Great poems
/ page 405 of 549 /
Last Will And Testament
© Nazim Hikmet
Comrades, if I don't live to see the day
-- I mean,if I die before freedom comes --
take me away
and bury me in a village cemetery in Anatolia.
Optimistic Man
© Nazim Hikmet
as a child he never plucked the wings off flies
he didn't tie tin cans to cats' tails
or lock beetles in matchboxes
or stomp anthills
On Living
© Nazim Hikmet
ILiving is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example--
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
A Sad State Of Freedom
© Nazim Hikmet
You waste the attention of your eyes,
the glittering labour of your hands,
and knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves
of which you'll taste not a morsel;
you are free to slave for others--
you are free to make the rich richer.
Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 2. The Poet's Tale; Lady Wentworth
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Such was the mansion where the great man dwelt.
A widower and childless; and he felt
The loneliness, the uncongenial gloom,
That like a presence haunted every room;
For though not given to weakness, he could feel
The pain of wounds, that ache because they heal.
I Dream Of My Grandmother And Great-grandmother
© Maria Mazziotti Gillan
I imagine them walking down rocky paths
toward me, strong, Italian women returning
at dusk from fields where they worked all day
on farms built like steps up the sides
The Pilgrim
© William Butler Yeats
I FASTED for some forty days on bread and buttermilk,
For passing round the bottle with girls in rags or silk,
In country shawl or Paris cloak, had put my wits astray,
And what's the good of women, for all that they can say
Is fol de rol de rolly O.
Transformation
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
She waited in a rose-hued room;
A wanton-hearted creature she,
But beautiful and bright to see
As some great orchid just in bloom.
At Vaucluse
© Alfred Austin
By Avignon's dismantled walls,
Where cloudless mid-March sunshine falls,
Rhone, through broad belts of green,
Flecked with the light of almond groves,
Upon itself reverting, roves
Reluctant from the scene.
The Creation
© James Weldon Johnson
And God stepped out on space,
And He looked around and said,
"I'm lonely -
I'll make me a world."
On The Third Day
© Stephen Spender
On the first summer day I lay in the valley.
Above rocks the sky sealed my eyes with a leaf
A Song in Time of Revolution. 1860
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
THE HEART of the rulers is sick, and the high-priest covers his head:
For this is the song of the quick that is heard in the ears of the dead.
Seraphita
© Ernest Christopher Dowson
But when the storm is highest, and the thunders blare,
And sea and sky are riven, O moon of all my night!
Stoop down but once in pity of my great despair,
And let thine hand, though over late to help, alight
But once upon my pale eyes and my drowning hair,
Before the great waves conquer in the last vain fight.
The Trio
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
We love but once. The great gold orb of light
From dawn to even-tide doth cast his ray;
But the full splendor of his perfect might
Is reached but once throughout the livelong day.
At His Grave
© Alfred Austin
LEAVE me a little while alone,
Here at his grave that still is strown
With crumbling flower and wreath;
The laughing rivulet leaps and falls,
The thrush exults, the cuckoo calls,
And he lies hushd beneath.
Stars Wheel in Purple
© Hilda Doolittle
Stars wheel in purple, yours is not so rare
as Hesperus, nor yet so great a star
as bright Aldeboran or Sirius,
nor yet the stained and brilliant one of War;
Sheltered Garden
© Hilda Doolittle
Every way ends, every road,
every foot-path leads at last
to the hill-crest --
then you retrace your steps,
or find the same slope on the other side,
precipitate.
