Learning poems
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Hymn to Life
© James Schuyler
The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp
And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass
Immigrant Blues
© Li-Young Lee
People have been trying to kill me since I was born,
a man tells his son, trying to explain
the wisdom of learning a second tongue.
Medea in Athens
© Augusta Davies Webster
Dimly I recall
some prophecy a god breathed by my mouth.
It could not err. What was it? For I think;-
it told his death¹.
The Cottager
© John Clare
True as the church clock hand the hour pursues
He plods about his toils and reads the news,
Golden State
© Frank Bidart
I
To see my father
lying in pink velvet, a rosary
twined around his hands, rouged,
After Thomas Kempis
© George MacDonald
Who follows Jesus shall not walk
In darksome road with danger rife;
But in his heart the Truth will talk,
And on his way will shine the Life.
I Am Learning To Abandon the World
© Linda Pastan
I am learning to abandon the world
before it can abandon me.
Upon Nothing
© John Wilmot
Nothing! thou Elder Brother ev’n to Shade,
That hadst a Being ere the World was made,
Ambition
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
I had ambition once. Like Solomon
I asked for wisdom, deeming wisdom fair,
And with much pains a little knowledge won
Of Nature's cruelty and Man's despair,
Two Songs Of A Fool
© William Butler Yeats
A speckled cat and a tame hare
Eat at my hearthstone
And seep there;
And both look up to me alone
For learning and defence
As I look up to Providence.
Songs from the Plays - Fear No More the Heat o the Sun
© William Shakespeare
Fear no more the heat o the sun,
Nor the furious winters rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and taen thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
The Ghost
© Richard Harris Barham
There stands a City,- neither large nor small,
Its air and situation sweet and pretty;
Learning Geography
© Lesbia Harford
They have a few little hours
To study the world
Its lovely absence of clouds,
Or the thunderbolts hurled
Sanctuary
© Jean Valentine
Here ... well, wanting solitude; and talk; friendship—
The uses of solitude. To imagine; to hear.
Learning braille. To imagine other solitudes.
But they will not be mine;
to wait, in the quiet; not to scatter the voices—
Song of Myself
© Walt Whitman
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
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?
Guinevere
© Alfred Tennyson
`Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
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?
An Essay on Criticism: Part 2
© Alexander Pope
Thus critics, of less judgment than caprice,
Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts
(As most in manners) by a love to parts.
Valeries Confession. To A Friend.
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
THEY declare that I'm gracefully pretty,
The very best waltzer that whirls;
They say I am sparkling and witty,
The pearl, the queen rose-bud of girls.
