Happiness poems
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Paradise Lost: Book I (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
So spake th' Apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but rackt with deep despare:
And him thus answer'd soon his bold Compeer.
Captain Reece
© William Schwenck Gilbert
Of all the ships upon the blue,
No ship contained a better crew
Than that of worthy CAPTAIN REECE,
Commanding of THE MANTELPIECE.
Hannah
© Thomas Parnell
Then Seek ye Subject & its song be mine
Whose numbers next in Sacred story shine;
Go brightly-working thought, prepard to fly
Above ye page on hov'ring pinnions ly,
& beat with stronger force to make thee rise
Where beautious Hannah meets ye searching eyes.
The French Revolution as it appeared to Enthusiasts
© William Wordsworth
. Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Poem 1 From Pierce Penilesse
© Thomas Nashe
Why ist damnation to dispaire and die,
When life is my true happinesse disease?
My soule, my soule, thy safetye makes me flie
The faultie meanes, that might my paine appease.
from The Vanity of Human Wishes
© Henry James Pye
Yet still one genral cry the skies assails,
And gain and grandeur load the tainted gales,
Few know the toiling statesmans fear or care,
Th insidious rival and the gaping heir.
"Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant"
© André Breton
Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant
Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air
Swift
© Delmore Schwartz
What shall Presto do for pretty prattle
To entertain his dears? Sunday: lightning fifty times!
This week to Flanders goes the Duke of Ormond!
Shall hope of him, although he loves me well!
In Summer Time
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
When summer time has come, and all
The world is in the magic thrall
Different Ways to Pray
© Naomi Shihab Nye
And occasionally there would be one
who did none of this,
the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,
who beat everyone at dominoes,
insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,
and was famous for his laugh.
from The Task, Book II: The Time-Piece
© William Cowper
(excerpt)
England, with all thy faults, I love thee still
All nature has a feeling
© John Clare
All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Paradise Regain'd: Book I (1671)
© Patrick Kavanagh
I Who e're while the happy Garden sung,
By one mans disobedience lost, now sing
The Jungfrau To Beth
© Louisa May Alcott
God bless you, dear Queen Bess!
May nothing you dismay,
But health and peace and happiness
Be yours, this Christmas day.
A Happy Childhood
© William Matthews
No one keeps a secret so well as a child
Victor Hugo
My mother stands at the screen door, laughing.
“Out out damn Spot,” she commands our silly dog.
I wonder what this means. I rise into adult air
To Asra
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Are there two things, of all which men possess,
That are so like each other and so near,
Little Ache
© Li-Young Lee
That sparrow on the iron railing,
not worth a farthing, purchases a realm
its shrill cries measure, trading
dying for being.
Kaddish
© Allen Ginsberg
Magnificent, mourned no more, marred of heart, mind behind, married dreamed, mortal changed—Ass and face done with murder.
In the world, given, flower maddened, made no Utopia, shut under pine, almed in Earth, balmed in Lone, Jehovah, accept.
Nameless, One Faced, Forever beyond me, beginningless, endless, Father in death. Tho I am not there for this Prophecy, I am unmarried, I’m hymnless, I’m Heavenless, headless in blisshood I would still adore
Thee, Heaven, after Death, only One blessed in Nothingness, not light or darkness, Dayless Eternity—
Take this, this Psalm, from me, burst from my hand in a day, some of my Time, now given to Nothing—to praise Thee—But Death
This is the end, the redemption from Wilderness, way for the Wonderer, House sought for All, black handkerchief washed clean by weeping—page beyond Psalm—Last change of mine and Naomi—to God’s perfect Darkness—Death, stay thy phantoms!
“I have been a stranger in a strange land”
© Rita Dove
And there was no voice in her head,
no whispered intelligence lurking
in the leaves—just an ache that grew
until she knew she'd already lost everything
except desire, the red heft of it
warming her outstretched palm.
