Isn't my heart holy, more full of life's beauty,
since I fell in love? Why did you like me more
when I was prouder and wilder, more full
of words, yet emptier?

Tale VII

© George Crabbe

view,
A useful lass,--you may have more to do."
Dreadful were these commands; but worse than

'T WAS a vision of childhood that came with its dawn,
Ere the curtain that covered life's day-star was drawn;
The nurse told the tale when the shadows grew long,
And the mother's soft lullaby breathed it in song.

Le Marais Du Cygne

© John Greenleaf Whittier

A BLUSH as of roses
Where rose never grew!
Great drops on the bunch-grass,
But not of the dew!

Night and Morning

© Anonymous

Was it a lie that they told me,
Was it a pitiless hoax?
A sop for my soul and its longing
Only to cozen and coax?
And a voice came down through the night and rain:
"They lied; thou has trusted in vain."

A Book Of Strife In The Form Of The Diary Of An Old Soul - July

© George MacDonald

1.

ALAS, my tent! see through it a whirlwind sweep!

To A Violet Found On All Saint's Day

© Paul Laurence Dunbar

Belated wanderer of the ways of spring,
Lost in the chill of grim November rain,
Would I could read the message that you bring
And find in it the antidote for pain.

Pocahontas

© William Makepeace Thackeray

Wearied arm and broken sword

Wage in vain the desperate fight:

Arroyo Al on Worry

They'd make a rattlin' roundup, sure,

The troubles known to man,

To Heavy Hearts

HEAVY hearts, your jubilee

Droops about the Christmas Tree.

Paraphrase of Isaiah, Chap. 64

O that Thou wouldest rend the breadth of sky,
That veils Thy presence from the sons of men!
O that, as erst Thou camest from on high
Sudden in strength, Thou so would'st come again!
Track'd out by judgments was Thy fiery path,
Ocean and mountain withering in Thy wrath!

The Death of Artemidora

ARTEMIDORA! Gods invisible,
While thou art lying faint along the couch,
Have tied the sandal to thy veined feet,
And stand beside thee, ready to convey

Fiammetta

BEHOLD Fiammetta, shown in Vision here.

Gloom-girt 'mid Spring-flushed apple-growth she stands;

Sustenance by Ronald Wallace : American Life in Poetry #226 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006

© Ted Kooser

Elizabeth Bishop, one of our greatest American poets, once wrote a long poem in which the sudden appearance of a moose on a highway creates a community among a group of strangers on a bus. Here Ronald Wallace, a Wisconsin poet, gives us a sighting with similar results.

Sustenance