Great poems
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St. Francis And The Sow
© Galway Kinnell
The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
Acrostic : Georgiana Augusta Keats
© John Keats
Kind sister! aye, this third name says you are;
Enchanted has it been the Lord knows where;
And may it taste to you like good old wine,
Take you to real happiness and give
Sons, daughters and a home like honied hive.
Ode To Walt Whitman
© Stephen Vincent Benet
"Let me taste all, my flesh and my fat are sweet,
My body hardy as lilac, the strong flower.
I have tasted the calamus; I can taste the nightbane."
War Song
© John Davidson
In anguish we uplift
A new unhallowed song:
The race is to the swift;
The battle to the strong.
Perdita
© Rolf Boldrewood
She is beautiful yet, with her wondrous hair
And eyes that are stormy with fitful light,
The delicate hues of brow and cheek
Are unmarred all, rose-clear and bright;
That matchless frame yet holds at bay
The crouching bloodhounds, Remorse, Decay.
The Last Rose
© John Davidson
'O WHICH is the last rose?'
A blossom of no name.
At midnight the snow came;
At daybreak a vast rose,
In darkness unfurl'd,
O'er-petall'd the world.
What The Engines Said
© Francis Bret Harte
What was it the Engines said,
Pilots touching,--head to head
Facing on the single track,
Half a world behind each back?
This is what the Engines said,
Unreported and unread.
A Ballad of Hell
© John Davidson
'A letter from my love to-day!
Oh, unexpected, dear appeal!'
She struck a happy tear away,
And broke the crimson seal.
The Rhyme of the Three Greybeards
© Henry Lawson
He'd been for years in Sydney "a-acting of the goat",
His name was Joseph Swallow, "the Great Australian Pote",
In spite of all the stories and sketches that he wrote.
Why The Classics
© Zbigniew Herbert
1
in the fourth book of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides tells among other things
the story of his unsuccessful expedition
The Neophyte
© Aleister Crowley
To-night I tread the unsubstantial way
That looms before me, as the thundering night
Falls on the ocean: I must stop, and pray
One little prayer, and then - what bitter fight
The Mantra-Yoga
© Aleister Crowley
Even as a cancer, so this passion gnaws
Away my soul, and will not ease its jaws
Till I am dead. Then let me die! Who knows
But that this corpse committed to the earth
May be the occasion of some happier birth?
Spring's earliest snowdrop? Summer's latest rose?
Ages And Ages, Returning At Intervals
© Walt Whitman
AGES and ages, returning at intervals,
Undestroy'd, wandering immortal,
The Garden of Janus
© Aleister Crowley
IThe cloud my bed is tinged with blood and foam.
The vault yet blazes with the sun
Writhing above the West, brave hippodrome
Whose gladiators shock and shun
The Four Winds
© Aleister Crowley
The South wind said to the palms:
My lovers sing me psalms;
But are they as warm as those
That Laylah's lover knows?
The Disciples
© Aleister Crowley
Beneath the vine tree and the fig
Where mortal cares may not intrude,
On melon and on sucking pig
Although their brains are bright and big
Banquet the Great White Brotherhood.
The Buddhist
© Aleister Crowley
There never was a face as fair as yours,
A heart as true, a love as pure and keen.
These things endure, if anything endures.
But, in this jungle, what high heaven immures
A Defence Of English Spring
© Alfred Austin
Unnamed, unknown, but surely bred
Where Thames, once silver, now runs lead,
Hymn to Pan
© Aleister Crowley
Thrill with lissome lust of the light,
O man ! My man !
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan ! Io Pan .
At Sea
© Aleister Crowley
As night hath stars, more rare than ships
In ocean, faint from pole to pole,
So all the wonder of her lips
Hints her innavigable soul.
