Life poems
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Impentitent Ultima
© Ernest Christopher Dowson
Before my light goes out for ever if God should give me a choice of
graces,
I would not reck of length of days, nor crave for things to be;
But cry: "One day of the great lost days, one face of all the faces,
Grant me to see and touch once more and nothing more to see.
Radiator by Connie Wanek: American Life in Poetry #52 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
What a marvelous gift is the imagination, and each of us gets one at birth, free of charge and ready to start up, get on, and ride away. Can there be anything quite so homely and ordinary as a steam radiator? And yet, here, Connie Wanek, of Duluth, Minnesota, nudges one into play.
Radiator
Mittens are drying on the radiator,
boots nearby, one on its side.
Like some monstrous segmented insect
the radiator elongates under the window.
From 'Lines In Memory Of Edmund Morris'
© Duncan Campbell Scott
HERE Morris, on the plains that we have loved,
Think of the death of Akoose, fleet of foot,
On A Candle
© Jonathan Swift
Of all inhabitants on earth,
To man alone I owe my birth,
And yet the cow, the sheep, the bee,
Are all my parents more than he:
To A New-Born Child
© William Cosmo Monkhouse
Small traveler from an unseen shore,
By mortal eye ne'er seen before,
To you, good-morrow.
You are as fair a little dame
As ever from a glad world came
To one of sorrow.
To a Millionaire
© Archibald Lampman
The world in gloom and splendour passes by,
And thou in the midst of it with brows that gleam,
A creature of that old distorted dream
That makes the sound of life an evil cry.
Lift up your heads, ye gates of brass;
© James Montgomery
Lift up your heads, ye gates of brass;
Ye bars of iron, yield!
And let the King of glory pass;
The Cross is in the field!
Sent To Dr. Hayes, With The Ode To Harmony
© Henry James Pye
As Man's dull form inert and silent lay,
A senseless heap of unenliven'd clay,
London Types:Life-Guardsman
© William Ernest Henley
Joy of the Milliner, Envy of the Line,
Star of the Parks, jack-booted, sworded, helmed,
The Greater Love
© Roderic Quinn
ONCE upon a time,
Little Golden-Head,
Steeples used to chime,
And their chiming said:
Days I enjoy
© Victoria Mary Sackville-West
Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens,
When I have no engagements written on my block,
When all Thy Mercies, O My God
© Joseph Addison
When all Thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, Im lost
In wonder, love and praise.
The Shallow Heart!
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
"PITY her," say'st thou, "pity her!" nay, not I!
Her heart is shallow as yon garrulous rill
That froths o'er pebbles: grief, true grief is still,
Deathfully solemn as eternity
A Receipt To Restore Stellas Youth. 1724-5
© Jonathan Swift
The Scottish hinds, too poor to house
In frosty nights their starving cows,
While not a blade of grass or hay
Appears from Michaelmas to May,
Idyll XI. The Giant's Wooing
© Theocritus
"The blame's my mother's; she is false to me;
Spake thee ne'er yet one sweet word for my sake,
Though day by day she sees me pine and pine.
I'll feign strange throbbings in my head and feet
To anguish her--as I am anguished now."
The Burial Of Moses
© Cecil Frances Alexander
By Nebo's lonely mountain,
On this side Jordan's wave,
Olney Hymn 42: Self-Acquaintance
© William Cowper
Dear Lord! accept a sinful heart,
Which of itself complains,
And mourns, with much and frequent smart,
The evil it contains.
An Invitation
© James Russell Lowell
Nine years have slipt like hour-glass sand
From life's still-emptying globe away,
Since last, dear friend, I clasped your hand,
And stood upon the impoverished land,
Watching the steamer down the bay.
