Life poems
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Elegy II. On Posthumous Reputation - To a Friend
© William Shenstone
O grief of griefs! that Envy's frantic ire
Should rob the living virtue of its praise;
O foolish Muses! that with zeal aspire
To deck the cold insensate shrine with bays.
On A December Day
© George MacDonald
This is the sweetness of an April day;
The softness of the spring is on the face
Of the old year. She has no natural grace,
But something comes to her from far away
Vain Death
© Archibald Thomas Strong
ALL the first night she might not weep
But watched till morning came,
To My Old Schoolmaster
© John Greenleaf Whittier
AN EPISTLE NOT AFTER THE MANNER OF HORACE
Old friend, kind friend! lightly down
Spring
© Samuel Johnson
Stern Winter now, by Spring repress'd
Forbears the long-continued strife;
And Nature, on her naked breast,
Delights to catch the gales of life.
The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Up and down the village streets
Strange are the forms my fancy meets,
He Loves And He Rides Away
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
'Twas in that island summer where
They spin the morning gossamer,
Summer Storm
© James Russell Lowell
But up the west, like a rock-shivered surge,
Climbs a great cloud edged with sun-whitened spray;
Huge whirls of foam boil toppling o'er its verge,
And falling still it seems, and yet it climbs alway.
I Am The Only Being Whose Doom
© Emily Jane Brontë
I am the only being whose doom
No tongue would ask no eye would mourn
I never caused a thought of gloom
A smile of joy since I was born
Grass From The Battle-Field
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
Small sheaf
Of withered grass, that hast not yet revealed
Thy story, lo! I see thee once more green
And growing on the battle-field,
On that last day that ever thou didst grow!
A Letter
© James Russell Lowell
From Mr. Hosea Biglow To The Hon. J.T. Buckingham, Editor Of The Boston Courier, Covering A Letter From Mr. B. Sawin, Private In The Massachusetts Regiment
This kind o' sogerin' aint a mite like our October trainin',
Le Grenier
© William Makepeace Thackeray
Je viens revoir l'asile ou ma jeunesse
De la misere a subi les lecons.
In New Orleans
© Eugene Field
'Twas in the Crescent City not long ago befell
The tear-compelling incident I now propose to tell;
So come, my sweet collector friends, and listen while I sing
Unto your delectation this brief, pathetic thing-
No lyric pitched in vaunting key, but just a requiem
Of blowing twenty dollars in by nine o'clock a.m.
Ode On The Present Times, 27th January 1795
© Amelia Opie
Lo! Winter drives his horrors round;
Wide o'er the rugged soil they fly;
Epilogue
© Arthur Symons
Little waking hour of life out of sleep!
When I consider the many million years
Fand, A Feerie Act I
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Eithne's Spinning Song
Things of the Earth and things of the Air,
Strengths that we feel though we cannot share,
Shapes that are round us and everywhere.
Rehab by Thomas Reiter : American Life in Poetry #277 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Here’s hoping that very few of our readers have to go through cardiac rehab, which Thomas Reiter of New Jersey captures in this poem, but if they do, here’s hoping that they come through it feeling wildly alive and singing at the tops of their lungs.
Rehab
We wear harnesses like crossing guards.
At the Edge of Town by Don Welch: American Life in Poetry #56 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-20
© Ted Kooser
When I complained about some of the tedious jobs I had as a boy, my mother would tell me, Ted, all work is honorable. In this poem, Don Welch gives us a man who's been fixing barbed wire fences all his life.
At the Edge of Town
Hard to know which is more gnarled,
the posts he hammers staples into
or the blue hummocks which run
across his hands like molehills.
