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The Great Misgiving
© William Watson
'NOT ours,' say some, 'the thought of death to dread;
Asking no heaven, we fear no fabled hell:
Life is a feast, and we have banqueted-
Shall not the worms as well?
To Helen - 1848
© Edgar Allan Poe
I saw thee once &mdash once only &mdash years ago:
I must not say how many &mdash but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
The Flag
© Julia Ward Howe
There's a flag hangs over my threshold, whose folds are more dear to me
Than the blood that thrills in my bosom its earnest of liberty;
And dear are the stars it harbors in its sunny field of blue
As the hope of a further heaven that lights all our dim lives through.
The Old Wooden Tub
© Edgar Albert Guest
I like to get to thinking of the old days that are gone,
When there were joys that never more the world will look upon,
The days before inventors smoothed the little cares away
And made, what seemed but luxuries then, the joys of every day;
When bathrooms were exceptions, and we got our weekly scrub
By standing in the middle of a little wooden tub.
A Lament for the Fairies
© Alaric Alexander Watts
O, ye have lost,
Mountains, and moors, and meads, the radiant throng
Madhushala (The Tavern)
© Harivansh Rai Bachchan
Seeking wine, the drinker leaves home for the tavern.
Perplexed, he asks, "Which path will take me there?"
People show him different ways, but this is what I have to say,
"Pick a path and keep walking. You will find the tavern."
Australasia
© William Charles Wentworth
Hadst thou, old Cynic, seen this unclad crew
Stretch their bare bodies in the nightly dew,
Like hairy Satyrs, midst their Sylvan seats,
Endure both winter's frosts, and summer's heats;
Thy cloak and tub away thou wouldst have cast,
And tried, like them, to brave the piercing blast.
Sir Lark and King Sun
© George MacDonald
"Good morrow, my lord!" in the sky alone
Sang the lark as the sun ascended his throne.
"Shine on me, my lord: I only am come,
Of all your servants, to welcome you home!
I have shot straight up, a whole hour, I swear,
To catch the first gleam of your golden hair."
Paracelsus: Part IV: Paracelsus Aspires
© Robert Browning
Festus.
So strange
That I must hope, indeed, your messenger
Has mingled his own fancies with the words
Purporting to be yours.
Taking His Place
© Edgar Albert Guest
He's doing double duty now;
Time's silver gleams upon his brow,
An Elegy, To an Old Beauty
© Thomas Parnell
In vain, poor Nymph, to please our youthful sight
You sleep in cream and frontlets all the night,
Your face with patches soil, with paint repair,
Dress with gay gowns, and shade with foreign hair.
If truth in spight of manners must be told,
Why, really fifty-five is something old.
Alsace-Lorraine
© George Meredith
Yet the like aerial growths may chance be the delicate sprays,
Infant of Earth's most urgent in sap, her fierier zeal
For entry on Life's upper fields: and soul thus flourishing pays
The martyr's penance, mark for brutish in man to heel.
The Ride Of Rody Burke
© Alice Guerin Crist
The heat haze veiled the distant hills, the white clouds floated high,
Drifting in slow content across the blue Australian sky;
And down in Clancys paddock there were mirth and laughter gay,
Where the She-Oak Jockey Club were met upon St. Patricks day.
Davideis: A Sacred Poem Of The Troubles Of David (excerpt)
© Abraham Cowley
BOOK I (excerpt)
I sing the man who Judah's sceptre bore
