Great poems
/ page 387 of 549 /
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 05:
© Conrad Aiken
The cigarette-smoke loops and slides above us,
Dipping and swirling as the waiter passes;
You strike a match and stare upon the flame.
The tiny fire leaps in your eyes a moment,
And dwindles away as silently as it came.
A Hymn To My God
© Sir Henry Wotton
OH thou great Power, in whom I move,
For whom I live, to whom I die,
Dream-Land (I)
© Frances Anne Kemble
All the night long you come to me in dreams,
My lady dear! Ah, wherefore do you so?
The Country Schoolmaster.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"I feel new life in every limb!"
Our traveller cried in ecstasy.
"Who art thou who thus gladden'st me?
May Heaven such blessings ever send!
Ne'er may I want a jovial friend!"
Ballad Of Low-Lie-Down
© Madison Julius Cawein
John-a-Dreams and Harum-Scarum
Came a-riding into town:
At the Sign o' the Jug-and-Jorum
There they met with Low-lie-down.
Sow
© Sylvia Plath
God knows how our neighbor managed to breed
His great sow:
Whatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid
To Charles Eliot Norton
© James Russell Lowell
The wind is roistering out of doors,
My windows shake and my chimney roars;
My Elmwood chimneys seem crooning to me,
As of old, in their moody, minor key,
And out of the past the hoarse wind blows,
As I sit in my arm-chair, and toast my toes.
The Sky Watcher
© William Wilfred Campbell
Black rolls the phantom chimney-smoke
Beneath the wintry moon;
Rosa Flammea
© Arthur Symons
Beautiful demon, O veil those eyes of fire,
Cover your breads that are whiter than milk, and ruddy
Tempura Mutantur
© James Russell Lowell
The world turns mild; democracy, they say,
Rounds the sharp knobs of character away,
June.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Soon between us rise to sight
Valleys cool, with bushes light,
Streams and meadows; next appear
Trilogy of Passion: I. TO WERTHER.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The farewell sunbeams bless'd our ravish'd view;
Fate bade thee go,--to linger here was mine,--
Going the first, the smaller loss was thine.
The Youth And The Millstream.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[This sweet Ballad, and the one entitled The
Maid of the Mill's Repentance, were written on the occasion of a
visit paid by Goethe to Switzerland. The Maid of the Mill's Treachery,
to which the latter forms the sequel, was not written till the following
year.]
Dedication
© Rainer Maria Rilke
I have great faith in all things not yet spoken.
I want my deepest pious feelings freed.
What no one yet has dared to risk and warrant
will be for me a challenge I must meet.
A Parable.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I PICKED a rustic nosegay lately,
And bore it homewards, musing greatly;
When, heated by my hand, I found
The heads all drooping tow'rd the ground.
The God And The Bayadere.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[This very fine Ballad was also first given in the Horen.]
(MAHADEVA is one of the numerous names of Seeva, the destroyer,--
the great god of the Brahmins.)
Lines On Seeing Schiller's Skull.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[This curious imitation of the ternary metre
of Dante was written at the age of 77.]WITHIN a gloomy charnel-house one dayI view'd the countless skulls, so strangely mated,
And of old times I thought, that now were grey.Close pack'd they stand, that once so fiercely hated,
And hardy bones, that to the death contended,Are lying cross'd,--to lie for ever, fated.
Two Sunsets
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
In the fair morning of his life,
When his pure heart lay in his breast,
Panting, with all that wild unrest
To plunge into the great world's strife
