Life poems
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The Fourth Olympic Ode Of Pindar
© Henry James Pye
To Psaumis of Camarina, on his Victory in the Chariot Race. ARGUMENT. The Poet, after an invocation to Jupiter, extols Psaumis for his Victory in the Chariot Race, and for his desire to honor his country. From thence he takes occasion to praise him for his skill in managing horses, his hospitality, and his love of peace; and, mentioning the history of Erginus, excuses the early whiteness of his hair.
STROPHE.
Catching the Moles by Judith Kitchen: American Life in Poetry #106 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 20
© Ted Kooser
By describing the relocation of the moles which ravaged her yard, Washington poet Judith Kitchen presents an experience that resonates beyond the simple details, and suggests that children can learn important lessons through observation of the natural world.
Catching the Moles
First we tamp down the ridges
that criss-cross the yard
I Know All This When Gipsy Fiddles Cry
© Vachel Lindsay
Oh, sweating thieves, and hard-boiled scalawags,
That still will boast your pride until the doom,
Smashing every caste rule of the world,
Reaching at last your Hindu goal to smash
The caste rules of old India, and shout:
"Down with the Brahmins, let the Romany reign."
Lost And Found
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
"Whither art thou gone, fair Una?
Una fair, the moon is gleaming;
Dialogues
© Pietro Aretino
ANTONIA What did you see? Tell me, please!
NANNA In the cell I saw four sisters, the General, and the three milky-white and ruby-red young friars, who were taking off the reverend fathers cassock and garbing him in a big velvet coat. Then hid his tonsure under a small golden skullcap, over which they placed a velvet cap ornamented with crystal droplets and surmounted by a white plume. Then, having buckled his sword at his side, the blissful General, to speak frankly, started strutting back and forth with the big-balled stride of a Bartolomeo Colleoni. In the meantime the sisters removed their habits and the friars took off their tunics. The latter put on the sisters` robes and the sisters that is, three of them put on the friars`. The fourth nun rolled herself up in Generals cassock, seated herself pontifically, and began to imitate a superior laying down the law for the convent.
An Eclogue From Virgil
© Eugene Field
(The exile Meliboeus finds Tityrus in possession of his own farm,
restored to him by the emperor Augustus, and a conversation ensues. The
poem is in praise of Augustus, peace and pastoral life.)
Gone For Ever
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
O happy rosebud blooming
Upon thy parent tree,
Nay, thou art too presuming
For soon the earth entombing
Thy faded charms shall be,
And the chill damp consuming.
A Royal Princess
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
I, a princess, king-descended, decked with jewels, gilded, drest,
Would rather be a peasant with her baby at her breast,
For all I shine so like the sun, and am purple like the west.
The Muses Threnodie: Third Muse
© Henry Adamson
These be the first memorials of a bridge,
Good Monsier, that we truely can alledge.
Thus spoke good Gall, and I did much rejoyce
To hear him these antiquities disclose;
Which I remembering now, of force must cry
Gall, sweetest Gall, what ailed thee to die?
To Italy (1818)
© Giacomo Leopardi
My country, I the walls, the arches see,
The columns, statues, and the towers
Seasonal Cycle - Chapter 02 - Rainy Season
© Kalidasa
"Oh, dear, now the kingly monsoon is onset with its clouds containing raindrops, as its ruttish elephants in its convoy, and with skyey flashes of lighting as its pennants and buntings, and with the thunders of thunderbolts as its percussive drumbeats, thus this rainy season has come to pass, radiately shining forth like a king, for the delight of voluptuous people…
"By far, the vault of heaven is overly impregnated with massive clouds, that are similar to the gleam of blackish petals of black-costuses… somewhere they are similar to the glitter of the heaps of well-kneaded blackish mascara… and elsewhere they glisten like the blackened nipples of bosoms of pregnant women, ready to rain the elixir of life on the lips of her offspring, when that offspring is actualised…
"Too oft the poet in elaborate verse"
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
Too oft the poet in elaborate verse,
Flushed with quaint images and gorgeous tropes,
To Sensibility
© Helen Maria Williams
In SENSIBILITY'S lov'd praise
I tune my trembling reed,
And seek to deck her shrine with bays,
On which my heart must bleed!
The Voyage To Vinland: Bioern's Beckoners
© James Russell Lowell
Looms there the New Land;
Locked in the shadow
Long the gods shut it,
Niggards of newness
They, the o'er-old.
Challenge
© Edgar Albert Guest
Life is a challenge to the bold,
It flings its gauntlet down
And bids us, if we seek for gold
And glory and renown,
To come and take them from its store,
It will not meekly hand them o'er.
Penelope
© Francis Thompson
Love, like a wind, shook wide your blosmy eyes,
You trembled, and your breath came sobbing-wise
For that you loved me.
