Life poems
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A Banjo Song
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
OH, dere's lots o' keer an' trouble
In dis world to swaller down;
Epilogue
© William Ernest Henley
These, to you now, O, more than ever now -
Now that the Ancient Enemy
Planting the Sand Cherry by Ann Struthers: American Life in Poetry #171 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laurea
© Ted Kooser
Sometimes I think that people are at their happiest when they're engaged in activities close to the work of the earliest humans: telling stories around a fire, taking care of children, hunting, making clothes. Here an Iowan, Ann Struthers, speaks of one of those original tasks, digging in the dirt.
Planting the Sand Cherry
John Underhill
© John Greenleaf Whittier
A score of years had come and gone
Since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth stone,
When Captain Underhill, bearing scars
From Indian ambush and Flemish wars,
Left three-hilled Boston and wandered down,
East by north, to Cocheco town.
Ballade Of True Wisdom
© Andrew Lang
Gods, grant or withhold it; your "yea" and your "nay"
Are immutable, heedless of outcry of ours:
But life IS worth living, and here we would stay
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.
Fear of the Inexplicable
© Rainer Maria Rilke
But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished
the existence of the individual; the relationship between
Contrasted Songs: A Lily And The Lute
© Jean Ingelow
“Nay! but thou a spirit art;
Men shall take thee in the mart
For the ghost of their best thought,
Raised at noon, and near them brought;
Or the prayer they made last night,
Set before them all in white.”
On The Star Of 'The Legion Of Honour' (From The French)
© George Gordon Byron
Star of the brave!--whose beam hath shed
Such glory o'er the quick and dead
Thou radiant and adored deceit!
Which millions rush'd in arms to greet,
Wild meteor of immortal birth;
Why rise in Heaven to set on Earth?
At The Corregidors
© Madison Julius Cawein
To Don Odora says Donna De Vine:
"I yield to thy long endeavor!--
At my balcony be on the stroke of nine,
And, Signor, am thine forever!"
Death
© John Le Gay Brereton
HE, born of my girlhood, is dead, while my life is yet young in my heart
Ere the breasts where his baby lips fed have forgotten their softness, we part.
Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year
© Raymond Carver
October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen
I study my father's embarrassed young man's face.
Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string
of spiny yellow perch, in the other
a bottle of Carlsbad Beer.
Autumn
© Boris Pasternak
I have allowed my family to scatter,
All those who were my dearest to depart,
And once again an age-long loneliness
Comes in to fill all nature and my heart.
The Arctic Voyager
© Henry Timrod
Shall I desist, twice baffled? Once by land,
And once by sea, I fought and strove with storms,
From The Break The Nightingale
© William Ernest Henley
From the brake the Nightingale
Sings exulting to the Rose;
The Cloud
© Charles Harpur
And oh! she said, that by some act of grace
Twere mine to succour yon fierce-toiling race,
To give the hungry meat, the thirsty drink
The thought of good is very sweet to think.
Christmas Tears
© Henry Van Dyke
The day returns by which we date our years:
Day of the joy of giving,that means love;
A Womans Sonnets: VII
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
What have I gained? A little charity?
I never more may dare to fling a stone
At any weakness, nor make boast that I
A better fence or fortitude had shown;
Oerweening Statesmen Have Full Long Relied
© William Wordsworth
O'ERWEENING Statesmen have full long relied
On fleets and armies, and external wealth:
But from 'within' proceeds a Nation's health;
Which shall not fail, though poor men cleave with pride
The Vision Of The Maid Of Orleans - The Third Book
© Robert Southey
The Maiden, musing on the Warrior's words,
Turn'd from the Hall of Glory. Now they reach'd
The Grief Of Love
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Love, I am sick for thee, sick with an absolute grief,
Sick with the thought of thy eyes and lips and bosom.
All the beauty I saw, I see to my hurt revealed.
All that I felt I feel to--day for my pain and sorrow.
