Great poems
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Going Up Yoyang Tower
© Li Po
We climbed Yoyang Tower with
all the scene around coming
into vision; looking up the
Great River seeing boats turn
Farewell to Secretary Shu-yun at the Hsieh Tiao Villa in Hsuan-Chou
© Li Po
Since yesterday had throw me and bolt,
Today has hurt my heart even more.
The autumn wildgeese have a long wing for escort
As I face them from this villa, drinking my wine.
Choriambics -- I
© Rupert Brooke
Ah! not now, when desire burns, and the wind calls, and the suns of spring
Light-foot dance in the woods, whisper of life, woo me to wayfaring;
Chiang Chin Chiu
© Li Po
See the waters of the Yellow River leap down from Heaven, Roll away to the deep sea and never turn again! See at the mirror
in the High Hall Aged men bewailing white locks - In the morning, threads of silk, In the evening flakes of snow. Snatch the joys
of life as they come and use them to the full; Do not leave the silver cup idly glinting at the moon. The things that Heaven made
Man was meant to use; A thousand guilders scattered to the wind may come back again. Roast mutton and sliced beef will only
Bringing in the Wine
© Li Po
See how the Yellow River's water move out of heaven.
Entering the ocean,never to return.
See how lovely locks in bright mirrors in high chambers,
Though silken-black at morning, have changed by night to snow.
Closing Time: Public Library
© Lesbia Harford
At ten o'clock the great gong sounds its dread
Prelude to splendour. I push back my chair,
And all the people leave their books. We flock,
Still acquiescent, down the marble stair
Into the dark where we can't read. And thought
Swoops down insatiate through the starry air.
In The Shadow Of The Beeches
© Madison Julius Cawein
In the shadow of the beeches,
Where the fragile wildflowers bloom;
Impressions De Nuit London
© Lord Alfred Douglas
That's the great town at night : I see her breasts,
Pricked out with lamps they stand like huge black towers.
I think they move ! I hear her panting breath.
And that's her head where the tiara rests.
And in her brain, through lanes as dark as death,
Men creep like thoughts . . . The lamps are like pale flowers.
On Dragon Hill
© Li Po
Drunk on Dragon Hill tonight,
the banished immortal, Great White,turns among yellow flowers,
his smile wide,as his hat sails away on the wind
and he dances away in the moonlight.
On A Young Poetesss Grave
© William Cosmo Monkhouse
UNDER her gentle seeing,
In her delicate little hand,
On Hearing The News From Venice
© George Meredith
(The Death Of Robert Browning)
Now dumb is he who waked the world to speak,
Good Old Moon
© Li Po
When I was a boy I called the moon a
white plate of jade, sometimes it looked
like a great mirror hanging in the sky,
first came the two legs of the fairy
A Mountain Revelry
© Li Po
To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows,
We drained a hundred jugs of wine.
A splendid night it was . . . .
In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed,
On the Death of Mr. William Hervey
© Abraham Cowley
IT was a dismal and a fearful night:
Scarce could the Morn drive on th' unwilling Light,
Ode to Mr. Graham, the Aeronaut
© Thomas Hood
Dear Graham, whilst the busy crowd,
The vain, the wealthy, and the proud,
Their meaner flights pursue,
Let us cast off the foolish ties
That bind us to the earth, and rise
And take a bird's-eye view!
From A Full Moon In March
© William Butler Yeats
PARNELL'S FUNERAL
UNDER the Great Comedian's tomb the crowd.
La Bella Bona Roba. To My Lady H. Ode
© Richard Lovelace
I.
Tell me, ye subtill judges in loves treasury,
Inform me, which hath most inricht mine eye,
This diamonds greatnes, or its clarity?
Freedoms Plow
© Langston Hughes
First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on the world,
On the great wooded world,
On the rich soil of the world,
On the rivers of the world.
Democracy
© Langston Hughes
Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
