Life poems
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Pippa Passes: Part IV: Night
© Robert Browning
Thanks, friends, many thanks! I chiefly desire life now, that I may recompense every one of you. Most I know something of already. What, a repast prepared?Benedicto benedicatur . . . ugh, ugh! Where was I? Oh, as you were remarking, Ugo, the weather is mild, very unlike winter-weather: but I am a Sicilian, you know, and shiver in your Julys here. To be sure, when 't was full summer at Messina, as we priests used to cross in procession the great square on Assumption Day, you might see our thickest yellow tapers twist suddenly in two, each like a falling star, or sink down on themselves in a gore of wax. But go, my friends, but go! [To the Intendant]
Not you, Ugo! [The others leave the apartment]
I have long wanted to converse with you, Ugo.
When The Wind Storms By With A Shout
© William Ernest Henley
When the wind storms by with a shout, and the stern sea-caves
Rejoice in the tramp and the roar of onsetting waves,
Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the top of life
Is the passion that burns the blood in the act of strife -
Till you pity the dead down there in their quiet graves.
Sonnet LX: Transfigured Life
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
As growth of form or momentary glance
In a child's features will recall to mind
Hymn XVII. Rise royal Sion! rise and sing
© John Austin
Rise royal Sion! rise and sing
Thy souls kind Shepherd, thy harts King:
To K.M.D.
© James Clerk Maxwell
In the buds, before they burst,
Leaves and flowers are moulded;
Closely pressed they lie at first,
Exquisitely folded.
Inspiration.
© Robert Crawford
There's a wind that sweeps through the day and night,
And like the lightning goes,
But none have heard the sound of its wings,
And none know whither it blows;
The Pick by Cecilia Woloch : American Life in Poetry #236 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Cecilia Woloch teaches in California, and when she’s not with her students she’s off to the Carpathian Mountains of Poland, to help with the farm work. But somehow she resisted her wanderlust just long enough to make this telling snapshot of her father at work.
The Pick
I watched him swinging the pick in the sun,
Aerophorion
© Henry James Pye
When bold Ambition tempts the ingenuous mind
To leave the beaten paths of life behind,
The Moor
© Ralph Hodgson
The world's gone forward to its latest fair
And dropt an old man done with by the way,
An Essay On The Different Stiles Of Poetry
© Thomas Parnell
I hate the Vulgar with untuneful Mind,
Hearts uninspir'd, and Senses unrefin'd.
Hence ye Prophane, I raise the sounding String,
And Bolingbroke descends to hear me sing.
The Unsung Heroes
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
A song for the unsung heroes who rose in the country's need,
When the life of the land was threatened by the slaver's cruel greed,
For the men who came from the cornfield, who came from the plough and the flail,
Who rallied round when they heard the sound of the mighty man of the rail.
To The Boy
© Edgar Albert Guest
I have no wish, my little lad,
To climb the towering heights of fame.
To Sir William Davenant
© Abraham Cowley
UPON HIS TWO FIRST BOOKS OF GONDIBERT
FINISHED BEFORE HIS VOYAGE TO AMERICA.
Hush'd Be the Camps Today
© Walt Whitman
Hush'd be the camps today,
And soldiers let us drape our war-worn weapons,
And each with musing soul retire to celebrate,
Our dear commander's death.
Now Spring Has Clad The Grove In Green
© Robert Burns
Now spring has clad the grove in green,
And strew'd the lea wi' flowers;
The Cathedral Of Rheims
© Emile Verhaeren
He who walks through the meadows of Champagne
At noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear,
Retro Santhanas
© Edith Nesbit
"REFUSE, refrain: for this is not the love
The Annunciation Angel warned you of;
This is the little candle, not the sun;
It burns, but will not warm, unhappy one!"
Naucratia; Or Naval Dominion. Part I
© Henry James Pye
By love of opulence and science led,
Now Commerce wide her peaceful empire spread,
And seas, obedient to the pilot's art,
But join'd the regions which they seem'd to part;
Free intercourse disarm'd the barbarous mind,
Tam'd savage hate, and humaniz'd mankind.
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 95
© Alfred Tennyson
While now we sang old songs that peal'd
From knoll to knoll, where, couch'd at ease,
The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field.
