History poems
/ page 32 of 51 /
One Woman's History
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
"The maiden free, the maiden wed.
Can never, never be the same,
A new life springs from out the dead.
And with the speaking of a name-
A breath upon the marriage bed,
She finds herself a something new.
The Recluse - Book First
© William Wordsworth
HOME AT GRASMERE
ONCE to the verge of yon steep barrier came
A roving school-boy; what the adventurer's age
Hath now escaped his memory--but the hour,
The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar’s House
© Howard Nemerov
The painter’s eye follows relation out.
His work is not to paint the visible,
He says, it is to render visible.
The Clan of MacCaura
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
Oh! bright are the names of the chieftains and sages,
That shine like the stars through the darkness of ages,
The Snowmass Cycle
© Stephen Dunn
If the rich are casually cruel
perhaps its because
they can stare at the sky
and never see an indictment
in the shape of clouds.
The Dream
© Caroline Norton
Ah! bless'd are they for whom 'mid all their pains
That faithful and unalter'd love remains;
Who, Life wreck'd round them,--hunted from their rest,--
And, by all else forsaken or distress'd,--
Claim, in one heart, their sanctuary and shrine--
As I, my Mother, claim'd my place in thine!
from The Prelude: Book 2: School-time (Continued)
© André Breton
Fare Thee well!
Health, and the quiet of a healthful mind
Attend thee! seeking oft the haunts of men,
And yet more often living with Thyself,
And for Thyself, so haply shall thy days
Be many, and a blessing to mankind.
Tristram And Iseult
© Matthew Arnold
Tristram. Is she not come? The messenger was sure
Prop me upon the pillows once again
Raise me, my page! this cannot long endure.
Christ, what a night! how the sleet whips the pane!
What lights will those out to the northward be?
The Idols
© Robert Laurence Binyon
I.2
The Forests of the Night awaken blind in heat
Of black stupor; and stirring in its deep retreat,
I hear the heart of Darkness slowly beat and beat.
The Truly Great
© Stephen Spender
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
How We Made a New Art on Old Ground
© Eavan Boland
A famous battle happened in this valley.
You never understood the nature poem.
Till now. Till this moment—if these statements
seem separate, unrelated, follow this
Retroduction to American History
© Allen Tate
Cats walk the floor at midnight; that enemy of fog,
The moon, wraps the bedpost in receding stillness; sleep
Collects all weary nothings and lugs away the towers,
The pinnacles of dust that feed the subway.
Michael: A Pastoral Poem
© William Wordsworth
Thus in his Father's sight the Boy grew up:
And now, when he had reached his eighteenth year,
He was his comfort and his daily hope.
the difference between a bad poet and a good one is luck
© Charles Bukowski
I suppose so.
I was living in an attic in Philadelphia
Ode To Maize
© Pablo Neruda
But, poet, let
history rest in its shroud;
praise with your lyre
the grain in its granaries:
sing to the simple maize in the kitchen.
Lawyer and Child
© James Whitcomb Riley
How large was Alexander, father,
That parties designate
The historic gentleman as rather
Inordinately great?
I Wasn’t One of the Six Million: And What Is My Life Span? Open Closed Open
© John Wesley
3
And what is my life span? I’m like a man gone out of Egypt:
the Red Sea parts, I cross on dry land,
two walls of water, on my right hand and on my left.
Pharaoh’s army and his horsemen behind me. Before me the desert,
perhaps the Promised Land, too. That is my life span.
