Life poems
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Easter Day
© John Keble
Oh! day of days! shall hearts set free
No "minstrel rapture" find for thee?
Thou art this Sun of other days,
They shine by giving back thy rays:
The Toad And Spyder. A Duell
© Richard Lovelace
The all-confounded toad doth see
His life fled with his remedie,
And in a glorious despair
First burst himself, and next the air;
Then with a dismal horred yell
Beats down his loathsome breath to hell.
Lob
© Edward Thomas
At hawthorn-time in Wiltshire travelling
In search of something chance would never bring,
Anniversary Hymn
© Katharine Lee Bates
Our fathers, in the years grown dim, reared slowly, wall by wall
A holy dwelling-place for Him, that filleth all in all.
They wrought His house of faith and prayer, the rainbow round the Throne,
A precious temple builded fair on Christ the Cornerstone.
Olney Hymn 13: The Covenant
© William Cowper
The Lord proclaims His grace abroad!
"Behold, I change your hearts of stone;
Each shall renounce his idol-god,
And serve, henceforth, the Lord alone.
Care of Birds for their Young
© James Thomson
As thus the patient dam assiduous sits,
Not to be tempted from her tender task,
Or by sharp hunger, or by smooth delight,
Tho' the whole loosen'd spring around her blows,
John Barleycorn: A Ballad
© Robert Burns
There was three kings unto the east,
Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.
The Fair Youth Sonnets (18 - 77, 87 - 126)
© William Shakespeare
Comprising the largest grouping of poems, the Fair Youth sonnets are addressed to the same young man in the Procreation Sonnets. But their themes and subjects are more drastically varied.
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The Closed Door
© Madison Julius Cawein
SHUT it out of the heart this grief,
O Love, with the years grown old and hoary!
And let in joy that life is brief,
And give God thanks for the end of the story.
Finding the Space in the Heart
© Gary Snyder
I first saw it in the sixties,
driving a Volkswagen camper
London By Lamplight
© George Meredith
There stands a singer in the street,
He has an audience motley and meet;
Above him lowers the London night,
And around the lamps are flaring bright.
A Double Standard
© Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Do you blame me that I loved him?
If when standing all alone
I cried for bread a careless world
Pressed to my lips a stone.
Deserted
© Madison Julius Cawein
A broken rainbow on the skies of May
Touching the sodden roses and low clouds,
White Water
© Eamon Grennan
Yes, the heart aches, but you know or think you know it could be
indigestion after all, the stomach uttering its after-lunch cantata
for clarinet and strings, while blank panic can be just a two-o'clock
shot of the fantods, before the afternoon comes on in toe-shoes
and black leotard, her back a pale gleaming board-game where all
is not lost though the hour is late and you've got light pockets.
A Winter Hymn
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
O WEARY winds! O winds that wail!
O'er desert fields and ice-locked rills!
O heavens that brood so cold and pale
Above the frozen Norland hills!
The Deserted Village
© Mark van Doren
Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheared the labouring swain,
The Knight's Epitaph
© William Cullen Bryant
This is the church which Pisa, great and free,
Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls,
