Life poems
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The Artist
© Oscar Wilde
ONE evening there came into his soul the desire to fashion an image
of THE PLEASURE THAT ABIDETH FOR A MOMENT. And he went forth into
the world to look for bronze. For he could think only in bronze.
Dawn Of The Headland
© William Watson
Dawn - and a magical stillness: on earth, quiescence profound;
On the waters a vast Content, as of hunger appeased and stayed;
Spring Song II
© Edith Nesbit
Small joy the greenness and grace of spring
To grey hard lives like our own can bring.
A drowning man cares little to think
Of the lights on the waves where he soon must sink.
The Dedication Poem
© Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Dedication Poem on the reception of the annex to
the home for aged colored people, from the bequest of
Mr. Edward T. Parker.
The Outpost
© Jessie Pope
The dying sunset's slanting rays
Incarnadine the soldier's deed,
His sturdy countenance betrays
The bull-dog breed.
Culloden
© Andrew Lang
Dark, dark was the day when we looked on Culloden
And chill was the mist drop that clung to the tree,
The oats of the harvest hung heavy and sodden,
No light on the land and no wind on the sea.
The Baby's Vengeance
© William Schwenck Gilbert
Weary at heart and extremely ill
Was PALEY VOLLAIRE of Bromptonville,
In a dirty lodging, with fever down,
Close to the Polygon, Somers Town.
A Task
© Czeslaw Milosz
In fear and trembling, I think I would fulfill my life
Only if I brought myself to make a public confession
Unpublished Poem II
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
WHENEVER you meet with a man from home
Who laughs at the falls and the fences here,
How Good Fortune Surprises Us by Jackson Wheeler: American Life in Poetry #144 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet
© Ted Kooser
I'd guess you've heard it said that the reason we laugh when somebody slips on a banana peel is that we're happy that it didn't happen to us. That kind of happiness may be shameful, but many of us have known it. In the following poem, the California poet, Jackson Wheeler, tells us of a similar experience.
How Good Fortune Surprises Us
I was hauling freight
out of the Carolinas
up to the Cumberland Plateau
when, in Tennessee, I saw
from the freeway, at 2 am
a house ablaze.
Solitude; In Youth And Age
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
IN youth we shrink from solitude!
It's quiet ways we shun,
Because our hearts are fain to dance
With others in the sun;--
Life's nectar bubbling brightly up,
O'erfloweth toward our brother's cup.
To S. C.
© John Kenyon
The chords thy ready fingers used to move
At fond request of dear domestic love,
The Wheel of the Breast
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Through rivers of veins on the nameless quest
The tide of my life goes hurriedly sweeping,
Till it reaches that curious wheel o' the breast,
The human heart, which is never at rest.
The Hill
© Rupert Brooke
Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,
Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
Employment
© George Herbert
If as a flowre doth spread and die,
Thou wouldst extend me to some good,
Before I were frost's extremitie
Nipt in the bud;
St. Louis: A Song Of The City
© Edgar Albert Guest
I was in St. Louis when their mystic Prophet came
From his dark, mysterious haunts to gaze upon the throngs.
None had ever seen his face and none could tell his name.
Yet they greeted him with cheers and welcomed him with songs.
The war Widow
© Alfred Noyes
Black-veiled, black-gowned, she rides in bus and train,
With eyes that fill too listlessly for tears.
Her waxen hands clasp and unclasp again.
_Good News_, they cry. She neither sees nor hears.
Colossians iii. 3. "Our Life Is Hid With Christ In God"
© George Herbert
My words and thoughts do both expresse this notion,
That Life hath with the sun a double motion.
The first Is straight, and our diurnall friend;
The other Hid, and doth obliquely bend.
