Life poems
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On A Moonstruck Gravel Road by Rodney Torreson: American Life in Poetry #49 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet La
© Ted Kooser
This fine poem by Rodney Torreson, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, looks into the world of boys arriving at the edge of manhood, and compares their natural wildness to that of dogs, with whom they feel a kinship.
On A Moonstruck Gravel Road
The sheep-killing dogs saunter home,
wool scraps in their teeth.
The Riding Camel
© William Henry Ogilvie
I was Junda's riding camel. I went in front of the train.
I was hung with shells of the Orient, from saddle and cinch and rein.
I was sour as a snake to handle, and rough a rock to ride,
But I could keep up with the west wind, and my pace was Junda's pride.
The Visionary
© Emily Jane Brontë
Silent is the house: all are laid asleep:
One alone looks out oer the snow-wreaths deep,
A Backward Look
© James Whitcomb Riley
As I sat smoking, alone, yesterday,
And lazily leaning back in my chair,
Of The Nature Of Things: Book III - Part 03 - The Soul Is Mortal
© Lucretius
Now come: that thou mayst able be to know
That minds and the light souls of all that live
Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: I
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
When is life other than a tragedy,
Whether it is played in tears from the first scene,
In sable robes and grief's mute pageantry,
For loves that died ere they had ever been,
The Least Possible
© Edith Nesbit
DEAR goddess of the shining shrine
Where all my votive tapers burn,
Where every gold-embroidered thought
And all my flowers of life are brought
--With many, alas! that are not mine--
What will you give me in return?
In Spite Of War
© Angela Morgan
And in my ear a whispering breath,
"Wake from the nightmare! Look and see
That life is naught but ecstasy
In spite of war, in spite of death!"
Natalias Resurrection: Sonnet XXII
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
The thought of night consoled him. To his vision
Natalia was dead only in false death,
The sleeping treason of some false misprision,
Some silent mystery of shortened breath,
Hakon's Lay
© James Russell Lowell
Then Thorstein looked at Hakon, where he sate,
Mute as a cloud amid the stormy hall,
A Ghost At The Dancing
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
Many here knew and loved thee--I nor loved,
Scarce knew--yet in thy place a shadow glides,
And a face shapes itself from empty air,
Watching the dancers, grave and quiet-eyed--
Eyes that now see the angels evermore,
Amiel, Amiel.
The New Wife and the Old
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Dark the halls, and cold the feast,
Gone the bridemaids, gone the priest.
All is over, all is done,
Twain of yesterday are one!
Blooming girl and manhood gray,
Autumn in the arms of May!
Stranger
© Hristo Botev
Hurry, stranger, quickly come
to your father's home at last,
do a dance before his home,
join the dance the pass across.
The Things That Cause A Quiet Life
© Henry Howard
My friend, the things that do attain
The happy life be these, I find:
The riches left, not got with pain,
The fruitful ground; the quiet mind;
On A Bust Of General Grant
© James Russell Lowell
Strong, simple, silent are the [steadfast] laws
That sway this universe, of none withstood,
The New Eden
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
SCARCE could the parting ocean close,
Seamed by the Mayflowerâs cleaving bow,
When oâer the rugged desert rose
The waves that tracked the Pilgrimâs plough.
Raschi In Prague
© Emma Lazarus
Raschi of Troyes, the Moon of Israel,
The authoritative Talmudist, returned
