Happy poems
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Life And Death
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
Life is not sweet. One day it will be sweet
To shut our eyes and die:
How Lucy Backslid
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
De times is mighty stirrin' 'mong de people up ouah way,
Dey 'sputin' an' dey argyin' an' fussin' night an' day;
An' all dis monst'ous trouble dat hit meks me tiahed to tell
Is 'bout dat Lucy Jackson dat was sich a mighty belle.
Tired
© Augusta Davies Webster
No not to-night, dear child; I cannot go;
I'm busy, tired; they knew I should not come;
you do not need me there. Dear, be content,
and take your pleasure; you shall tell me of it.
There, go to don your miracles of gauze,
and come and show yourself a great pink cloud.
St. Bartholomew
© John Keble
Hold up thy mirror to the sun,
And thou shalt need an eagle's gaze,
So perfectly the polished stone
Gives back the glory of his rays:
On Queen Anne's Peace, Anno 1713
© Thomas Parnell
Mother of plenty, daughter of the skies,
Sweet Peace, the troubl'd world's desire, arise;
Around thy poet weave thy summer shades,
Within my fancy spread thy flow'ry meads,
Amongst thy train soft ease and pleasure bring,
And thus indulgent sooth me whilst I sing.
Italy : 30. Rome
© Samuel Rogers
I am in Rome! Oft as the morning-ray
Visits these eyes, waking at once I cry,
Whence this excess of joy? What has befallen me?
And from within a thrilling voice replies,
The Victories Of Love. Book II
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
II
From Lady Clitheroe To Mary Churchill
Geraint And Enid
© Alfred Tennyson
Then Enid pondered in her heart, and said:
'I will go back a little to my lord,
And I will tell him all their caitiff talk;
For, be he wroth even to slaying me,
Far liefer by his dear hand had I die,
Than that my lord should suffer loss or shame.'
A Hymn On Contentment
© Thomas Parnell
Lovely lasting Peace appear;
This World it self, if thou art here,
Is once again with Eden bless'd,
And Man contains it in his Breast.
The Creek of the Four Graves [Early Version]
© Charles Harpur
And feeling thus by habit, that poor man
Though the black shadow of untimely death
Hopelessly thickened under every stroke,
Upstruggled desperate, until at last,
One, as in mercy, gave him to the dust,
With all his sorrows.
To H. C.
© William Wordsworth
SIX YEARS OLD
O THOU! whose fancies from afar are brought;
Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,
And fittest to unutterable thought
Sappho I
© Sara Teasdale
MIDNIGHT, and in the darkness not a sound,
So, with hushed breathing, sleeps the autumn night;
Only the white immortal stars shall know,
Here in the house with the low-lintelled door,
Colum-Cilles Farewell To Ireland
© Douglas Hyde
ALAS for the voyage, O High King of Heaven,
Enjoined upon me,
The Holy Innocents
© John Keble
Say, ye celestial guards, who wait
In Bethlehem, round the Saviour's palace gate,
Hymn To Mercury
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF HOMER.
I.
Sing, Muse, the son of Maia and of Jove,
The Herald-child, king of Arcadia
