Life poems
/ page 313 of 844 /The Veery
© Henry Van Dyke
THE MOONBEAMS over Arnos vale in silver flood were pouring,
When first I heard the nightingale a long-lost love deploring.
Ode Recited At The Harvard Commemoration July 21, 1865
© James Russell Lowell
Weak-Winged is Song,
Nor aims at that clear-ethered height
Boston
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
The rocky nook with hilltops three
Looked eastward from the farms,
And twice each day the flowing sea
Took Boston in its arms;
The men of yore were stout and poor,
And sailed for bread to every shore.
Freedoms
© Gerald Gould
To every hill there is a lowly slope,
But some have heights beyond all height--so high
They make new worlds for the adventuring eye.
We for achievement have forgone our hope,
And shall not see another morning ope,
Nor the new moon come into the new sky.
A Pageant of Elizabeth
© Rudyard Kipling
Now Valour, Youth, and Life's delight break forth
In flames of wondrous deed, and thought sublime--
Lightly to mould new worlds or lightly loose
Words that shall shake and shape all after-time!
The Battle Of Stamford Bridge
© Robert Laurence Binyon
``Haste thee, Harold, haste thee North!
Norway ships in Humber crowd.
Tall Hardrada, Sigurd' son,
For thy ruin this hath done--
England for his own hath vowed.
The Garden Of Adonis
© Emma Lazarus
(The Garden of Life in Spenser's "Faerie Queene.")
IT is no fabled garden in the skies,
But bloometh here this is no world of death;
And nothing that once liveth, ever dies,
Queen Mab: Part VIII.
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
THE FAIRY
'The present and the past thou hast beheld.
It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn,
The secrets of the future--Time!
Polyhymnia
© George Peele
Therefore, when thirtie two were come and gone,
Years of her raigne, daies of her countries peace,
Elizabeth great Empresse of the world,
Britanias Atlas, Star of Englands globe,
Quatrains
© Madison Julius Cawein
Above his misered embers, gnarled and gray,
With toil-twitched limbs he bends; around his hut,
Want, like a hobbling hag, goes night and day,
Scolding at windows and at doors tight-shut.
Conversation
© William Cowper
Though nature weigh our talents, and dispense
To every man his modicum of sense,
The Onlooker
© Edith Nesbit
If I could make a pillow for your head,
Soft, pleasant, filled with every pretty thought;
If I could lay a carpet where you tread
Of all my life's most radiant fancies wrought,
And spread my love as canopy above you,
Your sleep, your steps should know how much I love you.
A War Wedding
© John Jay Chapman
THE dreamy earth is flooded o'er
With warm and hazy light,
September's latest boon, before
She feels the hoar frost in the night;
And, pausing with a sober frown,
Nips the first floweret from her summer crown.
The Death of a Soldier
© Wallace Stevens
Life contracts and death is expected,
As in season of autumn.
The soldier falls.
Pippa Passes: Part II: Noon
© Robert Browning
You by me,
And I by you; this is your hand in mine,
And side by side we sit: all's true. Thank God!
I have spoken: speak you!
Consolation
© Edgar Albert Guest
SO YOU 'RE sobbin' in the night time, an' you 're sighin' through the day,
An' your heart is ever callin' for the loved one gone away;
An' you're lonely, oh, so lonely! an' there's nothin' friends can do,
That will start the old light shinin' in those tender eyes of blue.
Spring Song
© Bliss William Carman
Like a whim of Grieg's or Gounod's,
This same self, bird, bud, or Bluenose,
Some day I may capture (Who knows?)
Just the one last joy I lack,
Waking to the far new summons,
When the old spring winds come back.
A Lover's Anger
© Matthew Prior
As Cloe came into the Room t'other Day,
I peevish began; Where so long cou'd You stay?