Hope poems
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A Chorus
© Elizabeth Jennings
Kept, in the resignation of old men -
This spirit, this power, this holder together of space
Is about, is aware, is working in your breathing.
But most he is the need that shows in hunger
And in the tears shed in the lonely fastness.
And in sorrow after anger.
On Reading A Recent Greek Poet
© Bertolt Brecht
After the wailing had already begun
along the walls, their ruin certain,
the Trojans fidgeted with bits of wood
in the three-ply doors, itsy-bitsy
pieces of wood, fussing with them.
And began to get their nerve back and feel hopeful.
Solidarity Song
© Bertolt Brecht
Peoples of the world, together
Join to serve the common cause!
So it feeds us all for ever
See to it that it's now yours.
To Those Born After
© Bertolt Brecht
To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
To Posterity
© Bertolt Brecht
Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.
her south china sea eyes
© W. Jude Aher
young girl
with her south china sea
eyes
where an ocean wind
sighs
stands as she tries.
cold cold world
© W. Jude Aher
in the night
the deep deep night
do i dance
where mirror images
are lost within
The Prisoners
© Robert Hayden
Steel doors guillotine gates
of the doorless house closed massively.
We were locked in with loss.
Full Moon
© Robert Hayden
No longer throne of a goddess to whom we pray,
no longer the bubble house of childhood's
tumbling Mother Goose man,
The Iliad: Book VI (excerpt)
© Alexander Pope
He said, and pass'd with sad presaging heart
To seek his spouse, his soul's far dearer part;
At home he sought her, but he sought in vain:
She, with one maid of all her menial train,
From an Essay on Man
© Alexander Pope
Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
Essay on Man
© Alexander Pope
The First EpistleAwake, my ST. JOHN!(1) leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of Kings.
Let us (since Life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
An Essay on Man in Four Epistles: Epistle 1
© Alexander Pope
To Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
Eloisa to Abelard
© Alexander Pope
Yet here for ever, ever must I stay;
Sad proof how well a lover can obey!
Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;
And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain,
Here all its frailties, all its flames resign,
And wait till 'tis no sin to mix with thine.
The Torture of Cuauhtemoc
© Alan Seeger
Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms
Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew,
Curling across the jungle's ferny floor,
Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides,
The Sultan's Palace
© Alan Seeger
My spirit only lived to look on Beauty's face,
As only when they clasp the arms seem served aright;
As in their flesh inheres the impulse to embrace,
To gaze on Loveliness was my soul's appetite.
The Rendezvous
© Alan Seeger
He faints with hope and fear. It is the hour.
Distant, across the thundering organ-swell,
In sweet discord from the cathedral-tower,
Fall the faint chimes and the thrice-sequent bell.
The Need to Love
© Alan Seeger
The need to love that all the stars obey
Entered my heart and banished all beside.
Bare were the gardens where I used to stray;
Faded the flowers that one time satisfied.
The Aisne
© Alan Seeger
We first saw fire on the tragic slopes
Where the flood-tide of France's early gain,
Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes,
Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne.
Sonnet II
© Alan Seeger
Her courts are by the flux of flaming ways,
Between the rivers and the illumined sky
Whose fervid depths reverberate from on high
Fierce lustres mingled in a fiery haze.
