Great poems
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Greatness
© Charles Harpur
That man is truly great, and he alone
Who venerates, of present things or past
The Maids Of Attitash
© John Greenleaf Whittier
In sky and wave the white clouds swam,
And the blue hills of Nottingham
Through gaps of leafy green
Across the lake were seen,
Flower O The Peach
© Alice Guerin Crist
When I came down Toowoomba streets,
The evening air was full of sweets,
Of Springtime odours vague and faint,
Salmacis and Hermaphroditus.
© Francis Beaumont
MY wanton lines doe treate of amorous loue,
Such as would bow the hearts of gods aboue:
Creation
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
The impulse of all love is to create.
God was so full of love, in his embrace
Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D.
© Jonathan Swift
Dear honest Ned is in the gout,
Lies rack'd with pain, and you without:
How patiently you hear him groan!
How glad the case is not your own!
Dream Song 324
© John Berryman
Henry in Ireland to Bill underground:
Rest well, who worked so hard, who made a good sound
constantly, for so many years:
your high-jinks delighted the continents & our ears:
you had so many girls your life was a triumph
and you loved your one wife.
Hezekiah
© Thomas Parnell
From the bleak Beach and broad expanse of sea,
To lofty Salem, Thought direct thy way;
Mount thy light chariot, move along the plains,
And end thy flight where Hezekiah reigns.
Not All The Singers Of A Thousand Years
© Lord Alfred Douglas
And did you ask who signed the plea with you?
Fools! It was signed already with the sign
Of great dead men, of God-like Socrates,
Shakespeare and Plato and the Florentine
Who conquered form. And all your pretty crew
Once, and once only, might have stood with these.
Book Ninth [Residence in France]
© William Wordsworth
EVEN as a river,--partly (it might seem)
Yielding to old remembrances, and swayed
The Trial
© Zbigniew Herbert
in the first row sat an old fat woman
dressed up as my mother with a theatrical gesture she raised
a handkerchief to her dirty eyes but didn't cry
it must have lasted a long time I don't know even how long
the red blood of the sunset was rising in the gowns of the judges
The White Ship Henry I. Of England.25th November 1120
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
By none but me can the tale be told,
The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold.
Lovesong
© Ted Hughes
He loved her and she loved him.
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
Daphne
© Henry Kendall
Daphne! Ladon's daughter, Daphne! Set thyself in silver light,
Take thy thoughts of fairest texture, weave them into words of white -
Kinmont Willie
© Andrew Lang
O have ye na heard o the fause Sakelde?
O have ye na heard o the keen Lord Scroop?
How they hae taen bauld Kinmont Willie,
On Hairibee to hang him up?
Though Narrow Be That Old Mans Cares .
© William Wordsworth
THOUGH narrow be that old Man's cares, and near,
The poor old Man is greater than he seems:
For he hath waking empire, wide as dreams;
An ample sovereignty of eye and ear.
My Father Teaches Me to Dream by Jan Beatty: American Life in Poetry #72 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laure
© Ted Kooser
Those who survived the Great Depression of the 1930s have a tough, no-nonsense take on what work is. If when I was young I'd told my father I was looking for fulfilling work, he would have looked at me as if I'd just arrived from Mars. Here the Pennsylvania poet, Jan Beatty, takes on the voice of her father to illustrate the thinking of a generation of Americans.
