Life poems
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Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
© Henry Van Dyke
Joyful, joyful we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love,
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, hail Thee as the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness, drive the dark of doubt away;
Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day.
Doctor Frolic
© Robert Pinsky
Felicity the healer isn’t young
And you don’t look him up unless you need him.
Clown’s eyes, Pope’s nose, a mouth for dirty stories,
He made his bundle in the Great Depression
The Gallows
© John Greenleaf Whittier
I.
THE suns of eighteen centuries have shone
Since the Redeemer walked with man, and made
The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of stone,
Love Sonnet XVII
© Zora Bernice May Cross
I died with you that hour. Or, if not, merged
Myself in you, commingling all my life
Within your own, until I fled and fled
Into your blood; and my pure pulses surged,
Heaped with the wedded bliss of man and wife
Dying, I lived
and living, I was dead.
Cyriack, Whose Grandsire
© Patrick Kavanagh
Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal bench
Of British Themis, with no mean applause,
Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont
© André Breton
I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.
Planetarium
© Adrienne Rich
Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750—1848)
astronomer, sister of William; and others.
A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them
Sleepy Hollow
© William Ellery Channing
No abbey's gloom, nor dark cathedral stoops,
No winding torches paint the midnight air;
Here the green pines delight, the aspen droops
Along the modest pathways, and those fair
Pale asters of the season spread their plumes
Around this field, fit garden for our tombs.
Lullaby
© John Fuller
Sleep little baby, clean as a nut,
Your fingers uncurl and your eyes are shut.
Your life was ours, which is with you.
Go on your journey. We go too.
On Seeing The Captives, Lately Redeem'd From Barbary By His Majesty.
© Mary Barber
A sight like this, who can unmov'd survey?
Impartial Muse, can'st thou with--hold thy Lay?
See the freed Captives hail their native Shore,
And tread the Land of Liberty once more:
See, as they pass, the crouding People press,
Joy in their Joy, and their Dellv'rer bless.
Madeline. A Domestic Tale
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
My child, my child, thou leav'st me!âI shall hear
The gentle voice no more that blest mine ear
Sharing
© George MacDonald
On the far horizon there
Heaps of cloudy darkness rest;
Though the wind is in the air
There is stupor east and west.
Retreat
© John Fuller
I should like to live in a sunny town like this
Where every afternoon is half-day closing
And I would wait at the terminal for the one train
Of the day, pacing the platform, and no one arriving.
Love Me Little, Love Me Long
© Pierre Reverdy
Love me little, love me long,
Is the burden of my song.
To A Young Gentleman In Love. A Tale
© Matthew Prior
From publick Noise and factious Strife,
From all the busie Ills of Life,
Schemhammphorasch
© Rose Terry Cooke
‘This is the key which was given by the angel Michael to Pali, and by Pali to Moses. If “thou canst read it, then shalt thou understand the words of men, … the whistling of birds, the language of date-trees, the unity of hearts, ... nay, even the thoughts of the rains.”’
Gleanings after the Talmud
The Song of a Prison
© Henry Lawson
Tis a song of the weary warders, whom prisoners call the screws
A class of men who I fancy would cleave to the Evening News.
They look after their treasures sadly. By the screw of their keys they are known,
And they screw them many times daily before they draw their own.
My mother’s body
© Marge Piercy
The dark socket of the year
the pit, the cave where the sun lies down
and threatens never to rise,
when despair descends softly as the snow
covering all paths and choking roads:
