Great poems
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Lohengrin
© Emma Lazarus
THE holy bell, untouched by human hands,
Clanged suddenly, and tolled with solemn knell.
Between the massive, blazoned temple-doors,
Thrown wide, to let the summer morning in,
The Immediate Life
© Paul Eluard
Whats become of you why this white hair and pink
Why this forehead these eyes rent apart heart-rending
The great misunderstanding of the marriage of radium
Solitude chases me with its rancour.
The Cloth of the Tempest
© Kenneth Patchen
These of living emanate a formidable light,
Which is equal to death, and when used
The Truly Great
© Stephen Spender
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Palestine: 1917
© Katharine Tynan
How strange if it should fall to you,
To me, our boys should do the deed
The great Crusaders failed to do!
To win Christ's Sepulchre: to bleed,
So the immortal dream come true.
The Imperfect Enjoyment
© John Wilmot
Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms,
I filled with love, and she all over charms;
The Engine
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Into the gloom of the deep, dark night,
With panting breath and a startled scream;
Swift as a bird in sudden flight
Darts this creature of steel and steam.
On Shakespeare. 1630
© Patrick Kavanagh
What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,
The labor of an age in pilèd stones,
The Doubt of Future Foes
© Queen Elizabeth I
The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,
And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy;
Epitaph
© Katherine Philips
On her Son H.P. at St. Syths Church where her body also lies interred
What on Earth deserves our trust?
OEnone
© Alfred Tennyson
"Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.
He smiled, and opening out his milk-white palm
Disclosed a fruit of pure Hesperian gold,
That smelt ambrosially, and while I look'd
And listen'd, the full-flowing river of speech
Came down upon my heart.
The Played-Out Humorist
© William Schwenck Gilbert
Oh happy was that humorist - the first that made a pun at all -
Who when a joke occurred to him, however poor and mean,
Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all -
How popular at dinners must that humorist have been!
Falling Asleep over the Aeneid
© Robert Lowell
An old man in Concord forgets to go to morning service. He falls asleep, while reading Vergil, and dreams that he is Aeneas at the funeral of Pallas, an Italian prince.
The sun is blue and scarlet on my page,
Stanzas
© Sir Henry Parkes
Up go the beautiful and world-watch'd stars,
Lifting the glory of America,
To Thyrza: And Thou Art Dead, As Young And Fair
© George Gordon Byron
And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
To M.L. Lozinsky
© Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
I feel the undefeated fear,
In presence of the misty heights;
I'm glad that swallows fly here
And I enjoy the belfry's flight!
