Life poems
/ page 164 of 844 /Under Sentence
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
PLACE--Scotland. TIME--Thirteenth Century.
OFF! off! no treacherous priest for me!
What's Heaven? what's Hell? Eternity!
It hath no meaning to mine ear.
Yarrow Revisited
© William Wordsworth
. The gallant Youth, who may have gained,
Or seeks, a "winsome Marrow,"
The Wolf And Shepherds. A Fable
© James Beattie
Laws, as we read in ancient sages,
Have been like cobwebs in all ages:
Cobwebs for little flies are spread,
And laws for little folks are made;
The Innkeepers Wife
© Clive Sansom
Well, I must go in. There are meals to serve.
Join us there, Carpenter, when youve had enough
Of cattle-company. The world is a sad place,
But wine and music blunt the truth of it.
Poor Withered Rose
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Poor withered rose, she gave it me,
Half in revenge and half in glee;
Its petals not so pink by half
As are her lips when curled to laugh,
As are her cheeks when dimples gay
In merry mischief o'er them play.
A Poem On The Last Day - Book I
© Edward Young
When, lo, a mighty trump, one half conceal'd
In clouds, one half to mortal eye reveal'd,
Shall pour a dreadful note; the piercing call
Shall rattle in the centre of the ball;
The' extended circuit of creation shake,
The living die with fear, the dead awake.
Lovely And Lifelike
© Paul Eluard
A face at the end of the day
A cradle in days dead leaves
A bouquet of naked rain
Every ray of sun hidden
Tarafa
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
The tent lines these of Kháula in stone--stricken Tháhmadi.
See where the fire has touched them, dyed dark as the hands of her.
'Twas here thy friends consoled thee that day with thee comforting,
cried; Not of grief, thou faint--heart! Men die not thus easily.
A Christmas Carol
© James Russell Lowell
'What means this glory round our feet,'
The Magi mused, 'more bright than morn?'
And voices chanted clear and sweet,
'To-day the Prince of Peace is born!'
The Prophecy Of St. Oran: Part II
© Mathilde Blind
I.
THERE was a windless mere, on whose smooth breast
R. S. S.
© William Cowper
All-worshipped Gold! thou mighty mystery
Say by what name shall I address thee rather,
Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 3. The Student's Tale; Emma and Eginhard
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Smaragdo, Abbot of St. Michael's, said,
With many a shrug and shaking of the head,
Surely some demon must possess the lad,
Who showed more wit than ever schoolboy had,
And learned his Trivium thus without the rod;
But Alcuin said it was the grace of God.
The Last Prayer
© William Wilfred Campbell
MASTER of life, the day is done;
My sun of life is sinking low;
I watch the hours slip one by one
And hark the night-wind and the snow.
Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 1. The Musician's Tale; The Saga of King Olaf III. -- Thora Of Rimol
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Thora of Rimol! hide me! hide me!
Danger and shame and death betide me!
For Olaf the King is hunting me down
Through field and forest, through thorp and town!"
Thus cried Jarl Hakon
To Thora, the fairest of women.
Evolution (revised)
© Sri Aurobindo
I passed into a lucent still abode
And saw as in a mirror crystalline
An ancient Force ascending serpentine
The unhasting spirals of the aeonic road.
Yard Work by Don Thompson : American Life in Poetry #272 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Whether we like it or not, we live with the awareness that death is always close at hand, and in this poem by Don Thompson, a Californian, a dead blackbird can’t be pushed out of the awareness of the speaker, nor can it escape the ants, who have their own yard work to do.
Yard Work
My leaf blower lifted the blackbird-
Ormuzd And Ahriman. Part I
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
YE interstellar spaces, serene and still and clear.
Above, below, around!
Ye gray unmeasured breadths of ether, sphere on sphere!
We listen, but no sound
Rings from your depths profound.