Life poems
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Mimnermus in Church
© William Johnson Cory
YOU promise heavens free from strife,
Pure truth, and perfect change of will;
But sweet, sweet is this human life,
So sweet, I fain would breathe it still;
Your chilly stars I can forgo,
This warm kind world is all I know.
The Open Secret
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
The Heavens repeat no other Song,
And, plainly or in parable,
Fit The Fourth - The Hunting
© Lewis Carroll
"It's excessively awkward to mention it now-
As I think I've already remarked."
And the man they called "Hi!" replied, with a sigh,
"I informed you the day we embarked.
Red Rock Camp
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
A TALE OF EARLY COLORADO.
My simple story is of those times ere the magic power of steam
First whirled the traveller oer the plains with the swiftness of a dream,
Reducing to a few days time the journey of many a week,
That fell of old to the miners lot ere he sighted tall Pikes Peak.
Coins by Richard Newman: American Life in Poetry #57 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
What purses, piggy banks, and window sills
have these coins known, their presidential heads
pinched into what beggar's chalky palm--
they circulate like tarnished red blood cells,
all of us exchanging the merest film
of our lives, and the lives of those long dead.
Ode to W. Kitchener, M.D.
© Thomas Hood
Author of The Cook's Oracle, Observations on Vocal Music, The Art of Invigorating and Prolonging Life, Practical Observations on Telescopes, Opera-Glasses, and Spectacles, The Housekeeper's Ledger and The Pleasure of Making a Will.
"I rule the roast, as Milton says!"Caleb Quotem.
Oh! multifarious man!
Good Tidings; Or News From The Farm
© Robert Bloomfield
Where's the Blind Child, so admirably fair,
With guileless dimples, and with flaxen hair
Epitaph: On the Reverend Mr. Penrose
© Hannah More
If social manners, if the gentlest mind,
If zeal for God, and love for human kind,
If all the charities which life endear,
May claim affection, or demand a tear,
Then, o'er Penrose's venerable urn
Domestic love may weep, and friendship mourn.
"Still Glides the Gentle Streamlet On"
© Thomas Hood
Still glides the gentle streamlet on,
With shifting current new and strange;
The water that was here is gone,
But those green shadows do not change.
Severance
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
AH! who call tell how strong the tie
Which subtly binds us, heart to heart,
Till the dark master, Death, comes nigh,
To wrench our kindred lives apart?
Care-Free Youth
© Edgar Albert Guest
The skies are blue and the sun is out
and the grass is green and soft
Wind by Mike White: American Life in Poetry #121 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
A waiter in a clean apron
appeared, not quite
certain, shielding his eyes, wary
of our rumbling engines.
The Black Tracker (Or: Why He Lost The Track)
© Henry Lawson
THERE was a tracker in the force
Of wondrous sight (the story ran):
He never failed to track a horse,
He never failed to find his man.
The Suburbs
© Enid Derham
MILES and miles of quiet houses, every house a harbour,
Each for some unquiet soul a haven and a home,
The Bride Of The Nile - Act I
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Act I Governor's Palace at Alexandria.
Act II Garden House of the Makawkas at On.
Act III On the Banks of the Nile. Time, th Century, A.D.
Epistle To Augusta
© George Gordon Byron
I.
My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
