Life poems
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"I Might-And I Might Not"
© Gamaliel Bradford
I might forget ambition and the hunger for success.
I might forget the passion to escape from nothingness.
I might forget the curious dreams of ecstasy that haunt
My fancy day and night. I might forget them. But I can't.
Tristia
© Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
I have studied the Science of departures,
in nights sorrows, when a womans hair falls down.
The Mayflowers
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Sad Mayflower! watched by winter stars,
And nursed by winter gales,
With petals of the sleeted spars,
And leaves of frozen sails!
Sonnet. Written In Answer To A Sonnet By J. H. Reynolds
© John Keats
Blue! 'Tis the life of heaven,--the domain
Of Cynthia,--the wide palace of the sun,--
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,--
The bosomer of clouds, gold, gray, and dun.
In Memoriam A. H. H.
© Alfred Tennyson
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
A New Year's Greeting
© James Russell Lowell
The century numbers fourscore years;
You, fortressed in your teens,
To Time's alarums close your ears,
And, while he devastates your peers,
Conceive not what he means.
Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: XXIV
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Thus through these griefs I had been set apart,
As for a double priesthood. Life to me,
In those first moments when I probed my heart,
Less an enchantress seemed than enemy.
An Outdoor Reception
© John Greenleaf Whittier
On these green banks, where falls too soon
The shade of Autumn's afternoon,
The Sea Of Time.
© Robert Crawford
On that strange sea
Where Man's bark moves as toward eternity,
What sails put forth that are not seen again!
.... Joyous it may be, or in pain,
Looking Unto Jesus
© John Newton
By various maxims, forms and rules,
That pass for wisdom in the schools,
I strove my passion to restrain;
But all my efforts proved in vain.
I Shall Never Love the Snow Again
© Robert Seymour Bridges
I never shall love the snow again
Since Maurice died:
With corniced drift it blocked the lane,
And sheeted in a desolate plain
The country side.
On Finding a Turtle Shell in Daniel Boone National Forest by Jeff Worley : American Life in Poetry #
© Ted Kooser
A poem is an experience like any other, and we can learn as much or more about, say, an apple from a poem about an apple as from the apple itself. Since I was a boy, I’ve been picking up things, but I’ve never found a turtle shell until I found one in this poem by Jeff Worley, who lives in Kentucky.
On Finding a Turtle Shell in Daniel Boone National Forest
This one got tired
A Bush Study, A La Watteau
© Arthur Patchett Martin
HE.
See the smoke-wreaths how they curl so lightly skyward
From the ivied cottage nestled in the trees:
Such a lovely spotI really feel that I would
Be happy there with children on my knees.
The House Of Dust: Part 01: 06:
© Conrad Aiken
The fisherman draws his streaming net from the sea
And sails toward the far-off city, that seems
Like one vague tower.
The dark bow plunges to foam on blue-black waves,
And shrill rain seethes like a ghostly music about him
In a quiet shower.
Crotalus [Rattlesnake Bar, Sierras]
© Francis Bret Harte
No life in earth, or air, or sky;
The sunbeams, broken silently,
On the bared rocks around me lie,-
A Legend Of Christ's Nativity
© Duncan Campbell Scott
At Bethlehem upon the hill,
The day was done, the night was nigh,
The dusk was deep and had its will,
The stars were very small and still,
Like unblown tapers, faint and high.
Charity
© William Cowper
Fairest and foremost of the train that wait
On man's most dignified and happiest state,
Sketch Of A Political Character
© William Watson
Would that some call he could not choose but heed--
Of private passion or of public need--
At last might sting to life that slothful power,
And snare him into greatness for an hour!
