that it may not be,
The thing my soul desires,
And that Love's tenderer fires
Are doomed to loss and Time's sterility,
The Card-Dealer
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Could you not drink her gaze like wine?
Yet though its splendour swoon
Prince Athanase
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel,
Had grown quite weak and gray before his time;
Nor any could the restless griefs unravel
from The Botanic Garden, “The Economy of Vegetation”: Canto I
© Erasmus Darwin
Argument
The Genius of the place invites the Goddess of Botany, 1. She descends, is received by Spring, and the Elements, 59. Addresses the Nymphs of Fire. Star-light Night seen in the Camera Obscura, 81. I. Love created the Universe. Chaos explodes. All the Stars revolve. God, 97. II. Shooting Stars. Lightning. Rainbow. Colours of the Morning and Evening Skies. Exterior Atmosphere of inflammable Air. Twilight. Fire-balls. Aurora Borealis. Planets. Comets. Fixed Stars. Sun’s Orb, 115. III. 1. Fires of the Earth’s Centre. Animal Incubation, 137. 2. Volcanic Mountains. Venus visits the Cyclops, 149. IV. Heat confined on the Earth by the Air. Phosphoric lights in the Evening. Bolognian Stone. Calcined Shells. Memnon’s Harp, 173. Ignis fatuus. Luminous Flowers. Glow-worm. Fire-fly. Luminous Sea-insects. Electric Eel. Eagle armed with Lightning, 189. V. 1. Discovery of Fire. Medusa, 209. 2. The chemical Properties of Fire. Phosphorus. Lady in Love, 223. 3. Gunpowder, 237. VI. Steam-engine applied to Pumps, Bellows, Water-engines, Corn-mills, Coining, Barges, Waggons, Flying-chariots, 253. Labours of Hercules. Abyla and Calpe, 297. VII. 1. Electric Machine. Hesperian Dragon. Electric Kiss. Halo round the heads of Saints. Electric Shock. Fairy-rings, 335. 2. Death of Professor Richman, 371. 3. Franklin draws Lightning from the Clouds. Cupid snatches the Thunderbolt from Jupiter, 383. VIII. Phosphoric Acid and Vital Heat produced in the Blood. The great Egg of Night, 399. IX. Western Wind unfettered. Naiad released. Frost assailed. Whale attacked, 421. X. Buds and Flowers expanded by Warmth, Electricity, and Light. Drawings with colourless sympathetic Inks; which appear when warmed by the Fire, 457. XI. Sirius. Jupiter and Semele. Nothern Constellations. Ice-Islands navigated into the Tropic Seas. Rainy Monsoons, 497. XII. Points erected to procure Rain. Elijah on Mount Carmel, 549. Departure of the Nymphs of Fire like Sparks from artificial Fireworks, 587.
The Birch Tree
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Touched with beauty, I stand still and gaze
In the autumn twilight. Yellow leaves and brown
The grass enriching, gleam, or waver down
From lime and elm: far--glimmering through the haze
The quiet lamps in order twinkle; dumb
And fair the park lies; faint the city's hum.
The Great Pax Whitie
© Nikki Giovanni
The genesis was life
The genesis was death
In the genesis of death
Was the genesis of war
be still peace be still
A Poem For The Birth-Day Of The Right Honble The Lady Catharine Tufton
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
'Tis fit SERENA shou'd be sung.
High-born SERENA, Fair and Young,
To the States,
© Walt Whitman
To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad.
Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing?
Idyll XVI. The Value of Song
© Theocritus
"Kin before kith; to prosper is my prayer;
Poets, we know, are heaven's peculiar care.
We've Homer; and what other's worth a thought?
I call him chief of bards who costs me naught."
Sonnet XXXII: The First Time
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The first time that the sun rose on thine oath
To love me, I looked forward to the moon
Jerusalem Delivered - Book 05 - part 04
© Torquato Tasso
XLIX
"If then you scorn to be in prison pent,
