Life poems

The Fossil Elephant

© Howitt Mary

The earth is old! Six thousand years, Are gone since I had birth;In the forests of the olden time, And the solitudes of earth.

Here Dead Lie We because We did not Choose (XXXVI)

© Alfred Edward Housman

Here dead lie we because we did not choose To live and shame the land from which we sprung.Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; But young men think it is, and we were young.

Three Kings of Orient

© Hopkins Jr. John Henry

We Three Kings of Orient are,Bearing gifts we traverse afar, Field and fountain, Moor and mountain,Following yonder Star.

The Wreck of the Deutschland (Dec. 6, 7, 1875)

© Gerard Manley Hopkins

[[A-text]]to the happy memory of five Francisan nuns,exiles by the Falck Laws, drowned betweenmidnight & morning of December 7 [[1875]].

No Worst, There is None

© Gerard Manley Hopkins

No worst, there is none

The Beadle's Annual Address

© Thomas Hood

The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,The ploughman homeward plods his weary way And this is Christmas Eve, and here I be!

The Flâneur

© Oliver Wendell Holmes

I love all sights of earth and skies,From flowers that glow to stars that shine;The comet and the penny show,All curious things, above, below,Hold each in turn my wandering eyes:I claim the Christian Pagan's line,Humani nihil, -- even so, --And is not human life divine?

When soft the western breezes blow,And strolling youths meet sauntering maids,I love to watch the stirring tradesBeneath the Vallombrosa shadesOur much-enduring elms bestow;The vender and his rhetoric's flow,That lambent stream of liquid lies;The bait he dangles from his line,The gudgeon and his gold-washed prize

Oh, Give Me a Home Where the Buffalo Roam

© Higley Brewster

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam,Where the deer and the antelope play,Where seldom is heard a discouraging wordAnd the sky is not clouded all day.

Tick! Tick! Tick!

© Herschel John Frederick William

(occasioned by an "irregular ode to an old Clock", by Lady ---)

Double Ballade of the Nothingness of Things

© William Ernest Henley

The big teetotum twirlsAnd epochs wax and waneAs chance subsides or swirls;But of the loss and gainThe sum is always plain

The Peddler (Male)

© Susan Frances Harrison

Scissors and needles and pins--pins and needles and tape!Autolycus come to life, but look how Autolycus grins!What's wrong with his mouth? You would say it's full of his needles and pins,It's all on one side with a kink, a kind of a twisted gape

Of Love in Reproof

© Susan Frances Harrison

I thought that Life was worth the living,I thought that Love was worth the giving.

March

© Susan Frances Harrison

Here on the wide waste lands,Take--child--these trembling hands,Though my life be as blank and waste,My days as sorely ungracedBy glimmer of green on the rimOf a sunless wilderness dim,As the wet fields barren and brown,As the fork of each sterile limbShorn of its lustrous crown

The Apple of Eden

© Charles Harpur

Sex

© Guiterman Arthur

Amœbas at the start Were not complex;They tore themselves apart And started Sex.

Rags and Robes

© Whitney Adeline Dutton Train

"Hark, hark! The dogs do bark;Beggars are coming to town: Some in rags, Some in tags,And some in velvet gowns!"

The Passionate Suburbanite To His Love

© Guiterman Arthur

Commute with me, my Love, and be merry; How vain in the City to dwellWhen apple-trees blow in Dobbs' Ferry And lilacs adorn New Rochelle!White Plains is the Garden of Allah And Pelham's the Pearl of the Sea;There's bliss in the name of Valhalla -- Oh, fly to the Suburbs with me!

Then won't you commute on my family ticket?To Westchester County we'll flee

Our Suburb

© Guiterman Arthur

Our Garden Spot is always bright and pretty (Of course it's rather soggy when it rains),And only thirty minutes from the city (Of course you have to catch the proper trains)

Caelica: Sonnet 22

© Fulke Greville

I, with whose colours Myra dress'd her head, I, that ware posies of her own hand-making,I, that mine own name in the chimneys read By Myra finely wrought ere I was waking: Must I look on, in hope time coming may With change bring back my turn again to play?

I, that on Sunday at the church-stile found A garland sweet, with true-love knots in flowers,Which I to wear about mine arm was bound, That each of us might know that all was ours: Must I now lead an idle life in wishes, And follow Cupid for his loaves and fishes?

I, that did wear the ring her mother left, I, for whose love she gloried to be blamed,I, with whose eyes her eyes committed theft, I, who did make her blush when I was named: Must I lose ring, flowers, blush, theft, and go naked, Watching with sighs till dead love be awaked?

I, that, when drowsy Argus fell asleep, Like jealousy o'erwatched with desire,Was even warned modesty to keep, While her breath, speaking, kindled Nature's fire: Must I look on a-cold, while others warm them? Do Vulcan's brothers in such fine nets arm them?

Was it for this that I might Myra see Washing the water with her beauties white?Yet would she never write her love to me

Into Battle

© Grenfell Julian

The naked earth is warm with Spring,And with green grass and bursting treesLeans to the sun's gaze glorying,And quivers in the sunny breeze;And life is Colour and Warmth and Light,And a striving evermore for these;And he is dead who will not fight,And who dies fighting has increase