Great poems
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The Shepherd Piping To The Fishes
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
A Shepherd seeking with his Lass
To shun the Heat of Day;
Was seated on the shadow'd Grass,
Near which a flowing Stream did pass,
And Fish within it play.
A Festal Ode
© Confucius
With sounds of happiness the deer
The salsola crop in the fields.
What noble guests surround me here!
Each lute for them its music yields.
Sound, sound the lutes, or great or small.
The joy harmonious to prolong;--
Genesis BK XX
© Caedmon
(ll. 1248-1254) Then the sons of God began to take them wives
from the tribe of Cain, a cursed folk, and the sons of men chose
them wives from among that people, the fair and winsome daughters
of that sinful race, against the will of God. Then the Lord of
heaven lifted up His voice in wrath against mankind, and said:
The Obliterate Tomb
© Thomas Hardy
'More than half my life long
Did they weigh me falsely, to my bitter wrong,
But they all have shrunk away into the silence
Like a lost song.
On The Pleasures Of College Life
© George Moses Horton
With tears I leave these academic bowers,
And cease to cull the scientific flowers;
With tears I hail the fair succeeding train,
And take my exit with a breast of pain.
An Armour of proofe, brought from The Tower of Dauid, to fight agaynst Spannyardes
© Roger Cotton
When God of hosts in eighty eight had brought,
an host of men, our Countrey to annoy:
in that distresse the Lord by vs was sought,
whereby our woes were turned then to ioy.
But yet full true to vs may this be sayde,
in your distresse, you onely seeke my ayde.
The Celestial Surgeon
© Robert Louis Stevenson
IF I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
An Interview With Miles Standish
© James Russell Lowell
I sat one evening in my room,
In that sweet hour of twilight
The Witch's Daughter
© John Greenleaf Whittier
It was the pleasant harvest time,
When cellar-bins are closely stowed,
And garrets bend beneath their load,
Nux Postcoenatica
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
I was sitting with my microscope, upon my parlor rug,
With a very heavy quarto and a very lively bug;
The true bug had been organized with only two antennae,
But the humbug in the copperplate would have them twice as many.
Pleasing Dad
© Edgar Albert Guest
When I was but a little lad, not more than two or three,
I noticed in a general way my dad was proud of me.
He liked the little ways I had, the simple things I said;
Sometimes he gave me words of praise, sometimes he stroked my head;
And when I'd done a thing worth while, the thought that made me glad
Was always that I'd done my best, and that would please my dad.
Palinodia
© Charles Kingsley
Ye mountains, on whose torrent-furrowed slopes,
And bare and silent brows uplift to heaven,
I envied oft the soul which fills your wastes
Of pure and stern sublime, and still expanse
Unbroken by the petty incidents
Of noisy life: Oh hear me once again!
The Coming Of The Ship Chapter I
© Khalil Gibran
Only another breath will I breathe in this still air, only another loving look cast backward,
Then I shall stand among you, a seafarer among seafarers.
And you, vast sea, sleepless mother,
Who alone are peace and freedom to the river and the stream,
Only another winding will this stream make, only another murmur in this glade,
And then shall I come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.
Fragment XII
© James Macpherson
But when thou returnedst from war,
how peaceful was thy brow! Thy face
was like the sun after rain; like the
moon in the silence of night; calm as
the breast of the lake when the loud
wind is laid.
Agnes
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
THE KNIGHT
The tale I tell is gospel true,
As all the bookmen know,
And pilgrims who have strayed to view
The wrecks still left to show.
Paradiso (English)
© Dante Alighieri
The glory of Him who moveth everything
Doth penetrate the universe, and shine
In one part more and in another less.
