Life poems
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The Death of Allegory
© Billy Collins
I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions
that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings
and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance
displaying their capital letters like license plates.
Benjamin Pantier
© Edgar Lee Masters
Together in this grave lie Benjamin Pantier, attorney at law,
And Nig, his dog, constant companion, solace and friend.
To Marguerite: Continued
© Matthew Arnold
Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
At San Giovanni Del Lago
© Alfred Austin
I leaned upon the rustic bridge,
And watched the streamlet make
Its chattering way past zigzag ridge
Down to the silent lake.
from Jubilate Agno
© Christopher Smart
let elizur rejoice with the partridge
Let Elizur rejoice with the Partridge, who is a prisoner of state and is proud of his keepers.
Sonnet IV: Lovesight
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
When do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
The Card-Dealer
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Could you not drink her gaze like wine?
Yet though its splendour swoon
The Shepheardes Calender: January
© Edmund Spenser
A Shepeheards boye (no better doe him call)
when Winters wastful spight was almost spent,
All in a sunneshine day, as did befall,
Led forth his flock, that had been long ypent.
So faynt they woxe, and feeble in the folde,
That now vnnethes their feete could them vphold.
Mephistopheles Perverted
© Kenneth Slessor
(Or Goethe for the Times)
ONCE long ago lived a Flea
Who kept such a fine, fat King,
Not that he held with royalty,
Sonnet XVIII: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?
© William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Prince Athanase
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel,
Had grown quite weak and gray before his time;
Nor any could the restless griefs unravel
Of Life And Death
© Benjamin Jonson
The ports of death are sins; of life, good deeds:
Through which our merit leads us to our meeds.
The Great Pax Whitie
© Nikki Giovanni
The genesis was life
The genesis was death
In the genesis of death
Was the genesis of war
be still peace be still
Twenty-third
© Christina Pugh
And at the picnic table under the ancient elms,
one of my parents turned to me and said:
[as freedom is a breakfastfood]
© Edward Estlin Cummings
as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong
A Bachelor-Bookworms Complaint Of The Late Presidential Election
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
A MAN of peace, I never dared to marry,
Lover of tranquil hours, I dwelt apart;
Outside the realm where noisy schemes miscarry;
My only handmaids, Science, Learning, Art;
Oh! home of pleasant thought, of calm affection,
All blasted now by this last vile election!
The Poets
© Archibald Lampman
Half brutish, half divine, but all of earth,
Half-way 'twixt hell and heaven, near to man,
The whole world's tangle gathered in one span,
Full of this human torture and this mirth:
Life with its hope and error, toil and bliss,
Earth-born, earth-reared, ye know it as it is.
