Life poems
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Lines To Six-Foot Three
© George Borrow
A lad, who twenty tongues can talk
And sixty miles a day can walk;
Pajama Quotient
© Michael Rosen
Coinage of the not-yet-wholly-
hardened custodians of public
health, as health is roughly measured
?in the rougher parts of Dearborn.
Happiness
© Wilfred Owen
Yet heaven looks smaller than the old doll's-home,
No nestling place is left in bluebell bloom,
And the wide arms of trees have lost their scope.
The former happiness is unreturning:
Boys' griefs are not so grievous as our yearning,
Boys have no sadness sadder than our hope.
Jessie Mitchell’s Mother
© Gwendolyn Brooks
Into her mother’s bedroom to wash the ballooning body.
“My mother is jelly-hearted and she has a brain of jelly:
The Laurentians
© Frederick George Scott
These mountains once, throned in some primal sea,
Shook half the world with thunder, and the sun
Pierced not the gloom that clung about their crest;
Now with sealed lips, toilers from toil set free,
Unvexed by fate, the part they played being done,
They watch and wait in venerable rest.
English Eclogues VI - The Ruined Cottage
© Robert Southey
I pass this ruin'd dwelling oftentimes
And think of other days. It wakes in me
A transient sadness, but the feelings Charles
That ever with these recollections rise,
I trust in God they will not pass away.
Epilogue to Schiller's Song of the Bell
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mingled the crowds from ev'ry region brought,
And on the stage, in festal pomp array'd
The HOMAGE OF THE ARTS we saw displayed.
Immortal Sails
© Alfred Noyes
Now, in a breath, we’ll burst those gates of gold,
And ransack heaven before our moment fails.
Now, in a breath, before we, too, grow old,
We’ll mount and sing and spread immortal sails.
A Child My Choice
© Robert Southwell
Let folly praise that fancy loves, I praise and love that Child
Whose heart no thought, whose tongue no word, whose hand no deed defiled.
The Wreckage
© Donald Hall
At the edge of the city the pickerel
vomits and dies. The river
with its white hair staggers to the sea.
Magnets
© Robert Laurence Binyon
A far look in absorbed eyes, unaware
Of what some gazer thrills to gather there;
Paradise Lost: Book I (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
So spake th' Apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but rackt with deep despare:
And him thus answer'd soon his bold Compeer.
Under The Rose
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
Oh the rose of keenest thorn!
One hidden summer morn
Under the rose I was born.
The Pit
© John Fuller
From the beginning, the egg cradled in pebbles,
The drive thick with fledglings, to the known last
Riot of the senses, is only a short pass.
Earth to be forked over is more patient,
Bird hungers more, flower dies sooner.
The Hunting of the Snark
© Lewis Carroll
"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
Amen
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
It is over. What is over?
Nay, now much is over truly!
Harvest days we toiled to sow for;
Now the sheaves are gathered newly,
Now the wheat is garnered duly.
