Life poems
/ page 390 of 844 /
The Choice
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
This Consul Casementhe who heard the cry
Of stricken peopleand who in his fight
Butterflies
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
O child of Joy! What idle life is thine!
Thou, in these meadows, while thy skies are blue,
And while thy joys are new to thee like wine,
Chasest mad butterflies as children do.
And lo, thou turnest from them to repine,
Because it was not love thou didst pursue.
308. The Epitaph on Captain Matthew Henderson
© Robert Burns
STOP, passenger! my storys brief,
And truth I shall relate, man;
I tell nae common tale o grief,
For Matthew was a great man.
49. Epigram on the said Occasion
© Robert Burns
O DEATH, hadst thou but spard his life,
Whom we this day lament,
We freely wad exchanged the wife,
And a been weel content.
307. Elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson
© Robert Burns
Go to your sculpturd tombs, ye Great,
In a the tinsel trash o state!
But by thy honest turf Ill wait,
Thou man of worth!
And weep the ae best fellows fate
Eer lay in earth.
189. Verses on Castle Gordon
© Robert Burns
STREAMS that glide in orient plains,
Never bound by Winters chains;
Glowing here on golden sands,
There immixd with foulest stains
The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part II: To Juliet: XXIII
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
ASKING FOR HER HEART
Give me thy heart, Juliet, give me thy heart!
I have a need of it, an absolute need,
Because my own heart has thus long been dead.
The Tangled Skein
© William Schwenck Gilbert
Try we life-long, we can never
Straighten out life's tangled skein,
31. SongMy Nanie, O!
© Robert Burns
BEHIND yon hills where Lugar flows,
Mang moors an mosses many, O,
The wintry sun the day has closd,
And Ill awa to Nanie, O.
350. Epistle to John Maxwell, Esq., of Terraughty
© Robert Burns
Fareweel, auld birkie! Lord be near ye,
And then the deil, he daurna steer ye:
Your friends aye love, your faes aye fear ye;
For me, shame fa me,
If neist my heart I dinna wear ye,
While Burns they ca me.
245. Versicles on Sign-Posts
© Robert Burns
CURSD be the man, the poorest wretch in life,
The crouching vassal to a tyrant wife!
Who has no will but by her high permission,
Who has not sixpence but in her possession;
Hospital Duties
© Anonymous
Fold away all your bright-tinted dresses,
Turn the key on your jewels today,
202. On the Death of Robert Dundas, Esq., of Arniston
© Robert Burns
LONE on the bleaky hills the straying flocks
Shun the fierce storms among the sheltering rocks;
Down from the rivulets, red with dashing rains,
The gathering floods burst oer the distant plains;
311. On the Birth of a Posthumous Child
© Robert Burns
SWEET flowret, pledge o meikle love,
And ward o mony a prayer,
What heart o stane wad thou na move,
Sae helpless, sweet, and fair?
242. The Poets Progress
© Robert Burns
THOU, Nature, partial Nature, I arraign;
Of thy caprice maternal I complain.
The peopled fold thy kindly care have found,
The hornèd bull, tremendous, spurns the ground;
Sonnet XIII. To La Fayette
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
As when far off the warbled strains are heard
That soar on Morning's wing the vales among,
Within his cage th' imprisoned matin bird
Swells the full chorus with a generous song:
Mother, Washing Dishes by Susan Meyers : American Life in Poetry #267 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate
© Ted Kooser
Here’s a poem by Susan Meyers, of South Carolina, about the most ordinary of activities, washing the dishes, but in this instance remembering this ordinary routine provides an opportunity for speculation about the private pleasures of a lost parent.
Life and Death
© Charles Harpur
Yet not for horror, nor to weep;
But through the solemn dark to see
That life, though swift, is wonder-deep,
And death the only key
That lets to that mysterious height
Where earth and heaven in God unite.
