Life poems
/ page 248 of 844 /
Country Life:to His Brother, Mr Thomas Herrick
© Robert Herrick
Thrice, and above, blest, my soul's half, art thou,
In thy both last and better vow;
Only a Woman
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
"She loves with love that cannot tire:
And if, ah, woe! she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love flames higher,
As grass grows taller round a stone."
Coventry Patmore.
Twilight
© Caroline Norton
When the mournful Jewish mother
Laid her infant down to rest,
In doubt, and fear, and sorrow,
On the water's changeful breast;
Worn Out
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
You bid me hold my peace
And dry my fruitless tears,
Forgetting that I bear
A pain beyond my years.
To ---, Five Years Old
© Richard Monckton Milnes
Delighted soul! that in thy new abode
Dwellest contentedly and knowest not
What men can mean who faint beneath the load
Of mortal life and mourn an earthly lot;
He Never Smiled Again
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
The bark that held a prince went down,
The sweeping waves roll'd on;
To Her Portrait
© Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
'Tis but vain artifice of scheming minds;
'Tis but a flower fading on the winds;
'Tis but a useless protest against Fate;
'Tis but stupidity without a thought,
A lifeless shadow, if we meditate;
'Tis death, tis dust, tis shadow, yea, 'tis nought.
The Hand of Glory: The Nurse's Story
© Richard Harris Barham
And now before
That old Woman's door,
Where nought that 's good may be,
Hand in hand
The Murderers stand
By one, by two, by three!
To Mr. Dryden
© Joseph Addison
How long, great Poet, shall thy sacred lays
Provoke our wonder, and transcend our praise?
The Solitary
© Robert Fuller Murray
I have been lonely all my days on earth,
Living a life within my secret soul,
With mine own springs of sorrow and of mirth,
Beyond the world's control.
The Sense Of Beauty
© Caroline Norton
Lo! at his pencil's touch steals faintly forth
(Like an uprising star in the cold north)
Some face which soon shall glow with beauty's fire:
Dim seems the sketch to those who stand around,
Dim and uncertain as an echoed sound,
But oh! how bright to him, whose hand thou dost inspire!
August 1914
© Isaac Rosenberg
What in our lives is burnt
In the fire of this?
The hearts dear granary?
The much we shall miss?
As Like The Woman As You Can
© William Ernest Henley
'As like the Woman as you can' -
(Thus the New Adam was beguiled) -
Dialogue Between Ghost And Priest
© Sylvia Plath
In the rectory garden on his evening walk
Paced brisk Father Shawn. A cold day, a sodden one it was
In black November. After a sliding rain
Dew stood in chill sweat on each stalk,
Each thorn; spiring from wet earth, a blue haze
Hung caught in dark-webbed branches like a fabulous heron.
Storm
© Archibald Lampman
Out of the gray northwest, where many a day gone by
Ye tugged and howled in your tempestuous grot,
And evermore the huge frost giants lie,
Your wizard guards in vigilance unforgot,
Forgotten Dead, I Salute You
© Muriel Stuart
Dawn has flashed up the startled skies,
Night has gone out beneath the hill
Medjnoon in his Solitude
© Louisa Stuart Costello
My ev'ry thought and wish was thine;
Alas! thou know'st too well
The ties that bind thy soul and mine,
How lasting need I tell.
