Great poems
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An EPISTLE from Alexander to Hephaestion In His Sickness
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
But why these single Griefs shou'd I expose?
The World no Mirth, no War, no Bus'ness knows,
But, hush'd with Sorrow stands, to favour thy Repose.
The Man To Be
© Edgar Albert Guest
Some day the world will need a man of courage in a time of doubt,
And somewhere, as a little boy, that future hero plays about.
A Tale of the Miser and the Poet
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
Noquoth the Man of broken Slumbers:
Yet we have Patrons for our Numbers;
There are Mecænas's among 'em.
Drumcolliher
© William Percy French
I've been to a great many places,
And wonderful sights I've seen
Mock Panegyric on a Young Friend
© Jane Austen
In measured verse I'll now rehearse
The charms of lovely Anna:
And, first, her mind is unconfined
Like any vast savannah.
The Holy Grail
© Alfred Tennyson
`Then leaving the pale nun, I spake of this
To all men; and myself fasted and prayed
Always, and many among us many a week
Fasted and prayed even to the uttermost,
Expectant of the wonder that would be.
The Hermit Goes Up Attic
© Maxine Kumin
By 1816, whatever the crop goes sour.
Three tallies cut by the knife are all
in a powder of dead flies and wood dust pale as flour.
Death, if it came then, has since gone dry and small.
Listen, Lord: A Prayer
© James Weldon Johnson
O Lord, we come this morning
Knee-bowed and body-bent
Before Thy throne of grace.
O Lord--this morning--
Go Down, Death
© James Weldon Johnson
And Jesus took his own hand and wiped away her tears,
And he smoothed the furrows from her face,
And the angels sang a little song,
And Jesus rocked her in his arms,
And kept a-saying: Take your rest,
Take your rest.
Englands Openers
© Gerald England
Bare midrifs above belt-like skirts
Bedraggled daffodils line the lanes
Belladonna is unlucky
Beyond the wooded embankment home
Big Irma
To Sir Joshua Reynolds
© William Cowper
Dear President, whose art sublime
Gives perpetuity to time,
And bids transactions of a day,
That fleeting hours would waft away
The Vision Of The Maid Of Orleans - The Second Book
© Robert Southey
She spake, and lo! celestial radiance beam'd
Amid the air, such odors wafting now
The Girl Of The U.S.A.
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Oh! the maidens of France are certainly fine,
And I think every fellow will state
And Thou Art Dead, As Young and Fair
© Lord Byron
And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;
And form so soft, and charms so rare,
Too soon return'd to Earth!
Mazeppa
© Lord Byron
'Twas after dread Pultowa's day,
When fortune left the royal Swede -
Around a slaughtered army lay,
No more to combat and to bleed.
The Riders
© Katharine Tynan
RHEIMS is down in fire and smoke,
The hour of God is at the stroke.
Round and round the ruined place,-
Jesu, Mary, give us grace!
The Siege of Corinth
© Lord Byron
Still the old man stood erect,
And Alp's career a moment check'd.
"Yield thee, Minotti; quarter take,
For thine own, thy daughter's sake."
The Giaour
© Lord Byron
A Fragment of a Turkish TaleThe tale which these disjointed fragments present, is founded upon circumstances now less common in the East than formerly; either because the ladies are more circumspect than in the 'olden time', or because the Christians have better fortune, or less enterprise. The story, when entire, contained the adventures of a female slave, who was thrown, in the Mussulman manner, into the sea for infidelity, and avenged by a young Venetian, her lover, at the time the Seven Islands were possessed by the Republic of Venice, and soon after the Arnauts were beaten back from the Morea, which they had ravaged for some time subsequent to the Russian invasion. The desertion of the Mainotes on being refused the plunder of Misitra, led to the abandonment of that enterprise, and to the desolation of the Morea,during which the cruelty exercised on all sides was unparalleled even in the annals of the faithful.
No breath of air to break the wave
That rolls below the Athenian's grave,
That tomb which, gleaming o'er the cliff
