Life poems
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Sacred To the Memory of Algernon R. G. Stanhope
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
THE silver cord is loosed, he said,
The golden bowl is broken;
In The Twilight
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
NOT bed-time yet! The night-winds blow,
The stars are out,--full well we know
Aurora Leigh: Book Eighth
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
In my ears
The sound of waters. There he stood, my king!
Ambition And Content: A Fable
© Mark Akenside
Thus spoke the fair; and straight she bent her way
To the tall mountain, where the cottage lay:
Arriv'd she makes her chang'd condition known;
Tells how the rebels drove her from the throne;
What painful, dreary wilds she'd wander'd o'er;
And shelter from the tyrant doth implore.
Wild Flowers
© George MacDonald
Content Primroses,
With hearts at rest in your thick leaves' soft care,
The Messiah : A Sacred Eclogue
© Alexander Pope
Ye nymphs of Solyma! begin the song,
To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong.
The mossy fountains, and the sylvan shades,
The dreams of Pindus, and the Aonian maids,
Delight no more - O thou, my voice inspire,
Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire!
Autumn At The Orchard
© Edgar Albert Guest
The sumac's flaming scarlet on the edges o' the lake,
An' the pear trees are invitin' everyone t' come an' shake.
Revelation
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Still, as of old, in Beavor's Vale,
O man of God! our hope and faith
The Elements and Stars assail,
And the awed spirit holds its breath,
Blown over by a wind of death.
Love Inducin Christian Conduct
© John Bunyan
When understand my meaning by my words,
How sense of mercy unto faith affords
The Curse Of The Charter-Breakers
© John Greenleaf Whittier
IN Westminster's royal halls,
Robed in their pontificals,
England's ancient prelates stood
For the people's right and good.
Our Autocrat
© John Greenleaf Whittier
His laurels fresh from song and lay,
Romance, art, science, rich in all,
And young of heart, how dare we say
We keep his seventieth festival?
The Anglers Reveille
© Henry Van Dyke
What time the rose of dawn is laid across the lips of night,
And all the little watchman-stars have fallen asleep in light,
'Tis then a merry wind awakes, and runs from tree to tree,
And borrows words from all the birds to sound the reveille.
To Dante
© Frances Anne Kemble
"Poeta volontieri
Parlerei a que' duo che' insieme vanno,
E pajon si al vento esser leggieri."
Dell' Inferno, Canto .
Natalias Resurrection: Sonnet XXXI
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Rather I hold with those that tell it thus,
That they, who had made proof of their great faith,
Were joined no less with honour in love's house
By Holy Church, which binding looseneth,
An Elegie. Princesse Katherine Borne, Christened, Buried, I
© Richard Lovelace
Bright soule! teach us, to warble with what feet
Thy swathing linnen and thy winding sheet,
Weepe, or shout forth that fonts solemnitie,
Which at once christn'd and buried thee,
And change our shriller passions with that sound,
First told thee into th' ayre, then to the ground.
The Bereaved One
© Henry Kendall
She sleepsand I see through a shadowy haze,
Where the hopes of the past and the dreams that I cherished
Youths End
© Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
I HAVE held my life too high,
Spring and harvest, love and laughter, smile and sigh.
Geometry by Nancy Botkin: American Life in Poetry #117 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
We knew them only in summer when the air
passed through the screens. The neighbor girls
talked to us across the great divide: attic window
to attic window. We started with our names.
Our whispers wobbled along a tightrope,
and below was the rest of our lives.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2006 by Nancy Botkin. Reprinted from âPoetry East,â? Spring, 2006, by permission of the author, whose full-length book of poems, âParts That Were Once Whole,â? is available from Mayapple Press, 2007. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
