Life poems
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The Prodigy.
© Mary Barber
Then they throng to my House, and my Maid they beseech,
To say, if her Mistress had quite lost her Speech.
Nell readily own'd, what they heard was too true;
That To--day I was dumb, give the Devil his Due:
And frankly confess'd, were it always the Case,
No Servant could e'er have a happier Place.
It's Raining My Son
© Vahan Tekeyan
It's raining my son.... The autumn is wet,
Wet like the eyes of a poor beguiled love....
Go, close the window, and close the door,
Then come beside me, come, face me seated
Willie's Question
© George MacDonald
I.
Willie speaks.
Is it wrong, the wish to be great,
For I do wish it so?
I have asked already my sister Kate;
She says she does not know.
The Laughter of Women by Mary-Sherman Willis: American Life in Poetry #168 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Lau
© Ted Kooser
So often, reading a poem can in itself feel like a thing overheard. Here, Mary-Sherman Willis of Virginia describes the feeling of being stilled by conversation, in this case barely audible and nearly indecipherable.
The Laughter of Women
From over the wall I could hear the laughter of women
in a foreign tongue, in the sun-rinsed air of the city.
They sat (so I thought) perfumed in their hats and their silks,
When you go Away
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
When you go away, my friend,
When you say your last good-bye,
Then the summer time will end,
And the winter will be nigh.
Tauler
© John Greenleaf Whittier
And as he walked he prayed. Even the same
Old prayer with which, for half a score of years,
Morning, and noon, and evening, lip and heart
Had groaned: "Have pity upon me, Lord!
Thou seest, while teaching others, I am blind.
Send me a man who can direct my steps!"
Epilogue
© Edgar Lee Masters
You're dreaming worlds. I'm in the King row.
Move as you will, if I can't wreck you
I'll thwart you, harry you, rout you, check you.
One star only for Love's heaven
© Augusta Davies Webster
ONE star only for Love's heaven;
One rose only for Love's breast;
One love only to be given.
Break o Day
© Henry Lawson
I was born to ruin or born to mar
The home wherever I light.
Oh! I wish that you were the Evening Star
And that I were the Fall o Night.
The Sweet Little Man
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Now, while our soldiers are fighting our battles,
Each at his post to do all that he can,
Down among rebels and contraband chattels,
What are you doing, my sweet little man?
Apostrophe
© Charlotte Turner Smith
TO AN OLD TREE.
WHERE thy broad branches brave the bitter North,
Like rugged, indigent, unheeded, worth,
Lo! Vegetation's guardian hands emboss
Jerusalem Delivered - Book 03 - part 03
© Torquato Tasso
XXXI
The villain flies, he, full of rage and ire,
The Philosopher and the Philanthropist
© James Kenneth Stephen
Searching an infinite Where,
Probing a bottomless When,
Dreamfully wandering,
Ceaselessly pondering,
Gipsies
© William Wordsworth
YET are they here the same unbroken knot
Of human Beings, in the self-same spot!
Men, women, children, yea the frame
Of the whole spectacle the same!
A Song Of Other days
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
As o'er the glacier's frozen sheet
Breathes soft the Alpine rose,
On Leaving London For Wales
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
Hail to thee, Cambria! for the unfettered wind
Which from thy wilds even now methinks I feel,
Chasing the clouds that roll in wrath behind,
And tightening the soul's laxest nerves to steel;
Theory And Practice
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
The man of God stands, on the Sabbath-day,
Warning the sinners from the broad highway
You Must Not Understand This Life (with original German)
© Rainer Maria Rilke
You must not understand this life.
Then everyday will be like a party.
Simply let every day be
like a child who, passing by,
receives many flowers from the wind.
