Life poems
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Italy : 20. Marcolini
© Samuel Rogers
It was midnight; the great clock had struck, and was
still echoing through every porch and gallery in the
quarter of St. Mark, when a young Citizen, wrapped
in his cloak, was hastening home under it from an interview
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 118.
© Alfred Tennyson
Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime,
The herald of a higher race,
And of himself in higher place,
If so he type this work of time
How Do You Buy Your Money?
© Edgar Albert Guest
How do you buy your money? For money is bought and sold,
And each man barters himself on earth for his silver and shining gold,
And by the bargain he makes with men, the sum of his life is told.
Sonnet XLV
© William Shakespeare
The other two, slight air and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide;
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
The Two Swans (A Fairy Tale)
© Thomas Hood
I
Immortal Imogen, crown'd queen above
The lilies of thy sex, vouchsafe to hear
A fairy dream in honor of true love
Moeurs Contemporaines
© Ezra Pound
And by her left foot, in a basket,
Is an infant, aged about 14 months,
The infant beams at the parent,
The parent re-beams at its offspring.
The basket is lined with satin,
There is a satin-like bow on the harp.
How Is It?
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
You who are loudly crying out for peace,
You who are wanting love to vanquish hate.
How is it in the four walls of your home
The while you wait?
A Parodie
© George Herbert
Soul's joy, when thou art gone,
And I alone,
Which cannot be,
Because thou dost abide with me,
And I depend on thee;
Sonnet XCII
© William Shakespeare
But do thy worst to steal thyself away,
For term of life thou art assured mine,
And life no longer than thy love will stay,
For it depends upon that love of thine.
'I Cannot Forget with what Fervid Devotion'
© William Cullen Bryant
I cannot forget with what fervid devotion
I worshipped the vision of verse and of fame.
Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and ocean,
To my kindled emotions, was wind over flame.
At the Grave by Jonathan Greene: American Life in Poetry #2 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Many of us have felt helpless when we've tried to assist friends who are dealing with the deaths of loved ones. Here the Kentucky poet and publisher, Jonathan Greene, conveys that feeling of inadequacy in a single sentence. The brevity of the poem reflects the measured and halting speech of people attempting to offer words of condolence:
At the Grave
Sonnet LXXXIII
© William Shakespeare
I never saw that you did painting need
And therefore to your fair no painting set;
I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
The barren tender of a poet's debt;
The Deadliest Sin
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
God! though all other sins on earth persist,
Strike dumb the blatant, loud-mouthed atheist.
A Book Of Strife In The Form Of The Diary Of An Old Soul - June
© George MacDonald
1.
FROM thine, as then, the healing virtue goes
The Two Graves
© William Cullen Bryant
Two low green hillocks, two small gray stones,
Rose over the place that held their bones;
But the grassy hillocks are levelled again,
And the keenest eye might search in vain,
'Mong briers, and ferns, and paths of sheep,
For the spot where the aged couple sleep.
Sonnet LXXXI
© William Shakespeare
Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
By The Side Of The Grave Some Years After
© William Wordsworth
LONG time his pulse hath ceased to beat
But benefits, his gift, we trace--
Expressed in every eye we meet
Round this dear Vale, his native place.
Astrophel's Song Of Phyllida And Corydon
© Nicholas Breton
Fair in a morn (O fairest morn!),
Was never morn so fair,
