Great poems

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Your noble reign

© Ivan Donn Carswell

The man whose term we would remember as our longest,
constant serving Head of State, besides the late Sir Robert
Gordon Menzies, turned 67 yesterday. Congratulations John,
you’ve run a long and torrid race, kept up a frenzied pace

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Worthy Places

© Ivan Donn Carswell

There were some worthy places where we could escape,
avoid the heavy weight of living in a densely
peopled space; the first was to the outside loo
(the only loo but where at least the toilet paper

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When We Were Young

© Ivan Donn Carswell

As a child I played in the same frosty fields
barefoot as my no lesser loved classmates,
whom we challenged to show courage in the numbing cold,
then together we held our chilled fingers over the roaring stove
that warmed our prefabricated, asbestos-sided classroom.

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Winter Uplands

© Archibald Lampman

  The frost that stings like fire upon my cheek,
  The loneliness of this forsaken ground,
  The long white drift upon whose powdered peak
  I sit in the great silence as one bound;

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What does it take?

© Ivan Donn Carswell

Is the current rate of global warming
a serious and cogent warning?
Do we need to think about the fact
that higher tides will drown Pacific island states

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The Quidditie

© George Herbert

My God, a verse is not a crown;
  No point of honor, or gay suit;
No hawk, or banquet, or renown,
  Nor a good sword, nor yet a lute:

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To win a game

© Ivan Donn Carswell

How do you win a football game? Not by skill alone or clever plays,
in modern days the game has changed and subterfuge and actors
ways will pave the path to glory. Fitness pays a fair reward to keep
a fleetness in the feet, a clearness in the head, and special food

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Malcolm's Katie: A Love Story - Part II.

© Isabella Valancy Crawford

  O, Love builds on the azure sea,
  And Love builds on the golden sand;
  And Love builds on the rose-wing'd cloud,
  And sometimes Love builds on the land.

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On the Bill Which Was Passed in England For Regulating the Slave-Trade

© Helen Maria Williams

The hollow winds of night no more

In wild, unequal cadence pour,

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Ode To Tranquillity

© Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Tranquillity! thou better name
  Than all the family of Fame!
  Thou ne'er wilt leave my riper age
  To low intrigue, or factious rage;

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Denner's Old Woman

© William Cowper

In this mimic form of a matron in years,

How plainly the pencil of Denner appears!

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Fragment

© James Weldon Johnson

The hand of Fate cannot be stayed,
  The course of Fate cannot be steered,
  By all the gods that man has made,
  Nor all the devils he has feared,
  Not by the prayers that might be prayed
  In all the temples he has reared.

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General Joubert

© Rudyard Kipling

With those that bred, with those that loosed the strife,
He had no part whose hands were clear of gain;
But subtle, strong, and stubborn, gave his life
To a lost cause, and knew the gift was vain.

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To Roosevelt {2}

© Rubén Dario

It is with the voice of the Bible, or the verse of Walt Whitman,
that I should come to you, Hunter,
primitive and modern, simple and complicated,
with something of Washington and more of Nimrod.

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Flower-De-Luce: Hawthorne

© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

How beautiful it was, that one bright day
  In the long week of rain!
Though all its splendor could not chase away
  The omnipresent pain.

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Piscine kind of kinship

© Ivan Donn Carswell

To glibly say that Joe was sort of odd
quite missed the point. Peculiar in many
ways and kind of weird, I would have
been afraid of him were I a child (if I ever

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Paper towel

© Ivan Donn Carswell

She wrapped a paper towel around his softened cock
in what he thought was quaint affection, that was new,
an after-thought perhaps, refined appreciation?
She had never talked a lot in bed just let her actions

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United States

© Edgar Albert Guest

He shall be great who serves his country well.
  He shall be loved who ever guards her fame.
His worth the starry banner long shall tell,
  Who loves his land too much to stoop to shame.

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Woodstock Park

© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Here in a little rustic hermitage

  Alfred the Saxon King, Alfred the Great,

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The Forlorn

© James Russell Lowell

The night is dark, the stinging sleet,
  Swept by the bitter gusts of air,
Drives whistling down the lonely street,
  And glazes on the pavement bare.