Great poems
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A Code of Morals
© Rudyard Kipling
Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.
The Coastwise Lights
© Rudyard Kipling
Our brows are bound with spindrift and the weed is on our knees;
Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas.
From reef and rock and skerry -- over headland, ness, and voe --
The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!
Morning Lament
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
OH thou cruel deadly-lovely maiden,
Tell me what great sin have I committed,
That thou keep'st me to the rack thus fasten'd,
That thou hast thy solemn promise broken?
February. Take ink and weep,
© Boris Pasternak
February. Take ink and weep,
write February as youre sobbing,
while black Spring burns deep
through the slush and throbbing.
A Charm
© Rudyard Kipling
These shall cleanse and purify
Webbed and inward-turning eye;
These shall show thee treasure hid,
Thy familiar fields amid;
And reveal (which is thy need)
Every man a King indeed!
Chapter Headings
© Rudyard Kipling
When the earth was sick and the skies were grey,
And the woods were rotted with rain,
The Dead Man rode through the autumn day
To visit his love again.
The Captive
© Rudyard Kipling
Not with an outcry to Allah nor any complaining
He answered his name at the muster and stood to the chaining.
When the twin anklets were nipped on the leg-bars that held them,
He brotherly greeted the armourers stooping to weld them.
Song Of The Stygian Naiades
© Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Proserpine may pull her flowers,
Wet with dew or wet with tears,
The Burial
© Rudyard Kipling
It is his will that he look forth
Across the world he won --
The granite of the ancient North --
Great spaces washed with sun.
Jerusalem Delivered - Book 04 - part 03
© Torquato Tasso
XXXIII
Thus passed she, praised, wished, and wondered at,
Godminister Chimes
© James Russell Lowell
Written In Aid Of A Chime Of Bells For Christ Church, Cambridge
Godminster? Is it Fancy's play?
To Miss --,
© Samuel Johnson
{On her playing upon the harpsichord in
a room hung with flower-pieces of her own painting}.
The Betrothed
© Rudyard Kipling
Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.
Harpalus. An Ancient English Pastoral
© Henry Howard
Phylida was a faire mayde,
As fresh as any flowre;
Whom Harpalus the herdman prayde
To be his paramour.
The Bell Buoy
© Rudyard Kipling
1896
They christened my brother of old--
And a saintly name he bears--
They gave him his place to hold
Beast and Man in India
© Rudyard Kipling
Written for John Lockwood Kipling's
They killed a Child to please the Gods
In Earth's young penitence,
And I have bled in that Babe's stead
Because of innocence.
The Rowers
© Rudyard Kipling
The banked oars fell an hundred strong,
And backed and threshed and ground,
But bitter was the rowers' song
As they brought the war-boat round.
The Ballad of the King's Jest
© Rudyard Kipling
When spring-time flushes the desert grass,
Our kafilas wind through the Khyber Pass.
Lean are the camels but fat the frails,
Light are the purses but heavy the bales,
Lord I Owe Thee a Death
© Alice Meynell
Man pays the debt with new munificence,
Not piecemeal now, not slowly, by the old;
Not grudgingly, by the effaced thin pence,
But greatly and in gold.
A Ballad of Jakkko Hill
© Rudyard Kipling
One moment bid the horses wait,
Since tiffin is not laid till three,
Below the upward path and straight
You climbed a year ago with me.
