Life poems
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Irelands Vow
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
Come! Liberty, come! we are ripe for thy coming-
Come freshen the hearts where thy rival has trod-
Come, richest and rarest!-come, purest and fairest!-
Come, daughter of Science!-come, gift of the God!
Ella with the Shining Hair
© Henry Kendall
One passed us, like a sudden gleam;
Her face was deadly fair.
Oh, go, we said, you homeless Dream
Of Ellas shining hair!
Coombe-Ellen
© William Lisle Bowles
Call the strange spirit that abides unseen
In wilds, and wastes, and shaggy solitudes,
1946-47
© Jibanananda Das
Thousands of Bengali villages, silent and powerless, sink into
hopelessness and lightlessness.
When the sun sets, a certain lovely haired darkness
Comes to fix her hair in-a bun-but by whose hands?
The Jealous Gods
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Oh life is wonderful,' she said,
'And all my world is bright;
Can Paradise show fairer skies,
Or more effulgent light?'
(Speak lower, lower, mortal heart,
The jealous gods may hear.)
The Brothers
© Richard Monckton Milnes
'Tis true, that we can sometimes speak of Death,
Even of the Deaths of those we love the best,
Without dismay or terror; we can sit
In serious calm beneath deciduous trees,
Wet Weather
© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
IT is the English in me that loves the soft, wet weather--
The cloud upon the mountain, the mist upon the sea,
The sea-gull flying low and near with rain upon each feather,
The scent of deep, green woodlands where the buds are breaking free.
My Son the Man by Sharon Olds: American Life in Poetry #70 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
As a man I'll never gain the wisdom Sharon Olds expresses in this poem about motherhood, but one of the reasons poetry is essential is that it can take us so far into someone else's experience that we feel it's our own.
My Son the Man
A Dream Of Death
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
WHERE shall we sail to-day?"--Thus said, methought,
A voice that only could be heard in dreams:
And on we glided without mast or oar,
A wondrous boat upon a wondrous sea.
Louis XVII (King Louis XVII)
© Victor Marie Hugo
On entendit des voix qui disaient dans la nue :
" Jeune ange, Dieu sourit à ta gloire ingénue;
Viens, rentre dans ses bras pour ne plus en sortir;
Et vous, qui du Très-Haut racontez les louanges,
Séraphins, prophètes, archanges,
Courbez-vous, c'est un Roi; chantez, c'est un Martyr! "
Wendover
© Jean Ingelow
Uplifted and lone, set apart with our love
On the crest of a soft swelling down
Cloud shadows that meet on the grass at our feet
Sail on above Wendover town.
On Happiness In This Life
© Thomas Parnell
The morning opens very freshly gay
And life itself is in the month of May.
His Gippsland Girl
© William Henry Ogilvie
Now, money was scarce and work was slack
And love to his heart Crept in,
Twenty-One Distichs About Children
© Eli Siegel
1. Bernice thinks a little.
Bernice is two months old; the world is new for her.
Ah, will her parents' angry world quite do for her?
The Winters Walk
© Caroline Norton
Gleam'd the red sun athwart the misty haze
Which veil'd the cold earth from its loving gaze,
Feeble and sad as Hope in Sorrow's hour,
But for THY soul it still had warmth and power;
Not to its cheerless beauty wert thou blind,
To the keen eye of thy poetic mind
A Pilgrim's Way
© Rudyard Kipling
I do not look for holy saints to guide me on my way,
Or male and female devilkins to lead my feet astray.
If these are added, I rejoice--if not, I shall not mind,
So long as I have leave and choice to meet my fellow-kind.
For as we come and as we go (and deadly-soon go we!)
The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!
Ave
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
FULL well I know the frozen hand has come
That smites the songs of grove and garden dumb,
And chills sad autumn's last chrysanthemum;
On Late Acquired Wealth (From The Greek)
© William Cowper
Poor in my youth, and in life's later scenes
Rich to no end, I curse my natal hour,
Who nought enjoy'd while young, denied the means;
And nought when old enjoy'd, denied the power.
The Second Monarchy, being the Persian, began underCyrus, Darius being his Uncle and Father-in-la
© Anne Bradstreet
Cyrus Cambyses Son of Persia King,
Whom Lady Mandana did to him bring,
