Life poems
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France--December 1870
© George Meredith
Henceforth of her the Gods are known,
Open to them her breast is laid.
Inveterate of brain, heart-valiant,
Never did fairer creature pant
Before the altar and the blade!
XV: To Heaven
© Benjamin Jonson
Good, and great God, can I not think of thee,
But it must, straight, my melancholy bee?
"O Wondrous dreamer, with thy power divine,"
© John Bunyan
O Wondrous dreamer, with thy power divine,
How all our pilgrim-life thy dream hath told
Life Is A Dream
© Pedro Calderon de la Barca
We live, while we see the sun,
Where life and dreams are as one;
And living has taught me this,
Man dreams the life that is his,
Not Knowing Why by Ann Struthers : American Life in Poetry #253 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-
© Ted Kooser
Animals are incapable of reason, or so we’ve been told, but we imaginative humans keep talking to our dogs and cats as if they could do algebra. In this poem, Ann Struthers looks into the mystery of instinctive behavior.
The Gift Of Harun Al-Rashid
© William Butler Yeats
KUSTA BEN LUKA is my name, I write
To Abd Al-Rabban; fellow-roysterer once,
Now the good Caliph's learned Treasurer,
And for no ear but his.
An Evening Guest
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
IF, in the silence of this lonely eve,
With the street lamp pale flickering on the wall,
An angel were to whisper me, "Believe--
It shall be given thee. Call!"--whom should I call?
The Cock-Fighter's Garland
© William Cowper
Muse -- hide his name of whom I sing,
Lest his surviving house thou bring
For his sake into scorn,
Nor speak the school from which he drew,
The much or little that he knew,
Nor place where he was born.
A Shrine In The Pantheon
© Henry Van Dyke
FOR THE UNNAMED SOLDIERS WHO DIED IN FRANCE
Universal approval has been accorded the proposal made in the French Chamber that the ashes of an unnamed French soldier, fallen for his country, shall be removed with solemn ceremony to the Pantheon. In this way it is intended to honor by a symbolic ceremony the memory of all who lie in unmarked graves.
Saint Maura: A.D. 304
© Charles Kingsley
Thank God! Those gazers' eyes are gone at last!
The guards are crouching underneath the rock;
The Angel In The House. Book II. Canto XI.
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
IV Constancy rewarded
I vow'd unvarying faith, and she,
To whom in full I pay that vow,
Rewards me with variety
Which men who change can never know.
Sailor's Harbor
© Henry Reed
My thoughts, like sailors becalmed in Cape Town harbor,
Await your return, like a favorable wind, or like
A Clerk
© Kostas Karyotakis
The hours have faded me, found once again
leaning across the thankless table.
(The sun slips through the window in the wall that
faces me, and plays.)
"I cant prevent myself from singing"
© Thibaut de Champagne
Mercy, my lady, who knows all things!
All goodness and everything worth having
Are yours: more than any woman living.
Help me, now, it is in your giving!
You Have Let The Beauty Of The Day Go Over
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
You have let the beauty of the day go over,
You have let the glory of the noon go by.
Clouds from the West have gathered close and cover
All but a remnant now of our proud sky.
On Giles and Joan
© Benjamin Jonson
Who says that Giles and Joan at discord be?
Th' observing neighbors no such mood can see.
Family Album by Diane Thiel: American Life in Poetry #41 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Those photos in family albums, what do they show us about the lives of people, and what don't they tell? What are they holding back? Here Diane Thiel, who teaches in New Mexico, peers into one of those pictures.
Family Album
I like old photographs of relatives
in black and white, their faces set like stone.
They knew this was serious business.
My favorite album is the one that's filled
with people none of us can even name.
