Great poems
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An Ode in Time of Hesitation
© William Vaughn Moody
After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted negro regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.
I Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe,
And set here in the city's talk and trade
The Curtain
© Hayden Carruth
renewing field of corpse-flesh.
In this valley the snow falls silently all day and out our window
We see the curtain of it shifting and folding, hiding us away in
On a Line from Valéry (The Gulf War)
© Carolyn Kizer
The whole green sky is dying.The last tree flares
With a great burst of supernatural rose
Under a canopy of poisonous airs.
On a Line From Valery (Gulf War)
© Carolyn Kizer
The whole green sky is dying. The last tree flares
With a great burst of supernatural rose
Under a canopy of poisonous airs.
American Beauty
© Carolyn Kizer
As you described your mastectomy in calm detail
and bared your chest so I might see
the puckered scar,
"They took a hatchet to your breast!" I said. "What an
Amazon you are."
The Chatterbox
© Ann Taylor
From morning till night it was Lucy's delight
To chatter and talk without stopping:
There was not a day but she rattled away,
Like water for ever a-dropping.
Jane and Eliza
© Ann Taylor
There were two little girls, neither handsome nor plain;
One's name was Eliza, the other's was Jane:
They were both of one height, as I've heard people say,
They were both of one age, I believe, to a day.
A True Story
© Ann Taylor
The ladies in feathers and jewels were seen,
The chariot was painted all o'er,
The footmen behind were in silver and green,
The horses were prancing before.
Henry Purcell
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell
and praises him that, whereas other musicians have
given utterance to the moods of man's mind, he has,
beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and
species of man as created both in him and in all men
generally.
Felix Randal
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.
My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears,
Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;
The Blessed Virgin Compared To The Air We Breathe
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The Soldier
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
Mark Christ our King. He knows war, served this soldiering through;
He of all can handle a rope best. There he bides in bliss
Now, and s?eing somewh?re some m?n do all that man can do,
For love he leans forth, needs his neck must fall on, kiss,
And cry 'O Christ-done deed! So God-made-flesh does too:
Were I come o'er again' cries Christ 'it should be this'.
God's Grandeur
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Came the Great Popinjay
© Dame Edith Sitwell
CAME the great Popinjay
Smelling his nosegay:
In cages like grots
The birds sang gavottes.
Dtatue And The Bust, The
© Robert Browning
There's a palace in Florence, the world knows well,
And a statue watches it from the square,
And this story of both do our townsmen tell.
Protus
© Robert Browning
Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head. Great eye,
Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can
To give you the crown-grasper. What a man!
Instans Tyrannus
© Robert Browning
Of the million or two, more or less,
I rule and possess,
One man, for some cause undefined,
Was least to my mind.
Cavalier Tunes: Marching Along
© Robert Browning
Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:
And, pressing a troop unable to stoop
And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
De Gustibus---
© Robert Browning
I.Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,
(If our loves remain)
In an English lane,
By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Kar
© Robert Browning
Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,
The not-incurious in God's handiwork
(This man's-flesh he hath admirably made,
Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,
