Life poems
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"Formerly A Slave"
© Herman Melville
The sufferance of her race is shown,
And retrospect of life,
Which now too late deliverance dawns upon;
Yet is she not at strife.
Yes, It Was The Mountain Echo
© William Wordsworth
YES, it was the mountain Echo,
Solitary, clear, profound,
Answering to the shouting Cuckoo,
Giving to her sound for sound!
Reality
© Emma Lazarus
These things alone endure;
"They are the solid facts," that we may grasp,
Leading us on and upward if we clasp
And hold them firm and sure.
Satisfied With Life
© Edgar Albert Guest
I have known the green trees and the skies overhead
And the blossoms of spring and the fragrance they shed;
I have known the blue sea, and the mountains afar
And the song of the pines and the light of a star;
And should I pass now, I could say with a smile
That my pilgrimage here has been well worth my while.
Stable by Claudia Emerson Andrews: American Life in Poetry #26 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
Descriptive poetry depends for its effects in part upon the vividness of details. Here the Virginia poet, Claudia Emerson, describes the type of old building all of us have seen but may not have stopped to look at carefully. And thoughtfully.
Stable
Love Nursed By Solitude. By W. I. Thomson, Edinburgh
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
AY, surely it is here that Love should come,
And find, (if he may find on earth), a home;
Here cast off all the sorrow and the shame
That cling like shadows to his very name.
Custer: Book Third
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Were every red man slaughtered in a day,
Still would that sacrifice but poorly pay
For one insulted woman captive's woes.
Spartan Mothers
© Alfred Austin
``One more embrace! Then, o'er the main,
And nobly play the soldier's part!''
The Offering
© Edith Nesbit
What will you give me for this heart of mine,
No heart of gold, and yet my dearest treasure?
It has its graces, it can ache and pine,
The Gatekeeper
© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
THE sunlight falls on old Quebec,
A city framed of rose and gold,
The Word
© Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev
In the days when the God eternal
Was declining face to the new world,
By the Word they stopped the suns inferno,
And destroyed the towns by the Word.
Requiem
© Edith Nesbit
NOW veiled in the inviolable past
Love lies asleep, who never more will wake;
Nor would you wake him, even for my sake
Who for your sake pray he sleep sound at last.
Lament Of Mary Queen Of Scots
© William Wordsworth
SMILE of the Moon!--for I so name
That silent greeting from above;
Love and War
© Ovid
Lovers all are soldiers, and Cupid has his campaigns:
I tell you, Atticus, lovers all are soldiers.
The Death Of The Poor
© Charles Baudelaire
It is Death, alas, persuades us to keep on living:
the goal of life and the only hope we have,
like an elixir, rousing, intoxicating, giving
the strength to march on towards the grave:
An Empty Room
© Roderic Quinn
"THIS is the room where Pinksie died";
So runs the writing there on the wall.
The world outside is a golden tide
Of light, but here the shadows fall.
Koya San
© Robert Laurence Binyon
High on the mountain, shrouded in vast trees,
The stillness had the chastity of frost.
I trod the fallen pallors of the moon.
The path was paven stone: I was not lost,
But followed whither it should lead me soon
Into the mountains midmost secrecies.
Somebody Spoke A Cheering Word
© Edgar Albert Guest
SOMEBODY spoke a cheering word,
Somebody praised his labor,
To The Additional Examiner For 1875
© James Clerk Maxwell
Queen Cram went straying
Where Tait was swaying,
