Life poems
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The Creek of the Four Graves [Early Version]
© Charles Harpur
And feeling thus by habit, that poor man
Though the black shadow of untimely death
Hopelessly thickened under every stroke,
Upstruggled desperate, until at last,
One, as in mercy, gave him to the dust,
With all his sorrows.
To H. C.
© William Wordsworth
SIX YEARS OLD
O THOU! whose fancies from afar are brought;
Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel,
And fittest to unutterable thought
The Passing Of The Beautiful
© Madison Julius Cawein
On southern winds shot through with amber light,
Breeding soft balm, and clothed in cloudy white,
Sappho I
© Sara Teasdale
MIDNIGHT, and in the darkness not a sound,
So, with hushed breathing, sleeps the autumn night;
Only the white immortal stars shall know,
Here in the house with the low-lintelled door,
Andy Veto
© Henry Clay Work
Come! Come! Joshua, come!
Don't you think it's time the journey closes?
For you know we'll never stand in the promised land
While Andy Veto's our Moses.
To The Countess Of Blessington
© George Gordon Byron
You have ask'd for a verse:--the request
In a rhymer 'twere strange to deny;
But my Hippocrene was but my breast,
And my feelings (its fountain) are dry.
In Carissimam Memoriam A.S.P.
© Robert Laurence Binyon
To whom but thee, my youth to dedicate,
My youth, which these few leaves have sought to save,
Should I now come, although I come too late,
Alas! and can but lay them on thy grave?
Autumn
© William Watson
Thou burden of all songs the earth hath sung,
Thou retrospect in Time's reverted eyes,
Sleep
© Mathilde Blind
To thee, O star-eyes comforter, we creep,
Earth's ill-used step-children to thee make moan,
As hiding in thy dark skirts' ample sweep;
-Poor debtors whose brief life is not their own;
For dunned by Death, to whom we owe its loan,
Give us, O Night, the interest paid in sleep.
Vanitas Vanitatum, Omnia Vanitas
© Anne Brontë
In all we do, and hear, and see,
Is restless Toil and Vanity.
While yet the rolling earth abides,
Men come and go like ocean tides;
The Solitary Lake
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
Ah! still a something strange and rare
O'errules this tranquil earth and air,
Casting o'er both a glamour known
To their enchanted realm alone;
Whence shines, as 'twere a spirit's face,
The sweet coy genius of the place,
Seventy-Four And Twenty
© Thomas Hardy
Here goes a man of seventy-four,
Who sees not what life means for him,
And here another in years a score
Who reads its very figure and trim.
Preexistence
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
WHILE sauntering through the crowded street,
Some half-remembered face I meet,
Albeit upon no mortal shore
That face, methinks, hath smiled before.
The Fisherman
© Edgar Albert Guest
Along a stream that raced and ran
Through tangled trees and over stones,
That long had heard the pipes o' Pan
And shared the joys that nature owns,
I met a fellow fisherman,
Who greeted me in cheerful tones.
Ode For A Social Meeting
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
COME! fill a fresh bumper, for why should we go
While the nectar (logwood) still reddens our cups as they flow?
Pour out the rich juices (decoction) still bright with the sun,
Till o'er the brimmed crystal the rubies (dye-stuff) shall run.
Sonnets At Christmas I
© Allen Tate
This is the day His hour of life draws near,
Let me get ready from head to foot for it
An Indian-Summer Reverie
© James Russell Lowell
What visionary tints the year puts on,
When failing leaves falter through motionless air
Will
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
YOUR face, my boy, when six months old,
We propped you laughing in a chair,
And the sun-artist caught the gold
Which rippled o'er your waving hair!
The Holy Innocents
© John Keble
Say, ye celestial guards, who wait
In Bethlehem, round the Saviour's palace gate,
