Great poems
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A Soul in Prison
© Augusta Davies Webster
"They," you'd answer me,
if you owned my instance, "sorrowed in their doubt,
and did not wholly doubt, and loved."
In Reference to her Children, 23 June 1659
© Anne Bradstreet
I had eight birds hatcht in one nest,
Four Cocks were there, and Hens the rest.
from The Task, Book II: The Time-Piece
© William Cowper
(excerpt)
England, with all thy faults, I love thee still
New England Cocky
© Anonymous
"To Mary I give my pet kangaroo,
"May it prove to turn out a great blessing, too;
"To Michael I leave the old cockatoo,
"And to Bridget I'll give the piebald emu.
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 07:
© Conrad Aiken
Study them . . . you will see there, in the porcelain,
If you stare hard enough, a sort of swimming
Of lights and shadows, ghosts within a crystal
My brain unfolding! There you'll see me sitting
Day after day, close to a certain window,
Looking down, sometimes, to see the people . . .
The Banks Of Wye - Book III
© Robert Bloomfield
PEACE to your white-wall'd cots, ye vales,
Untainted fly your summer gales;
On the Death of the Late Earl of Rochester
© Aphra Behn
Mourn, mourn, ye Muses, all your loss deplore,
The young, the noble Strephon is no more.
Julian and Maddalo
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
As thus I spoke
Servants announc'd the gondola, and we
Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea
Sail'd to the island where the madhouse stands.
In The Seven Woods
© William Butler Yeats
I HAVE heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods
Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees
Year’s End
© Lola Ridge
Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.
Paradise Regain'd: Book IV (1671)
© Patrick Kavanagh
PErplex'd and troubl'd at his bad success
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
The Fly
© Ishmael Reed
O hideous little bat, the size of snot,
With polyhedral eye and shabby clothes,
The Aeneid of Virgil: Book 10
© Publius Vergilius Maro
THE GATES of heavn unfold: Jove summons all
The gods to council in the common hall.
Hildebrand, Who was frightened by a Passing Motor, and was brought to Reason.
© Hilaire Belloc
"Oh murder! What was that, Papa!"
"My child, It was a Motor-Car,
A most Ingenious Toy!
Designed to Captivate and Charm
Much rather than to rouse Alarm
In any English Boy.
‘The Opal Sea’
© Ella Higginson
An inland sea – blue as a sapphire – set
Within a sparkling, emerald mountain chain
Revenge of Injuries
© Elizabeth Carew
The fairest action of our human life
Is scorning to revenge an injury;
For who forgives without a further strife,
His adversary's heart to him doth tie.
And 'tis a firmer conquest truly said,
To win the heart, than overthrow the head.
A Hymn
© James Thomson
These, as they change, Almighty Father, these
Are but the varied God. The rolling year
