Hope poems
/ page 371 of 439 /Security
© William Stafford
Tomorrow will have an island. Before night
I always find it. Then on to the next island.
These places hidden in the day separate
and come forward if you beckon.
But you have to know they are there before they exist.
Europe, MDCCCCI To Napoleon
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Soars still thy spirit, Child of Fire?
Dost hear the camps of Europe hum?
On eagle wings dost hover nigher
At the far rolling of the drum?
To see the harvest thou hast sown
Smilest thou now, Napoleon?
The Little Knight In Green
© Katharine Lee Bates
WHAT fragrant-footed comer
Is stepping oer my head?
April 24
© David Lehman
Did you know that Evian spelled backwards is naive?
I myself was unaware of this fact until last Tuesday night
when John Ashbery, Marc Cohen, and Eugene Richie
gave a poetry reading and I introduced them
Quid Non Supremus, Amantes?
© Ernest Christopher Dowson
Why is there in the least touch of her hands
More grace than other women's lips bestow,
If love is but a slave in fleshly bands
Of flesh to flesh, wherever love may go?
Book Sixth [Cambridge and the Alps]
© William Wordsworth
A passing word erewhile did lightly touch
On wanderings of my own, that now embraced
With livelier hope a region wider far.
To Mrs. Norton
© Frances Anne Kemble
I never shall forget thee'tis a word
Thou oft nust hear, for surely there be none
A Lover Since Childhood
© Robert Graves
Tangled in thought am I,
Stumble in speech do I?
Do I blunder and blush for the reason why?
Wander aloof do I,
Lean over gates and sigh,
Making friends with the bee and the butterfly?
The Final Reckoning
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
Twas a wild and stormy sunset, changing tints of lurid red
Flooded mountain top and valley and the low clouds overhead;
And the rays streamed through the windows of a building stately, high,
Whose wealthy, high-born master had lain him down to die.
Paradise Lost : Book XII.
© John Milton
As one who in his journey bates at noon,
Though bent on speed; so here the Arch-Angel paused
Elegy I
© Henry James Pye
O Happiness! thou wish of every mind,
Whose form, more subtle than the fleeting air,
Hermann And Dorothea - IV. Euterpe
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Mother," he said in confusion:--"You greatly surprise me!" and quickly
Wiped he away his tears, the noble and sensitive youngster.
"What! You are weeping, my son?" the startled mother continued
"That is indeed unlike you! I never before saw you crying!
Say, what has sadden'd your heart? What drives you to sit here all lonely
Under the shade of the pear-tree? What is it that makes you unhappy?"
Venus' Runaway
© Benjamin Jonson
Beauties, have ye seen this toy,
Called Love, a little boy,
Almost naked, wanton, blind;
Cruel now, and then as kind?
If he be amongst ye, say?
He is Venus' runaway.
A Town
© Jane Taylor
A BUSY town mid Britain's isle,
Behold in fancy's eye ;
With tower, and spire, and civic pile,
Beneath a summer sky :
O Pulchritudo
© Sir Henry Newbolt
O Saint whose thousand shrines our feet have trod
And our eyes loved thy lamp's eternal beam,
Dim earthly radiance of the Unknown God,
Hope of the darkness, light of them that dream,
Far off, far off and faint, O glimmer on
Till we thy pilgrims from the road are gone.
Many Are Called
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Queen of my life! I do not love you less
Because you choose not me to cast your woes on.
It is enough for me you once said ``Yes.''
Many are called by Love, but few are chosen.
The Poet
© Lucy Maud Montgomery
There was strength in him and the weak won freely from it,
There was an infinite pity, and hard hearts grew soft thereby,
There was truth so unshrinking and starry-shining,
Men read clear by its light and learned to scorn a lie.
O Star Of France
© Walt Whitman
The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame,
Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long,
Beseems to-day a wreck, driven by the gale-a mastless hulk;
And 'mid its teeming, madden'd, half-drown'd crowds,
Nor helm nor helmsman.