Life poems
/ page 251 of 844 /
Love Sonnets
© Charles Harpur
How beautiful doth the morning rise
Oer the hills, as from her bower a bride
Comes brightenedblushing with the shame-faced pride
Of love that now consummated supplies
The Men Who Made Bad Matches
© Henry Lawson
Oh, the men who made bad matches, and the Great Misunderstood,
Are through all the world a mighty and a silent brotherhood.
If a wife is discontented, every other woman knows
But the men who made bad matches keep the cruel secret close.
Love's Reward
© William Morris
It was a knight of the southern land
Rode forth upon the way
When the birds sang sweet on either hand
About the middle of the May.
The Believer's Safety
© John Newton
Incarnate God! the soul that knows
Thy name's mysterious power
Shall dwell in undisturbed repose,
Nor fear the trying hour.
The Haunch Of Venison
© Oliver Goldsmith
A POETICAL EPISTLE TO LORD CLARE
THANKS, my Lord, for your venison, for finer or fatter
To The Memory Of Mrs. Lefroy Who Died Dec: 16 -- My Birthday.
© Jane Austen
Angelic Woman! past my power to praise
In Language meet, thy Talents, Temper, mind.
Thy solid Worth, they captivating Grace!-
Thou friend and ornament of Humankind!-
Sonnet LV. Music And Poetry. 1.
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
SING, poets, as ye list, of fields, of flowers,
Of changing seasons with their brilliant round
Of keen delights, or themes still more profound
Where soul through sense transmutes this world of ours.
Satan
© Richard Crashaw
Below the bottom of the great Abyss,
There where one centre reconciles all things,
The Death of Parson Caldwell's Wife
© Mercy Otis Warren
THE outrage of innocence in instances too numerous to be recorded, of the wanton barbarity of the soldiers of the King of England, as they patrolled the defenceless villages of America, was evinced nowhere more remarkably than in the burnings and massacres every that, marked the footsteps of the British troops as they from time to time ravaged the State of New Jersey
Come Back
© Henry William Herbert
COME back and bring my life again
That went with thee beyond my will!
The Song Of Hiawatha II: The Four Winds
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Honor be to Mudjekeewis!"
Cried the warriors, cried the old men,
The Wind on the Hills
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
Go not to the hills of Erin
When the night winds are about,
Put up your bar and shutter,
And so keep the danger out.
Occasionally
© Franklin Pierce Adams
Now and then there's a couple whose conjugal life
Is happy as happy can be;
Epitaph on Sir Thomas Hanmer, Bart.
© Samuel Johnson
Thou who survey'st these walls with curious eye,
Pause at this tomb where Hanmer's ashes lie;
Everybody by Marie Sheppard Williams : American Life in Poetry #243 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2
© Ted Kooser
Lots of contemporary poems are anecdotal, a brief narration of some event, and what can make them rise above anecdote is when they manage to convey significance, often as the poem closes. Here is an example of one like that, by Marie Sheppard Williams, who lives in Minneapolis.
Everybody
I stood at a bus corner
Ode - On the Death of a Young Lady
© John Logan
The peace of Heaven attend thy shade,
My early friend, my favourite maid!
When life was new, companions gay,
We hail'd the morning of our day.
Perle Des Jardins
© Madison Julius Cawein
What am I, and what is he
Who can cull and tear a heart,
As one might a rose for sport
In its royalty?
In Hospital
© Boris Pasternak
They stood, almost blocking the pavement,
As though at a window display;
The stretcher was pushed in position,
The ambulance started away.
Sonnet LXXVII: Soul's Beauty
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Under the arch of Life, where love and death,
Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
