Happy poems
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To Mæcenas
© Phillis Wheatley
Mæcenas, you, beneath the myrtle shade,
Read o'er what poets sung, and shepherds play'd.
What felt those poets but you feel the same?
Does not your soul possess the sacred flame?
Their noble strains your equal genius shares
In softer language, and diviner airs.
A Funeral Poem on the Death of C.E.
© Phillis Wheatley
By thoughtless wishes, and prepost'rous love?
Doth his felicity increase your pain?
Or could you welcome to this world again
The heir of bliss? with a superior air
Methinks he answers with a smile severe,
"Thrones and dominions cannot tempt me there."
To a Boy Whistling
© James Whitcomb Riley
The smiling face of a happy boy
With its enchanted key
Is now unlocking in memory
My store of heartiest joy.
The Song of Yesterday
© James Whitcomb Riley
My head was fair
With flaxen hair,
And fragrant breezes, faint and rare,
And, warm with drouth
From out the south,
Blew all my curls across my mouth.
Little Orphant Annie
© James Whitcomb Riley
To all the little children: -- The happy ones; and sad ones;
The sober and the silent ones; the boisterous and glad ones;
The good ones -- Yes, the good ones, too; and all the lovely bad ones.
Duino Elegies: The Tenth Elegy
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Yet the dead youth must go on alone.
In silence the elder Lament brings him
as far as the gorge where it shimmers in the moonlight:
The Foutainhead of Joy. With reverance she names it,
saying: "In the world of mankind it is a life-bearing stream."
M'Fingal - Canto IV
© John Trumbull
"For me, before that fatal time,
I mean to fly th' accursed clime,
And follow omens, which of late
Have warn'd me of impending fate.
M'Fingal - Canto II
© John Trumbull
"T' evade these crimes of blackest grain
You prate of liberty in vain,
And strive to hide your vile designs
In terms abstruse, like school-divines.
gee i like to think of dead
© Edward Estlin Cummings
gee i like to think of dead it means nearer because deeper firmer
since darker than little round water at one end of the well it's
too cool to be crooked and it's too firm to be hard but it's sharp
and thick and it loves, every old thing falls in rosebugs and
jackknives and kittens and pennies they all sit there looking at
each other having the fastest time because they've never met before
next to of course god america i... (III)
© Edward Estlin Cummings
"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country tis of centuries come and go
she being Brand... (XIX)
© Edward Estlin Cummings
-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having
The Mortal One
© Sharon Olds
Three months after he lies dead, that
long yellow narrow body,
not like Christ but like one of his saints,
the naked ones in the paintings whose bodies are
The Old Women
© Arthur Symons
They pass upon their old, tremulous feet,
Creeping with little satchels down the street,
And they remember, many years ago,
Passing that way in silks. They wander, slow
Tractor
© Ted Hughes
Worse iron is waiting. Power-lift kneels
Levers awake imprisoned deadweight,
Shackle-pins bedded in cast-iron cow-shit.
The blind and vibrating condemned obedience
Of iron to the cruelty of iron,
Wheels screeched out of their night-locks -
To Dan
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
STEP me now a bridal measure,
Work give way to love and leisure,
Hearts be free and hearts be gay --
Doctor Dan doth wed to-day.
Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling.
© Walt Whitman
THOU orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon!
Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand,
The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam,
And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue;
To the Man-of-War-Bird.
© Walt Whitman
THOU who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renewd on thy prodigious pinions,
(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascendedst,
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,)
Mystic Trumpeter, The.
© Walt Whitman
1
HARK! some wild trumpetersome strange musician,
Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night.
Song of the Universal.
© Walt Whitman
1
COME, said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the Universal.
