Life poems
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The Quaker Of The Olden Time
© John Greenleaf Whittier
THE Quaker of the olden time!
How calm and firm and true,
Unspotted by its wrong and crime,
He walked the dark earth through.
To The Duke Of Dorset
© George Gordon Byron
Dorset! whose early steps with mine have stray'd,
Exploring every path of Ida's glade;
O Who Will Speak From a Womb or a Cloud?
© George Barker
Not less light shall the gold and the green lie
On the cyclonic curl and diamonded eye, than
A Farm House by the River
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
I know a little country place
Where still my heart doth linger,
The Four Seasons : Autumn
© James Thomson
Crown'd with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf,
While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain,
Comes jovial on; the Doric reed once more,
Well pleased, I tune. Whate'er the wintry frost
The Path O' Little Children
© Edgar Albert Guest
The path o' little children is the path I want to tread,
Where green is every valley and every rose is red,
Where laughter's always ringing and every smile is real,
And where the hurts are little hurts that just a kiss will heal.
The Shepherdess Of The Arno
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
Tis no wild and wondrous legend, but a simple pious tale
Of a gentle shepherd maiden, dwelling in Italian vale,
Near where Arnos glittering waters like the sunbeams flash and play
As they mirror back the vineyards through which they take their way.
The Promise In Disturbance
© George Meredith
How low when angels fall their black descent,
Our primal thunder tells: known is the pain
Triumph
© Henry Cuyler Bunner
The dawn came in through the bars of the blind,--
And the winter's dawn is gray,--
And said, "However you cheat your mind,
The hours are flying away."
The Progress of Spring
© Alfred Tennyson
THE groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould,
Fair Spring slides hither o'er the Southern sea,
In My Mother's House by Gloria g. Murray: American Life in Poetry #31 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate
© Ted Kooser
All of us have known tyrants, perhaps at the office, on the playground or, as in this poem, within a family. Here Long Island poet Gloria g. Murray portrays an authoritarian mother and her domain. Perhaps you've felt the tension in a scene like this.
Gloves by Jose Angel Araguz: American Life in Poetry #196 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
One of the most effective means for conveying strong emotion is to invest some real object with one's feelings, and then to let the object carry those feelings to the reader. Notice how the gloves in this short poem by Jose´ Angel Araguz of Oregon carry the heavy weight of the speaker's loss.
Gloves
I made up a story for myself once,
That each glove I lost
Was sent to my father in prison
Beer
© Charles Stuart Calverley
In those old days which poets say were golden -
(Perhaps they laid the gilding on themselves:
Intry-Mintry
© Eugene Field
Willie and Bess, Georgie and May
Once, as these children were hard at play,
Lines Read At The New York City Hall Meeting On Lafayette Day, 1918
© John Jay Chapman
And even while we hold our holiday
The Allied ranks in fierce array
Press on the foe like huntsman on the prey:
The Wild Boar of the North is brought to bay!
The Benefit Of Trouble
© Edgar Albert Guest
IF LIFE were rosy and skies were blue
And never a cloud appeared,
If every heart that you loved proved true,
And never a friendship seared;
If there were no troubles to fret your soul,
You never would struggle to gain your goal.
Lines For Music (I)
© Frances Anne Kemble
Loud wind, strong wind, where art thou blowing?
Into the air, the viewless air,
Sonnet XXVIII
© Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa
The edge of the green wave whitely doth hiss
Upon the wetted sand. I look, yet dream.
Wind-Clouds And Star-Drifts
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Here am I, bound upon this pillared rock,
Prey to the vulture of a vast desire
That feeds upon my life. I burst my bands
And steal a moment's freedom from the beak,
The clinging talons and the shadowing plumes;
Then comes the false enchantress, with her song;
