Life poems
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Song (Untitled #12)
© George Meredith
Should thy love die;
O bury it not under ice-blue eyes!
And lips that deny,
With a scornful surprise,
The life it once lived in thy breast when it wore no disguise.
A Legend Of Madrid
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
O'er the horn'd front drops the streamer,
In the nape the sharp steel hisses,
Glances, grazes, - Christ! Redeemer!
By a hair the spine he misses.
Verses On Receiving A Flower From His Mistress
© James Thomson
Madam, the flower that I received from you,
Ere I came home, had lost its lovely hue:
As flowers deprived of the genial day,
Its sprightly bloom did wither and decay;
The Farmer Of Tilsbury Vale
© William Wordsworth
'TIS not for the unfeeling, the falsely refined,
The squeamish in taste, and the narrow of mind,
And the small critic wielding his delicate pen,
That I sing of old Adam, the pride of old men.
Errantry
© John Galsworthy
"Come! Let us lay a lance in rest,
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!
Death
© Rabindranath Tagore
O thou the last fulfilment of life,
Death, my death, come and whisper to me!
Sonnet XII: My Spotless Love
© Samuel Daniel
My spotless love hovers with white wings
About the temple of the proudest frame,
The Skeleton In Armour
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
The Ways Are Green
© William Ernest Henley
The ways are green with the gladdening sheen
Of the young year's fairest daughter.
There Will Always Be Something To Do
© Edgar Albert Guest
There will always be something to do, my boy;
There will always be wrongs to right;
An Epistle. Desiring The Queen's Picture, But Left Unfinished, By The Sudden News Of Her Majesty's D
© Matthew Prior
The train of equipage and pomp of state,
The shining sideboard and the burnish'd plate,
Napoleon III
© Mary Hannay Foott
His silent spirit from the place
Slid forth unseen; amid the throng
Suffering
© Millosh Gjergj Nikolla
Oh life,
I did not know before
How much I dreaded
Your grip
That strangles
Ruthless.
Mason And Slidell: A Yankee Idyll
© James Russell Lowell
Wut! they ha'n't hanged 'em?
Then their wits is gone!
Thet's the sure way to make a goose a swan!
Mahmood The Image-Breaker
© James Russell Lowell
Old events have modern meanings; only that survives
Of past history which finds kindred in all hearts and lives.
The Flying Dutchman
© James Russell Lowell
Don't believe in the Flying Dutchman?
I've known the fellow for years;
My button I've wrenched from his clutch, man:
I shudder whenever he nears!
At The End Of The Day -- English Translation
© Rabindranath Tagore
I know, this day will come to an end
At the end of the day
The Princess And The Page
© Harriet Monroe
There is a legendyou have read it
Of a fair page whom evil spells
Held in deep sleep; and men of credit
Tried all in vain, the story tells,
Week after week, by night and noon,
To wake him from his sombre swoon.
Hospital by Marianne Boruch: American Life in Poetry #155 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
The American poet Elizabeth Bishop often wrote of how placesâboth familiar and foreignâlooked, how they seemed. Here Marianne Boruch of Indiana begins her poem in this way, too, in a space familiar to us all but made newâmade strangeâby close observation.
Hospital
