Life poems
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From Laughter To Labor
© Edgar Albert Guest
We have wandered afar in our hunting for pleasure,
We have scorned the soul's duty to gather up treasure;
We have lived for our laughter and toiled for our winning
And paid little heed to the soul's simple sinning.
But light were the burdens that freighted us then,
God and country, to-day let us prove we are men!
Idylls of the King: The Last Tournament
© Alfred Tennyson
To whom the King, "Peace to thine eagle-borne
Dead nestling, and this honour after death,
Following thy will! but, O my Queen, I muse
Why ye not wear on arm, or neck, or zone
Those diamonds that I rescued from the tarn,
And Lancelot won, methought, for thee to wear."
Foolin' Wid De Seasons
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Seems lak folks is mighty curus
In de way dey t'inks an' ac's.
The House of Life: 71. The Choice, I
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Now kiss, and think that there are really those,
My own high-bosom'd beauty, who increase
Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way!
Through many years they toil; then on a day
They die not,—for their life was death,—but cease;
And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.
Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 3. The Landlord's Tale; The Rhyme of Sir Christopher
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It was Sir Christopher Gardiner,
Knight of the Holy Sepulchre,
From Merry England over the sea,
Who stepped upon this continent
As if his august presence lent
A glory to the colony.
Urania, or Spiritual Poems: Sonnet 2 - Too long I followed have
© William Henry Drummond
Too long I followed have my fond desire,
And too long painted on the ocean streams;
from The Bridge: Cutty Sark
© Hart Crane
“I ran a donkey engine down there on the Canal
in Panama—got tired of that—
then Yucatan selling kitchenware—beads—
have you seen Popocatepetl—birdless mouth
with ashes sifting down—?
and then the coast again . . . ”
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
© Walt Whitman
1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Like a Sentence
© John Ashbery
It was prettily said that “No man
hath an abundance of cows on the plain, nor shards
in his cupboard.” Wait! I think I know who said that! It was . . .
A Winter Night
© John Hay
The winter wind is raving fierce and shrill
And chides with angry moan the frosty skies,
The Troglodyte
© Madison Julius Cawein
In ages dead, a troglodyte,
At the hollow roots of a monster height,--
A Holy Week Song, 1918
© Katharine Tynan
Now when Christ died for man his sake
A myriad men must die;
The Lady Of La Garaye - Prologue
© Caroline Norton
This was the Chapel: that the stair:
Here, where all lies damp and bare,
The fragrant thurible was swung,
The silver lamp in beauty hung,
And in that mass of ivied shade
The pale nuns sang--the abbot prayed.
His Farewell to Sack
© Robert Herrick
Farewell thou thing, time past so known, so dear
To me as blood to life and spirit; near,
Fox Sleep
© William Stanley Merwin
On a road through the mountains with a friend many years ago
I came to a curve on a slope where a clear stream
After Looking into Carlyles Reminiscences
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
I.
THREE MEN lived yet when this dead man was young
from The Task, Book V: The Winter Morning Walk
© William Cowper
(excerpt)
’Tis morning; and the sun with ruddy orb
An English Peasant
© George Crabbe
To pomp and pageantry in nought allied,
A noble peasant, Isaac Ashford, died.
