Great poems
/ page 439 of 549 /The Commercial Traveler
© Christopher Morley
Then, when the sudden tears had ceased to blind
Your pansied eyes, I wonder if you could
Remember rightly, and forget aright?
Remember just your lad, uncouthly good,
Forgetting what he failed in spleen or spite?
Could you remember him as always kind?
Youth
© Francis Ledwidge
She paved the way with perfume sweet
Of flowers that moved like winds alight,
And never weary grew my feet
Wandering through[the spring's delight.
In the Country
© William Henry Davies
This life is sweetest; in this wood
I hear no children cry for food;
I see no woman, white with care;
No man, with muscled wasting here.
The Seven Old Men
© Charles Baudelaire
À Victor Hugo
Ant-like city, city full of dreams,
where the passer-by, at dawn, meets the spectre!
Mysteries everywhere are the sap that streams
The End Of Summer
© Madison Julius Cawein
Pods the poppies, and slim spires of pods
The hollyhocks; the balsam's pearly bredes
A Greeting
© William Henry Davies
Good morning, Life--and all
Things glad and beautiful.
My pockets nothing hold,
But he that owns the gold,
The Sun, is my great friend--
His spending has no end.
A Great Time
© William Henry Davies
Sweet Chance, that led my steps abroad,
Beyond the town, where wild flowers grow --
A rainbow and a cuckoo, Lord,
How rich and great the times are now!
Aechdeacon Barbour
© John Greenleaf Whittier
THROUGH the long hall the shuttered windows shed
A dubious light on every upturned head;
On locks like those of Absalom the fair,
On the bald apex ringed with scanty hair,
The Vigil Of Venus
© Thomas Parnell
Let those love now, who never lov'd before,
Let those who always lov'd, now love the more.
Mycerinus
© Matthew Arnold
'Not by the justice that my father spurn'd,
Not for the thousands whom my father slew,
Altars unfed and temples overturn'd,
Cold hearts and thankless tongues, where thanks are due;
Fell this dread voice from lips that cannot lie,
Stern sentence of the Powers of Destiny.
Obermann Once More
© Matthew Arnold
Glion?--Ah, twenty years, it cuts
All meaning from a name!
White houses prank where once were huts.
Glion, but not the same!
The Strayed Reveller
© Matthew Arnold
1 Faster, faster,
2 O Circe, Goddess,
3 Let the wild, thronging train
4 The bright procession
5 Of eddying forms,
6 Sweep through my soul!
Crossing the Grand Sierras
© Henry Clay Work
All aboard! all aboard!
The hissing breath of the iron steed
To a Republican Friend
© Matthew Arnold
God knows it, I am with you. If to prize
Those virtues, priz'd and practis'd by too few,
But priz'd, but lov'd, but eminent in you,
Man's fundamental life: if to despise
Strayed Reveller, The
© Matthew Arnold
Hist! Thou-within there!
Come forth, Ulysses!
Art tired with hunting?
While we range the woodland,
See what the day brings.
Quiet Work
© Matthew Arnold
One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,
One lesson which in every wind is blown,
One lesson of two duties kept at one
Though the loud world proclaim their enmity--
West London
© Matthew Arnold
Crouch'd on the pavement close by Belgrave Square
A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied;
A babe was in her arms, and at her side
A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.
David
© Charles Lamb
It is not always to the strong
Victorious battle shall belong.
This found Goliath huge and tall:
Mightiest giant of them all,
Who in the proud Philistian host
Defiëd Israel with boast.
Thyrsis, a Monody
© Matthew Arnold
How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,
Sohrab and Rustum
© Matthew Arnold
"Ferood, and ye, Persians and Tartars, hear!
Let there be truce between the hosts to-day.
But choose a champion from the Persian lords
To fight our champion Sohrab, man to man."