Life poems
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A Thousand Years From Now
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
I SAT within my tranquil room;
The twilight shadows sank and rose
With slowly flickering motions, waved
Grotesquely through the dusk repose;
Ode to a Lady on the Spring
© Joseph Warton
Lo! Spring, array'd in primrose-colour'd robe,
Fresh beauties sheds on each enliven'd scene,
With show'rs and sunshine cheers the smiling globe,
And mantles hill and vale in glowing green.
The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog by Alicia Ostriker : American Life in Poetry #
© Ted Kooser
Alicia Suskin Ostriker is one of our country’s finest poets. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey. I thought that today you might like to have us offer you a poem full of blessings.
The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog
To be blessed
The Making Of Friends
© Edgar Albert Guest
If nobody smiled and nobody cheered and nobody helped us along,
If each every minute looked after himself and good things all went to the
strong,
If nobody cared just a little for you, and nobody thought about me,
And we stood all alone to the battle of life, what a dreary old world it
would be!
In Time Of Silver Rain
© Langston Hughes
In time of silver rain
The earth puts forth new life again,
Green grasses grow
And flowers lift their heads,
And over all the plain
The wonder spreads
Improvement
© Edgar Albert Guest
The joy of life is living it, or so it seems to me;
In finding shackles on your wrists, then struggling till you're free;
Scotch Drink
© Robert Burns
Let other poets raise a fracas
Bout vines, and wines, an drucken Bacchus,
An crabbit names an stories wrack us,
An grate our lug:
I sing the juice Scotch bear can mak us,
In glass or Jug.
Brothers
© James Weldon Johnson
See! There he stands; not brave, but with an air
Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is he
Not more like brute than man? Look in his eye!
No light is there; none, save the glint that shines
In the now glaring, and now shifting orbs
Of some wild animal caught in the hunter's trap.
Lycus the Centaur
© Thomas Hood
FROM AN UNROLLED MANUSCRIPT OF APOLLONIUS CURIUS
(The Argument: Lycus, detained by Circe in her magical dominion, is beloved by a Water Nymph, who, desiring to render him immortal, has recourse to the Sorceress. Circe gives her an incantation to pronounce, which should turn Lycus into a horse; but the horrible effect of the charm causing her to break off in the midst, he becomes a Centaur).
Solomon on the Vanity of the World, A Poem. In Three Books. - Power. Book III.
© Matthew Prior
Come then, my soul: I call thee by that name,
Thou busy thing, from whence I know I am;
For, knowing that I am, I know thou art,
Since that must needs exist which can impart:
But how thou camest to be, or whence thy spring,
For various of thee priests and poets sing.
Asoka
© Robert Laurence Binyon
I
Gentle as fine rain falling from the night,
The first beams from the Indian moon at full
Steal through the boughs, and brighter and more bright
The Father Of The Man
© Edgar Albert Guest
I can't help thinkin' o' the lad!
Here's summer bringin' trees to fruit,
The Song Of Hiawatha VIII: Hiawatha's Fishing
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Forth upon the Gitche Gumee,
On the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Widows
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
The world was widowed by the death of Christ:
Vainly its suffering soul for peace has sought
And found it not.
For nothing, nothing, nothing has sufficed
To bring back comfort to the stricken house
From whence has gone the Master and the Spouse.
Sonnet XVII
© Caroline Norton
Nor wert thou only by thy kindred wept,--
Young mother! gentle daughter! cherish'd wife!
Deep in her memory France hath fondly kept
The records of thy unassuming life:
Elegance by Linda Gregg: American Life in Poetry #142 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
There's that old business about the tree falling in the middle of the forest with no one to hear it: does it make a noise? Here Linda Gregg, of New York, offers us a look at an elegant beauty that can be presumed to exist and persist without an observer.
Elegance
Elegy On The Death Of Mr. Phillips
© Thomas Chatterton
No more I hail the morning's golden gleam,
No more the wonders of the view I sing;
Friendship requires a melancholy theme,
At her command the awful lyre I string!
