Great poems
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Convict Once - Part First.
© James Brunton Stephens
I.
FREE again! Free again! eastward and westward, before me, behind me,
Wide lies Australia! and free are my feet, as my soul is, to roam!
Oh joy unwonted of space undetermined! No limit assigned me!
Freedom conditioned by nought save the need and desire of a home!
To The Reader
© John Bunyan
The title page will show, if there thou look,
Who are the proper subjects of this book.
They're boys and girls of all sorts and degrees,
Song of Myself
© Walt Whitman
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
Regret
© Charles Harpur
There's a regret that from my bosom aye
Wrings forth a dirgy sweetness, like a rain
Hope Beyond The Grave
© James Beattie
'Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more;
I mourn, but, ye woodlands, I mourn not for you;
For morn is approaching, your charms to restore,
Perfumed with fresh fragrance, and glittering with dew:
(Amidst the rush and roar of life...)
© Anselm Hollo
Amidst the rush and roar of life, O beauty, carved in stone, you stand mute and still, alone and aloof.
Great Time sits enamoured at your feet and repeats to you:
Speak, speak to me, my love; speak, my mute bride!
But your speech is shut up in stone, O you immovably fair!
Grant
© Henry Cuyler Bunner
Smile on, thou new-come Springif on thy breeze
The breath of a great man go wavering up
And out of this world's knowledge, it is well.
The Times
© Charles Churchill
The time hath been, a boyish, blushing time,
When modesty was scarcely held a crime;
At a Symphony
© Louise Imogen Guiney
Oh, I would have these tongues oracular
Dip into silence, tease no more, let be!
The Avenging Angel
© William Wilfred Campbell
As I rise and rise in the cloudy skies,
No sound in the silence is heard,
Save the lonesome whirr
Of my engine's purr,
Like the wings of a monster bird.
A Vision Of The Sea
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
'Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail
Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale:
From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven,
And when lightning is loosed, like a deluge from Heaven,
Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle upon the Restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the Estates and Honours of his Ancestors
© André Breton
High in the breathless Hall the Minstrel sate,
And Emont's murmur mingled with the Song.—
The words of ancient time I thus translate,
A festal strain that hath been silent long:—
Walking on Tiptoe
© Ted Kooser
Long ago we quit lifting our heels
like the others—horse, dog, and tiger—
The Slave Trade, A Poem
© Hannah More
If heaven has into being deign'd to call
Thy light, O Liberty! to shine on all;
Town Eclogues: Monday; Roxana or the Drawing-Room
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
ROXANA from the court retiring late,
Sigh'd her soft sorrows at St. JAMES's gate:
Such heavy thoughts lay brooding in her breast,
Not her own chairmen wth more weight opprest;
They groan the cruel load they're doom'd to bear ;
She in these gentler sounds express'd her care.
Sonnet XL: Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all
© William Shakespeare
Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all:
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
Zebra
© C. K. Williams
Kids once carried tin soldiers in their pockets as charms
against being afraid, but how trust soldiers these days
not to load up, aim, blast the pants off your legs?
Town Eclogues: Saturday; The Small-Pox
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
FLAVIA. THE wretched FLAVIA on her couch reclin'd,
Thus breath'd the anguish of a wounded mind ;
A glass revers'd in her right hand she bore,
For now she shun'd the face she sought before.
