Life poems
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To Lysander
© Aphra Behn
(On some Verses he writ, and asking more for his Heart than ‘twas worth.)
I
Take back that Heart, you with such Caution give,
Take the fond valu’d Trifle back;
I hate Love-Merchants that a Trade wou’d drive
And meanly cunning Bargains make.
Wormwood And Nightshade
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
The troubles of life are many,
The pleasures of life are few;
When we sat in the sunlight, Annie,
I dreamt that the skies were blue -
Burns
© Fitz-Greene Halleck
WILD ROSE of Alloway! my thanks:
Thou 'mindst me of that autumn noon
When first we met upon "the banks
And braes o'bonny Doon."
Nymphidia, The Court Of Fairy
© Michael Drayton
Old Chaucer doth of Thopas tell,
Mad Rabelais of Pantagruel,
Homer's Battle Of The Frogs And Mice. Book I
© Thomas Parnell
So pass'd Europa thro' the rapid Sea,
Trembling and fainting all the vent'rous Way;
With oary Feet the Bull triumphant rode,
And safe in Crete depos'd his lovely Load.
Ah safe at last! may thus the Frog support
My trembling Limbs to reach his ample Court.
Dolly
© Robert Bloomfield
The Bat began with giddy wing
His circuit round the Shed, the Tree;
And clouds of dancing Gnats to sing
A summer-night's serenity.
Lines In Memory Of Edmund Morris
© Duncan Campbell Scott
How shall we transmit in tendril-like images,
The tenuous tremor in the tissues of ether,
Before the round of colour buds like the dome of a shrine,
The preconscious moment when love has fluttered in the bosom,
Before it begins to ache?
Beautiful Dreamer Serenade
© Stephen C. Foster
Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee;
Sounds of the rude world heard in the day,
Lull'd by the moonlight have all pass'd a way!
A Farewell
© Edith Nesbit
Good-bye, good-bye; it is not hard to part!
You have my heart--the heart that leaps to hear
Your name called by an echo in a dream;
You have my soul that, like an untroubled stream,
Reflects your soul that leans so dear, so near -
Your heartbeats set the rhythm for my heart.
Sylvester’s Dying Bed
© Langston Hughes
I woke up this mornin’
’Bout half-past three.
All the womens in town
Was gathered round me.
Winter Roses
© John Greenleaf Whittier
My garden roses long ago
Have perished from the leaf-strewn walks;
Their pale, fair sisters smile no more
Upon the sweet-brier stalks.
The Wrens Nest
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
I TOOK the wren's nest;--
Heaven forgive me!
Its merry architects so small
Had scarcely finished their wee hall,
Becoming a Redwood
© Dana Gioia
Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds
start up again. The crickets, the invisible
toad who claims that change is possible,
Song #3.
© Robert Crawford
Love's but to be had this way:
Reverent you must be with her,
Letting your heart night and day
Dreamy in her beauty stir.
Paradise Regain'd: Book III (1671)
© Patrick Kavanagh
SO spake the Son of God, and Satan stood
A while as mute confounded what to say,
The Recluse - Book First
© William Wordsworth
HOME AT GRASMERE
ONCE to the verge of yon steep barrier came
A roving school-boy; what the adventurer's age
Hath now escaped his memory--but the hour,
The Life of Earth
© Robert Fuller Murray
The life of earth, how full of pain,
Which greets us on our day of birth,
Nor leaves us while we yet retain
The life of earth.
Brothers-American Drama
© James Weldon Johnson
See! There he stands; not brave, but with an air
Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is he
Not more like brute than man? Look in his eye!
No light is there; none, save the glint that shines
In the now glaring, and now shifting orbs
Of some wild animal caught in the hunter’s trap.
