Life poems
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Paradise Lost: Book IX (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
To whom the Virgin Majestie of Eve,
As one who loves, and some unkindness meets,
With sweet austeer composure thus reply'd,
Mummia
© Rupert Brooke
As those of old drank mummia
To fire their limbs of lead,
Making dead kings from Africa
Stand pandar to their bed;
The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar’s House
© Howard Nemerov
The painter’s eye follows relation out.
His work is not to paint the visible,
He says, it is to render visible.
Last May a Braw Wooer
© Robert Burns
Last May a braw wooer cam down the lang glen,
And sair wi' his love he did deave me;
I said there was naething I hated like men:
The deuce gae wi 'm to believe me, believe me,
The deuce gae wi 'm to believe me.
Proem.
© Robert Crawford
I only knew one poet in my life.
BROWNING.
I have not known a poet but myself,
If I'm indeed one, as I ought to be,
The Bard
© Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky
My friends, can you descry that mound of earth
Above clear waters in the shade of trees?
Postpartum Blues
© Joseph Brodsky
But what's in the way
To the way in? God,
That desperate explanation,
Mentor and tormentor, giving us
The duties of paradise,
To Mr. Pope
© Thomas Parnell
To praise, and still with just respect to praise
A Bard triumphant in immortal bays,
The Learn'd to show, the Sensible commend,
Yet still preserve the province of the Friend,
What life, what vigour must the lines require?
What Music tune them, what affection fire?
Cold
© Madison Julius Cawein
A mist that froze beneath the moon and shook
Minutest frosty fire in the air.
A Shropshire Lad XXXI: On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble
© Alfred Edward Housman
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
On Virtue
© Phillis Wheatley
O thou bright jewel in my aim I strive
To comprehend thee. Thine own words declare
The Dying Hunter to his Dog
© Susanna Moodie
Lie down—lie down!—my noble hound,
That joyful bark give o’er;
The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part IV: Vita Nova: LXXXV
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
THE SAME CONTINUED
These flowers shall be my offering, living flowers
Which here shall die with you in sacrifice,
Flowers from the empty fields which once were yours
Limerick:There was an Old Person of Tartary
© Edward Lear
There was an Old Person of Tartary,
Who divided his jugular artery;
But he screeched to his wife,
And she said, 'Oh, my life!
Your death will be felt by all Tartary!'
The Book Of Paradise - The Seven Sleepers
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
And the sheep-dog will not leave them,--
Scared away, his foot all-mangled,
To his master still he presses,
And he joins the hidden party,
Joins the favorites of slumber.
Haverhill
© John Greenleaf Whittier
O river winding to the sea!
We call the old time back to thee;
From forest paths and water-ways
The century-woven veil we raise.
Days of 1994: Alexandrians
© Marilyn Hacker
for Edmund White
Lunch: as we close the twentieth century,
death, like a hanger-on or a wanna-be
sits with us at the cluttered bistro
table, inflecting the conversation.
The Bridal of the Year
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
Yes! the Summer is returning,
Warmer, brighter beams are burning
January 22nd, Missolonghi
© Lord Byron
On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year
'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
