Great poems
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Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur
© Lewis Carroll
"And would you be a poet
Before you've been to school?
Ah, well! I hardly thought you
So absolute a fool.
First learn to be spasmodic -
A very simple rule.
The Fine Fat Saucy Chinaman
© Anonymous
I'll sing a little ditty, which
I trust you'll not think flat.
Paradise Lost : Book XI.
© John Milton
Thus they, in lowliest plight, repentant stood
Praying; for from the mercy-seat above
A Book Of Strife In The Form Of The Diary Of An Old Soul - April
© George MacDonald
1.
LORD, I do choose the higher than my will.
Icicles Round A Tree In Dumfriesshire
© Ruth Padel
We're talking different kinds of vulnerability here.
To The Small Celandine
© William Wordsworth
PANSIES, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there's a sun that sets,
Primroses will have their glory;
The Lion and Albert
© Marriott Edgar
There's a famous seaside place called Blackpool,
That's noted for fresh air and fun,
And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Went there with young Albert, their son.
The Garden Of Death
© Godfrey Mutiso Gorry
Weak but alive
dying yet still alive
huge eyes
round like golf balls
The Coming Of Arthur
© Alfred Tennyson
Leodogran, the King of Cameliard,
Had one fair daughter, and none other child;
And she was the fairest of all flesh on earth,
Guinevere, and in her his one delight.
M'Fingal - Canto I
© John Trumbull
When Yankies, skill'd in martial rule,
First put the British troops to school;
The Night
© Hilaire Belloc
Most Holy Night, that still dost keep
The keys of all the doors of sleep,
To me when my tired eyelids close
Give thou repose.
A Spiritual Manifestation
© John Greenleaf Whittier
To-day the plant by Williams set
Its summer bloom discloses;
The wilding sweethrier of his prayers
Is crowned with cultured roses.
In The Harbour: A Quiet Life. (From The French)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Let him who will, by force or fraud innate,
Of courtly grandeurs gain the slippery height;
Mr Cogito And The Imagination
© Zbigniew Herbert
he would rarely soar
on the wings of a metaphor
and then he fell like Icarus
into the embrace of the Great Mother
Drinking Song, On the Excellence of Burgundy Wine
© Hilaire Belloc
My jolly fat host with your face all a-grin,
Come, open the door to us, let us come in.
A score of stout fellows who think it no sin
If they toast till they're hoarse, and drink till they spin,
Hildebrand
© Hilaire Belloc
"Oh murder! What was that, Papa!"
"My child, It was a Motor-Car,
A most Ingenious Toy!
Designed to Captivate and Charm
Much rather than to rouse Alarm
In any English Boy.
October
© Hilaire Belloc
Mine host the month, at thy good hostelry,
Tired limbs I'll stretch and steaming beast I'll tether;
Pile on great logs with Gascon hand and free,
And pour the Gascon stuff that laughs at weather;
Swell your tough lungs, north wind, no whit care we,
Singing old songs and drinking wine together.
A Night-Picture
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
A GROAN from a dim-lit upper room
A stealthy step on the stairs in the gloom
News to the king, good news for all
© Augusta Davies Webster
"NEWS to the king, good news for all,"
The corn is trodden, the river runs red.
"News of the battle," the heralds call,
"We have won the field; we have taken the town;
We have beaten the rebels and crushed them down."
And the dying lie with the dead.
The Pelagian Drinking Song
© Hilaire Belloc
Pelagius lived at Kardanoel
And taught a doctrine there
How, whether you went to heaven or to hell
It was your own affair.
It had nothing to do with the Church, my boy,
But was your own affair.
