Life poems
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To the Angel Spirit of the Most Excellent Sir Philip Sidney
© Mary Sidney Herbert
(Variant printed in Samuel Daniel’s 1623 Works)
To thee, pure spirit, to thee alone addressed
The Forest Boy
© Charlotte Turner Smith
THE trees have now hid at the edge of the hurst
The spot where the ruins decay
Of the cottage, where Will of the Woodland was nursed,
And lived so beloved, till the moment accursed
The Owl And The Lark
© Alfred Austin
A grizzled owl at midnight moped
Where thick the ivy glistened;
So I, who long have vainly groped
For wisdom, leaned and listened.
Verses On Rome
© Frances Anne Kemble
O Rome, tremendous! who, beholding thee,
Shall not forget the bitterest private grief
Troop Train
© Ishmael Reed
It stops the town we come through. Workers raise
Their oily arms in good salute and grin.
Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound
© Anne Sexton
I am surprised to see
that the ocean is still going on.
The Chalk-Pit
© Edward Thomas
Is this the road that climbs above and bends
Round what was once a chalk-pit: now it is
To Oliver Wendell Holmes
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Among the thousands who with hail and cheer
Will welcome thy new year,
How few of all have passed, as thou and I,
So many milestones by!
The House of Life: 72. The Choice, II
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Though screen'd and hid, shall walk the daylight here.
And dost thou prate of all that man shall do?
Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be
Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?
Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:
Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.
Pauline, A Fragment of a Question
© Robert Browning
And I can love nothing-and this dull truth
Has come the last: but sense supplies a love
Encircling me and mingling with my life.
The Camp Of Souls
© Isabella Valancy Crawford
My white canoe, like the silvery air
O'er the River of Death that darkly rolls
When the moons of the world are round and fair,
I paddle back from the "Camp of Souls."
In The Orchard
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
LEAVE go my hands, let me catch breath and see;
Let the dew-fall drench either side of me;
Clear apple-leaves are soft upon that moon
Seen sidelong like a blossom in the tree;
Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
Little Gray Songs from St. Josephs
© Grace Fallow Norton
I
WITH cassock black, baret and book,
Father Saran goes by;
I think he goes to say a prayer
For one who has to die.
Testimonial
© Rita Dove
Back when the earth was new
and heaven just a whisper,
back when the names of things
hadn't had time to stick;
A Psalm of Freudian Life
© Edwin Morgan
Tell me not in mormonful numbers
“Life is but an empty dream!”
To a student of the slumbers
Things are never what they seem.
To the Consolations of Philosophy
© William Stanley Merwin
I know you will say
I have said that before
I know you have been
there all along somewhere
in another time zone
The Healer
© John Greenleaf Whittier
So stood of old the holy Christ
Amidst the suffering throng;
With whom His lightest touch sufficed
To make the weakest strong.
