Great poems
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The First Easter
© Edgar Albert Guest
Dead they left Him in the tomb
And the impenetrable gloom,
Rolled the great stone to the door,
Dead, they thought, forevermore.
The Knight's Epitaph
© William Cullen Bryant
This is the church which Pisa, great and free,
Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls,
On the Seashore
© Anselm Hollo
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.
They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.
The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby's cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.
To Toussaint LOuverture
© William Wordsworth
TOUSSAINT, the most unhappy man of men!
Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough
Within thy hearing, or thy head be now
Pillowed in some deep dungeon's earless den;--
To a Lady on the Death of Her Husband
© Phillis Wheatley
To join for ever on the hills of light:
To thine embrace this joyful spirit moves
To thee, the partner of his earthly loves;
He welcomes thee to pleasures more refin'd,
And better suited to th' immortal mind.
A Summer Pastoral
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
It's hot to-day. The bees is buzzin'
Kinder don't-keer-like aroun'
In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 55
© Alfred Tennyson
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?
The House Of Dust: Part 02: 07:
© Conrad Aiken
'One white rose . . . or is it pink, to-day?'
They pause and smile, not caring what they say,
If only they may talk.
The crowd flows past them like dividing waters.
Dreaming they stand, dreaming they walk.
The Speaking Tree
© Katha Pollitt
for Robert Payne ?
Great Alexander sailing was from his true course turned
On the Beach at Night
© Walt Whitman
On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
A Historical Footnote to Consider Only When All Else Fails
© Nikki Giovanni
Why, LBJ has made it
quite clear to me
He doesn’t give a
Good goddamn what I think
(else why would he continue to masterbate in public?)
Song for Dead Children
© Katha Pollitt
We set great wreaths of brightness on the graves of the passionate
who required tribute of hot July flowers—
for you, O brittle-hearted, we bring offering
remembering how your wrists were thin and your delicate bones
not yet braced for conquering.
The Change
© Leon Gellert
Last year I heard the songs of birds,
And heard the trumpets of the bees.
I caught the winding rivers words,
And clutched at leaves of trees.
An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician
© Robert Browning
Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,
The not-incurious in God's handiwork
A Letter From A Stupid Woman
© Nizar Qabbani
Don't become annoyed, my dear Master,
If I revealed to you my feelings
For the Eastern man
Is not concerned with poetry or feelings
The Eastern man - and forgive my insolence - does not understand women
but over the sheets.
The Great Drum
© Anonymous
The circle of the Earth is the head of a great drum;
With the day, it moves upward - booming;
With the night, it moves downward - booming;
The day and the night are its song.
Content and Rich
© Robert Southwell
I dwell in Grace's court,
Enriched with Virtue's rights;
Faith guides my wit, Love leads my will,
Hope all my mind delights.
Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 3. The Musician's Tale; The Mother's Ghost
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Svend Dyring he rideth adown the glade;
I myself was young!
