Knowledge poems
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At The Banquet To The Chinese Embassy
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
BROTHERS, whom we may not reach
Through the veil of alien speech,
Welcome! welcome! eyes can tell
What the lips in vain would spell,--
Words that hearts can understand,
Brothers from the Flowery Land!
The Art Of War. Book V.
© Henry James Pye
Pallas, whose hand can through each devious road
Conduct your steps to Victory's bright abode,
Teach you success in every hour to find,
And for each season form the Hero's mind,
Shall now in verse the prudent art disclose,
To guard your peaceful quarter's calm repose.
The Mortal Lease
© Edith Wharton
Because we have this knowledge in our veins,
Shall we deny the journeys gathered lore
The great refusals and the long disdains,
The stubborn questing for a phantom shore,
The sleepless hopes and memorable pains,
And all mortalitys immortal gains?
Paradise Lost : Book VII.
© John Milton
Descend from Heaven, Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine
What The Thrush Said. Lines From A Letter To John Hamilton Reynolds
© John Keats
O thou whose face hath felt the Winter's wind,
Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist
And the black elm tops 'mong the freezing stars,
To thee the spring will be a harvest-time.
Saint Romualdo
© Emma Lazarus
I give God thanks that I, a lean old man,
Wrinkled, infirm, and crippled with keen pains
Little Ditties I
© William Brighty Rands
Winifred Waters sat and sighed
Under a weeping willow;
When she went to bed she cried,
Wetting all the pillow;
The Young Greek Odalisque
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
Mid silken cushions, richly wrought, a young Greek girl reclined,
And fairer form the harems walls had neer before enshrined;
Mid all the young and lovely ones who round her clustered there,
With glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes, she shone supremely fair.
Friendship
© William Cowper
What virtue, or what mental grace
But men unqualified and base
Will boast it their possession?
Profusion apes the noble part
Of liberality of heart,
And dulness of discretion.
Pharsalia - Book I: The Crossing Of The Rubicon
© Marcus Annaeus Lucanus
First of such deeds I purpose to unfold
The causes - task immense - what drove to arms
A maddened nation, and from all the world
Struck peace away.
The Phantom Fleet
© Alfred Noyes
The sunset lingered in the pale green West:
In rosy wastes the low soft evening star
Woke; while the last white sea-mew sought for rest;
And tawny sails came stealing o'er the bar.
Prosopopoia : or, Mother Hubbards Tale
© Edmund Spenser
Yet he the name on him would rashly take,
Maugre the sacred Muses, and it make
A servant to the vile affection
Of such, as he depended most upon;
And with the sugrie sweete thereof allure
Chast Ladies eares to fantasies impure.
The Builders
© Ebenezer Elliott
Spring, summer, autumn, winter,
Come duly, as of old;
Winds blow, suns set, and morning saith,
"Ye hills, put on your gold."
Life Is A Dream - Act III
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
FIRST SOLDIER [within]. He is here within this tower.
Dash the door from off its hinges;
Enter all
Masnawi
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
In the prologue to the Masnavi Rumi hailed Love and its sweet madness that heals all infirmities, and he exhorted the reader to burst the bonds to silver and gold to be free. The Beloved is all in all and is only veiled by the lover. Rumi identified the first cause of all things as God and considered all second causes subordinate to that. Human minds recognize the second causes, but only prophets perceive the action of the first cause. One story tells of a clever rabbit who warned the lion about another lion and showed the lion his own image in a well, causing him to attack it and drown. After delivering his companions from the tyrannical lion, the rabbit urges them to engage in the more difficult warfare against their own inward lusts. In a debate between trusting God and human exertion, Rumi quoted the prophet Muhammad as saying, "Trust in God, yet tie the camel's leg."8 He also mentioned the adage that the worker is the friend of God; so in trusting in providence one need not neglect to use means. Exerting oneself can be giving thanks for God's blessings; but he asked if fatalism shows gratitude.
God is hidden and has no opposite, not seen by us yet seeing us. Form is born of the formless but ultimately returns to the formless. An arrow shot by God cannot remain in the air but must return to God. Rumi reconciled God's agency with human free will and found the divine voice in the inward voice. Those in close communion with God are free, but the one who does not love is fettered by compulsion. God is the agency and first cause of our actions, but human will as the second cause finds recompense in hell or with the Friend. God is like the soul, and the world is like the body. The good and evil of bodies comes from souls. When the sanctuary of true prayer is revealed to one, it is shameful to turn back to mere formal religion. Rumi confirmed Muhammad's view that women hold dominion over the wise and men of heart; but violent fools, lacking tenderness, gentleness, and friendship, try to hold the upper hand over women, because they are swayed by their animal nature. The human qualities of love and tenderness can control the animal passions. Rumi concluded that woman is a ray of God and the Creator's self.
Persephone
© Madison Julius Cawein
O Hades! O false gods! false to yourselves!
O Hades, 'twas thy brother gave her thee
The Wood-Spring To The Poet
© Duncan Campbell Scott
Give, Poet, give!
Thus only shalt thou live.
Give! for 'tis thy joyous doom
To charm, to comfort, to illume.
Poem For The Two Hundred And Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Founding Of Harvard College
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Thou whose bold flight would leave earth's vulgar crowds,
And like the eagle soar above the clouds,
Must feel the pang that fallen angels know
When the red lightning strikes thee from below!
To An Amiable Friend Mourning The Death Of An Excellent Father
© Mercy Otis Warren
LET deep dejection hide her pallid face,
And from thy breast each painful image rase;
Forbid thy lip to utter one complaint,
But view the glories of the rising saint,
Ripe for a crown, and waiting the reward
Of watching long the vineyard of the Lord.
