Life poems
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The House of Life: 41. Through Death to Love
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar
One Power, than flow of stream or flight of dove
Sweeter to glide around, to brood above.
Tell me, my heart,—what angel-greeted door
Or threshold of wing-winnow'd threshing-floor
Hath guest fire-fledg'd as thine, whose lord is Love?
Paradise Lost : Book X.
© John Milton
Mean while the heinous and despiteful act
Of Satan, done in Paradise; and how
At the Justice Department November 15, 1969
© Denise Levertov
Brown gas-fog, white
beneath the street lamps.
The Troubadour. Canto 4
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
But he was safe!--that very day
Farewell, it had been her's to say;
And he was gone to his own land,
To seek another maiden's hand.
I Genitori Perduti
© Gaius Valerius Catullus
The dove-white gulls
on the wet lawn in Washington Square
Flower Of Aloe
© Edith Nesbit
HOW can I tell you how I love you, dear?
There is no music now the world is old;
The songs have all been sung, the tales all told
Broken the vows are all this many a year.
The Angel Of The Sombre Cowl
© Alma Frances McCollum
O Angel of the Sombre Cowl! close fold
My hand and lead me into peace,' I prayed;
But with a glowing glance of love untold,
Alone to the Unknown he passed. Now stayed
Is former dread; whatever life may hold,
I follow to the end, all unafraid.
Magazine Girl
© Edgar Albert Guest
ALL women are lovely and radiantly fair
In the magazine pages today,
The Troubadour And Richard Coeur De Lion
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
The Troubadour's Song
"Thine hour is come, and the stake is set,"
The Soldan cried to the captive knight,
"And the sons of the Prophet in throngs are met
To gaze on the fearful sight.
A Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar
© Robert Duncan
I
The light foot hears you and the brightness begins
god-step at the margins of thought,
quick adulterous tread at the heart.
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
© Thomas Gray
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
The Plate
© Anthony Evan Hecht
Now he has silver in him. When sometime
Death shall boil down unnecessary fat
Denial by Patricia Frolander : American Life in Poetry #275 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
I recognize the couple who are introduced in this poem by Patricia Frolander, of Sundance, Wyoming, and perhaps you’ll recognize them, too.
Denial
Twenty Questions
© David Lehman
Why did the moth fly into the flame? Was it for the same reason
That Achilles died young? Who gets more fun out of sex,
The measureless gulfs of air are full of Thee
© Jean Ingelow
The measureless gulfs of air are full of Thee:
Thou Art, and therefore hang the stars; they wait,
And swim, and shine in God who bade them be,
And hold their sundering voids inviolate.
A Letter to her Husband, absent upon Publick employment
© Anne Bradstreet
My head, my heart, mine Eyes, my life, nay more,
My joy, my Magazine of earthly store,
Freedom's Plow
© Langston Hughes
First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on the world,
On the great wooded world,
On the rich soil of the world,
On the rivers of the world.
Echoes Of Love's House
© William Morris
Love gives every gift whereby we long to live
Love takes every gift, and nothing back doth give.
