Life poems
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Hard Work
© Roddy Lumsden
Tricky work sometimes not to smell yourself,
ferment being constant—constant as carnival sweat
(a non-stock phrase I palmed from a girl from Canada,
a land where I once saw this graffiti: life is great).
The Modern Mother
© Alice Meynell
Oh what a kiss
With filial passion overcharged is this!
To this misgiving breast
The child runs, as a child ne'er ran to rest
Upon the light heart and the unoppressed.
Sonnet III
© Caroline Norton
THE FORNARINA.
AND bless'd was she thou lovedst, for whose sake
Thy wit did veil in fanciful disguise
The answer which thou wert compell'd to make
Mare Rubrum
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
The billows swirl above my trembling limbs,
And almost chill my anxious heart to doubt
And disbelief, long conquered and defied.
But tho' the music of my hopeful hymns
Is drowned by curses of the raging rout,
No voice yet bids th' opposing waves divide!
For You O Democracy
© Walt Whitman
Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.
Erinna
© Sara Teasdale
They sent you in to say farewell to me,
No, do not shake your head; I see your eyes
The Landgraff
© Frances Anne Kemble
Through Thuringia's forest green
The Landgraff rode at close of e'en;
Hymn to Proserpine (After the Proclamation in Rome of the Christian Faith)
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Vicisti, Galilæe.
I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;
An Old Tale Re-Told
© Madison Julius Cawein
Well, the laughter of Yule was turned to tears
For them and for us. We saw the glare
Of torches that hurried from chamber to stair;
And we heard the castle re-echo her name,
But neither to them nor to us she came.
And that was the last of Clara of Clare.
My Uncle’s Favorite Coffee Shop
© Naomi Shihab Nye
My uncle slid into his booth.
I cannot tell you—how I love this place.
He drained the water glass, noisily clinking his ice.
My uncle hailed from an iceless region.
He had definite ideas about water drinking.
I cannot tell you—all the time. But then he’d try.
Time to Come
© Walt Whitman
O, Death! a black and pierceless pall
Hangs round thee, and the future state;
No eye may see, no mind may grasp
That mystery of fate.
Stars and Moon
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Beneath the stars and summer moon
A pair of wedded lovers walk,
Upon the stars and summer moon
They turn their happy eyes, and talk.
Mists In Autumn
© James Thomson
Now, by the cool, declining year condescend,
Descend the copious exhalations, check'd,
As up the middle sky unseen they stole,
And roll the doubling fogs around the hill.
Book Of Proverbs
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
CALL on the present day and night for nought,
Save what by yesterday was brought.
Any Lifetime
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
Any lifetime that is spent without seeing the master
Is either death in disguise or a deep sleep.
The water that pollutes you is poison;
The poison that purifies you is water.
The Book of the Dead Man (#3)
© Marvin Bell
When the dead man throws up, he thinks he sees his inner life.
Seeing his vomit, he thinks he sees his inner life.
Now he can pick himself apart, weigh the ingredients, research
Olney Hymn 46: Retirement
© William Cowper
Far from the world, O Lord, I flee,
From strife and tumult far;
From scenes where Satan wages still
His most successful war.
