Great poems
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As It Is
© Edith Nesbit
If you and I
Had wings to fly -
Great wings like seagulls' wings -
How would we soar
Above the roar
Of loud unneeded things!
Nuremberg
© Kenneth Slessor
So quiet it was in that high, sun-steeped room,
So warm and still, that sometimes with the light
Through the great windows, bright with bottle-panes,
Thered float a chime from clock-jacks out of sight,
Clapping iron mallets on green copper gongs.
The End Of The Century
© Madison Julius Cawein
There are moments when, as missions,
God reveals to us strange visions;
When, within their separate stations,
We may see the Centuries,
Like revolving constellations
Shaping out Earth's destinies.
Lines On Mr. Hodgson Written On Board The Lisbon Packet
© George Gordon Byron
Huzza! Hodgson, we are going,
Our embargo's off at last;
The Stranded Ship: (The Vincennes)
© Henry Lawson
TWAS the glowing log of a picnic fire where a red light should not be,
Or the curtained glow of a sick room light in a window that faced the sea.
But the Manly lights seemed the Sydney lights, and the bluffs as the Heads were seen;
And the Manly beach was the channel thenand the captain steered between.
Satyr I. A Letter To A Friend. On Poets.
© Thomas Parnell
Poets are bound by ye severest rules,
the great ones must be mad, ye little all are fools,
I Found A Few Old Letters
© Rabindranath Tagore
XIV
I found a few old letters of mine carefully hidden in thy boxa few small toys for thy memory to play with. With a timorous heart thou didst try to steal these trifles from the turbulent stream of time which washes away planets and stars, and didst say, These are only mine! Alas, there is no one now who can claim themwho is able to pay their price; yet they are still here. Is there no love in this world to rescue thee from utter loss, even like this love of thine that saved these letters with such fond care?
O woman, thou camest for a moment to my side and touched me with the great mystery of the woman that there is in the heart of creationshe who ever gives back to God his own outflow of sweetness; who is the eternal love and beauty and youth; who dances in bubbling streams and sings in the morning light; who with heaving waves suckles the thirsty earth and whose mercy melts in rain; in whom the eternal one breaks in two in joy that can contain itself no more and overflows in the pain of love.
Septuagesima Sunday
© John Keble
There is a book, who runs may read,
Which heavenly truth imparts,
And all the lore its scholars need,
Pure eyes and Christian hearts.
Winter Song
© Robert Bloomfield
Dear Boy, throw that Icicle down,
And sweep this deep Snow from the door:
The Pariah - Legend
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
WATER-FETCHING goes the noble
Brahmin's wife, so pure and lovely;
The Bell-Ringer
© Emile Verhaeren
Yon, in the depths of the evening's track,
Like a herd of blind bullocks that seek their fellows,
Wild, as in terror, the tempest bellows.
And suddenly, there, o'er the gables black
That the church, in the twilight, around it raises
All scored with lightnings the steeple blazes.
Welcome To Frost
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
O SPIRIT! at whose wafts of chilling breath
Autumn unbinds her zone, to rest in death;
Touched by whose blight the light of cordial days
Is lost in sombre browns and sullen grays;
At A Calvary Near The Ancre
© Wilfred Owen
One ever hangs where shelled roads part.
In this war He too lost a limb,
But His disciples hide apart;
And now the Soldiers bear with Him.
Hudibras: Part 1 - Canto I
© Samuel Butler
His doublet was of sturdy buff,
And tho' not sword, yet cudgel-proof;
Whereby 'twas fitter for his use,
Who fear'd no blows, but such as bruise.
"Flowers Of France" Decoration Poem For Soldiers' Graves, Tours, France, May 30, 1918
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Flowers of France in the Spring,
Your growth is a beautiful thing;
Night Coming Out Of A Garden
© Lord Alfred Douglas
Through the still air of night
Suddenly comes, alone and shrill,
Like the far-off voice of the distant light,
The single piping trill
At The Saturday Club
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
I start; I wake; the vision is withdrawn;
Its figures fading like the stars at dawn;
Crossed from the roll of life their cherished names,
And memory's pictures fading in their frames;
Yet life is lovelier for these transient gleams
Of buried friendships; blest is he who dreams!
The Gifts
© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
I GIVE you Life, O child, a garden fair;
I give you Love, a rose that blossoms there--
I give a day to pluck it and to wear!
