Hope poems
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Lines Composed on the Body Politic: An Accounting
© Rita Dove
Elizabeth, The Lodge at Woodstock, 1554
The Tongues We Speak
© Patricia Goedicke
I have arrived here after taking many steps
Over the kitchen floors of friends and through their lives.
from Totem Poem [If every step taken is a step well-lived]
© Luke Davies
And if every step taken is a step well-lived but a foot
towards death, every pilgrimage a circle, every flight-path
The Temper (I)
© George Herbert
How should I praise thee, Lord! How should my rhymes
Gladly engrave thy love in steel,
If what my soul doth feel sometimes,
My soul might ever feel!
Wall, Cave, and Pillar Statements, after Asôka
© Alan Dugan
In order to perfect all readers
the statements should be carved
from The Seasons: Spring
© James Thomson
As rising from the vegetable World
My Theme ascends, with equal Wing ascend,
The Corn Baby
© Mark Wunderlich
They brought it. It was brought
from the field, the last sheaf, the last bundle
The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue
© Geoffrey Chaucer
But for to tellen yow of his array,
His hors weren goode, but he was nat gay;
Of fustian he wered a gypon
Al bismótered with his habergeon;
For he was late y-come from his viage,
And wente for to doon his pilgrymage.
The Horrid Voice of Science
© Roald Dahl
"There's machinery in the butterfly;
There's a mainspring to the bee;
There's hydraulics to a daisy,
And contraptions to a tree.
Of the Poet’s Youth
© Erin Belieu
When the man behind the counter said, “You pay
by the orifice,” what could we do but purchase them all?
from The Seasons: Winter
© James Thomson
Father of light and life! thou Good Supreme!
O teach me what is good! teach me Thyself!
Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,
From every low pursuit; and feed my soul
With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure,
Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
© André Breton
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
[My prime of youth is but a frost of cares]
© Chidiock Tichborne
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain.
The day is gone and I yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.
A Little Called Pauline
© Gertrude Stein
A little called anything shows shudders.
Come and say what prints all day. A whole few watermelon. There is no pope.
No cut in pennies and little dressing and choose wide soles and little spats really little spices.
A little lace makes boils. This is not true.
Yarrow Revisited
© André Breton
The gallant Youth, who may have gained,
Or seeks, a "winsome Marrow,"
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
© Edward Estlin Cummings
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
To Wordsworth
© Victor Séjour
There is a strain to read among the hills,
The old and full of voices by the source
Of some free stream, whose gladdening presence fills
The solitude with sound; for in its course
Even such is thy deep song, that seems a part
Of those high scences, a fountain from the heart.
There Came a Soul
© Rita Dove
After IVAN ALBRIGHT’s Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida
She arrived as near to virginal
