Life poems
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The Mother Of A Poet
© Sara Teasdale
She is too kind, I think, for mortal things,
Too gentle for the gusty ways of earth;
God gave to her a shy and silver mirth,
And made her soul as clear
The Cross
© Madison Julius Cawein
The cross I bear no man shall know--
No man can ease the cross I bear!--
Alas! the thorny path of woe
Up the steep hill of care!
Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church, Rome, The
© Robert Browning
Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
The Lay Of Christine
© William Morris
TRANSLATED FROM THE ICELANDIC.
Of silk my gear was shapen,
Scarlet they did on me,
Then to the sea-strand was I borne
And laid in a bark of the sea.
O well were I from the World away.
The Inevitable by Allan Peterson: American Life in Poetry #159 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
Bad news all too often arrives with a ringing telephone, all too early in the morning. But sometimes it comes with less emphasis, by regular mail. Here Allan Peterson of Florida gets at the feelings of receiving bad news by letter, not by directly stating how he feels but by suddenly noticing the world that surrounds the moment when that news arrives.
The Inevitable
Habeas Corpus
© Helen Hunt Jackson
* (Unfinished here.)
Ah, well, friend Death, good friend thou art;
I shall be free when thou art through.
Take all there is - take hand and heart;
There must be somewhere work to do.
Soldierly
© Edgar Albert Guest
The glory of a soldierand a soldier's not a saint
Is the way he does his duty without grumbling or complaint;
His work's not always pleasant, but he does it rain or shine,
And he grabs a bit of glory when he's fighting in the line;
But the lesson that he teaches every day to me an' you
Is the way to do a duty that we do not like to do.
Bonduca
© Beaumont and Fletcher
{Bonduca the British queen, taking occasion from a defeat of the Romans to impeach their valor, is rebuked by Caratac.}
Queen Bonduca, I do not grieve your fortune.
The Race
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
On the hill they are crowding together,
In the stand they are crushing for room,
Like midge-flies they swarm on the heather,
They gather like bees on the broom;
The Poet
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
He sang of life, serenely sweet,
With, now and then, a deeper note.
From some high peak, nigh yet remote,
He voiced the world's absorbing beat.
M'Pherson's Rant
© Robert Burns
Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong,
The wretch's destinie!
M'Pherson's time will not be long
On yonder gallows-tree.
A Te Deum
© Alfred Austin
Now let me praise the Lord,
The Lord, the Maker of all!
I will praise Him on timbrel and chord;
Will praise Him, whatever befall.
Mogg Megone - Part II.
© John Greenleaf Whittier
"O, tell me, father, can the dead
Walk on the earth, and look on us,
And lay upon the living's head
Their blessing or their curse?
For, O, last night she stood by me,
As I lay beneath the woodland tree!"
Limericks
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
THERE is a big artist named Val,
The roughs' and the prizefighters' pal:
The mind of a groom
And the head of a broom
Were Nature's endowments to Val.
The Blackbird
© William Ernest Henley
The nightingale has a lyre of gold,
The lark's is a clarion call,
And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute,
But I love him best of all.
Baby's Age
© Henry Timrod
She came with April blooms and showers;
We count her little life by flowers.
A Satire Against The Citizens Of London
© Henry Howard
London, hast thou accused me
Of breach of laws, the root of strife?
Hark The Thundring Drums Inviting
© Thomas Parnell
Hark the thundring Drums inviting
All our forward youth to arms
The Troubadour
© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
THE wind blows salt from off the sea
And sweet from where the land lies green;
I travel down the great highway
That runs so straight and white between--
I watch the sea-wind strain the sheet,
The land-wind toss the yellow wheat!
On fidelity
© Ovid
I don't ask you to be faithful - you're beautiful, after all -
but just that I be spared the pain of knowing.
