Great poems
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On The Five Senses
© Jonathan Swift
All of us in one you'll find, Brethren of a wondrous kind;
Yet among us all no brother
Knows one tittle of the other;
We in frequent councils are,
The King Of Thule.*
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(* This ballad is also introduced in Faust,
where it is sung by Margaret.)IN Thule lived a monarch,Still faithful to the grave,
To whom his dying mistressA golden goblet gave.Beyond all price he deem'd it,He quaff'd it at each feast;
And, when he drain'd that goblet,His tears to flow ne'er ceas'd.And when he felt death near him,His cities o'er he told,
Thoughts On Jesus Christ's Descent Into Hell.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[THE remarkable Poem of which this is a literal
but faint representation, was written when Goethe was only sixteen
years old. It derives additional interest from the fact of its being
the very earliest piece of his that is preserved. The few other
pieces included by Goethe under the title of Religion and Church
are polemical, and devoid of interest to the English reader.]
Poems On Man
© Rabindranath Tagore
Man is immortal; therefore he must die endlessly.
For life is a creative idea;
it can only find itself in changing forms.
On Hurricane Jackson
© Alan Dugan
Now his noses bridge is broken, one eye
will not focus and the other is a stray;
The Man Who Discovered The Use Of A Chair
© Alfred Noyes
Now he went one night to a dinner of state
_Hear! hear!
In the proud Guildhall!_
And he sat on his chair, and he ate from a plate;
But nobody heard his opinions at all;
The Legend Of The Horseshoe.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
WHAT time our Lord still walk'd the earth,
Unknown, despised, of humble birth,
And on Him many a youth attended
(His words they seldom comprehended),
The River Of Rivers In Connecticut
© Wallace Stevens
There is a great river this side of Stygia
Before one comes to the first black cataracts
And trees that lack the intelligence of trees.
The Well Dressed Man With A Beard
© Wallace Stevens
After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.
If the rejected things, the things denied,
True
© Edgar Albert Guest
The shoemaker sticks to his last and he's right;
By divorce, though, we wouldn't be cursed,
If everyone else in this great world of ours
Would be willing to stick to his first.
To My Worthy Friend Mr. Peter Lilly: On That Excellent Pict
© Richard Lovelace
Whilst the true eaglet this quick luster spies,
And by his SUN'S enlightens his owne eyes;
He cures his cares, his burthen feeles, then streight
Joyes that so lightly he can beare such weight;
Whilst either eithers passion doth borrow,
And both doe grieve the same victorious sorrow.
Paradise
© George Herbert
I BLESSE thee, Lord, because I G R O W
Among thy trees, which in a R O W
To thee both fruit and order O W.
Prologue To A Charade.--"Damn-Ages"
© Horace Smith
In olden time--in great Eliza's age,
When rare Ben Jonson ruled the humorous stage,
The Wilderness
© Kathleen Raine
I came too late to the hills: they were swept bare
Winters before I was born of song and story,
Of spell or speech with power of oracle or invocation,
The River
© Kathleen Raine
In my second dream
Pure I was and free
By the rapid stream,
My crystal house the sky,
The pure crystalline sky.
On the Earl of Essex
© Henry King
Essex twice made unhappy by a Wife,
Yet Marry'd worse unto the Peoples strife:
He who by two Divorces did untie
His Bond of Wedlock and of Loyalty:
