Knowledge poems
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Paradise Lost: Book XII (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
AS one who in his journey bates at Noone,
Though bent on speed, so heer the Archangel paus'd
Betwixt the world destroy'd and world restor'd,
If Adam aught perhaps might interpose;
Then with transition sweet new Speech resumes.
Gnothi Seauton
© Samuel Johnson
What then remains? Must I, in slow decline,
To mute inglorious ease old age resign?
Or, bold ambition kindling in my breast,
Attempt some arduous task? Or, were it best,
Brooding o'er lexicons to pass the day,
And in that labour drudge my life away?
from The Testament of Love
© John Hall Wheelock
from Book I, Introduction
Man’s Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense,
Bel Canto
© Kenneth Koch
The sun is high, the seaside air is sharp,
And salty light reveals the Mayan School.
The Ecstasy
© Thomas Parnell
Charmd with the sight I long to bear my part
The pleasure flutters at my ravishd heart
Sweet saints and Angels Heavns immortall Quire
If Love have warmd me with celestial fire
Assist my words and as they move along
With Halelujah crown the burthend Song
On The Death Of Sir Henry Wootton
© Abraham Cowley
What shall we say, since silent now is he
Who when he spoke, all things would silent be?
Silchester
© John Kenyon
My travels' dream and talk for many a year,
At length I view thee, hoary Silchester!
Pilgrim long vowed; now only hither led,
As with new zeal by fervent Mitford fed,
Whose voice of poesy and classic grace
Had breathed a new religion on the place.
Days of '74
© Mark Jarman
What was the future then but affirmation,
The first yes between us
Followed by the first lingering dawn?
Waking below a window shaded by redwoods
(Waking? We hadn’t slept—),
We found time saved, like sunlight in a tree.
Paradise Lost: Book XI (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
He added not, for Adam at the newes
Heart-strook with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discover'd soon the place of her retire.
Paradise Lost: Book IX
© Patrick Kavanagh
So gloz'd the Tempter, and his proem tun'd.
Into the heart of Eve his words made way,
Though at the voice much marvelling; at length,
Not unamaz'd, she thus in answer spake:
One Year Old
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Is it we that are wise, is it we,
Who have bought with a price of grief
A wisdom seldom free
From scorn or disbelief,
There's A Moon Inside My Body
© Kabir
THE moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it:
The moon is within me, and so is the sun.
The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me; but my deaf ears cannot hear it.
Red Stains
© Allen Tate
In a pyloned desert where the scorpion reigns
My love and I plucked poppies breathing tales
Beauty
© Tony Hoagland
When the medication she was taking
caused tiny vessels in her face to break,
leaving faint but permanent blue stitches in her cheeks,
my sister said she knew she would
never be beautiful again.
A Farewell To My Youth
© France Preseren
O happier half of days decreed to me,
My early years, so soon you passed away:
To The Moon Of The South
© Richard Monckton Milnes
Let him go down,--the gallant Sun!
His work is nobly done;
Well may He now absorb
Within his solid orb
The Mirror
© Robert Laurence Binyon
I
Where is all the beauty that hath been?
Where the bloom?
Dust on boundless wind? Grass dropt into fire?
