Great poems
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Medea in Athens
© Augusta Davies Webster
Dimly I recall
some prophecy a god breathed by my mouth.
It could not err. What was it? For I think;-
it told his death¹.
Emergency Haying
© Hayden Carruth
Coming home with the last load I ride standing
on the wagon tongue, behind the tractor
in hot exhaust, lank with sweat,
Trilogy Of Passion 03 Atonement
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Eternal beauty has its fruit to bear;
The eye grows moist, in yearnings blest reveres
The godlike worth of music as of tears.
Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest
© Boris Pasternak
In his fifth year the son, deep in the backseat
of his father’s Ford and the mysterium
Vobiscum Est Iope
© Thomas Campion
When thou must home to shades of underground,
And there arrived, a new admirèd guest,
The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round,
White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest,
To hear the stories of thy finished love
From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move;
Intimations Of The Beautiful
© Madison Julius Cawein
The hills are full of prophecies
And ancient voices of the dead;
Of hidden shapes that no man sees,
Pale, visionary presences,
That speak the things no tongue hath said,
No mind hath thought, no eye hath read.
Writing
© Howard Nemerov
The cursive crawl, the squared-off characters
these by themselves delight, even without
Oh Lovely Rock
© Robinson Jeffers
We stayed the night in the pathless gorge of Ventana Creek, up the east fork.
The rock walls and the mountain ridges hung forest on forest above our heads, maple and redwood,
Laurel, oak, madrone, up to the high and slender Santa Lucian firs that stare up the cataracts
Of slide-rock to the star-color precipices.
Passion for Solitude
© Cesare Pavese
The night doesn’t matter. The square patch of sky
whispers all the loud noises to me, and a small star
struggles in emptiness, far from all foods,
from all houses, alien. It isn’t enough for itself,
it needs too many companions. Here in the dark, alone,
my body is calm, it feels it’s in charge.
A Man Young And Old: VI. His Memories
© William Butler Yeats
We should be hidden from their eyes,
Being but holy shows
And bodies broken like a thorn
Whereon the bleak north blows,
To think of buried Hector
And that none living knows.
Greatness
© Edgar Albert Guest
We can be great by helping one another;
We can be loved for very simple deeds;
Who has the grateful mention of a brother
Has really all the honor that he needs.
Sonnet II
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
I FEAR thee not, O Death! nay oft I pine
To clasp thy passionless bosom to mine own,
And on thy heart sob out my latest moan,
Ere lapped and lost in thy strange sleep divine;
Exultation
© Emma Lazarus
BEHOLD, I walked abroad at early morning,
The fields of June were bathed in dew and lustre,
The hills were clad with light as with a garment.
After Thomas Kempis
© George MacDonald
Who follows Jesus shall not walk
In darksome road with danger rife;
But in his heart the Truth will talk,
And on his way will shine the Life.
To a Gentleman and Lady on the Death of the Lady's Brother and Sister, and a Child of the Name Avis, Aged One Year
© Phillis Wheatley
But, Madam, let your grief be laid aside,
And let the fountain of your tears be dry'd,
In vain they flow to wet the dusty plain,
Your sighs are wafted to the skies in vain,
Your pains they witness, but they can no more,
While Death reigns tyrant o'er this mortal shore.
For No Clear Reason
© Robert Creeley
I dreamt last night
the fright was over, that
the dust came, and then water,
and women and men, together
again, and all was quiet
in the dim moon’s light.
To the Angel Spirit of the Most Excellent Sir Philip Sidney
© Mary Sidney Herbert
(Variant printed in Samuel Daniel’s 1623 Works)
To thee, pure spirit, to thee alone addressed
