Life poems
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The Violet-Gatherer (From The Danish Of Oehlenslaeger)
© George Borrow
Pale the moon her light was shedding
Oer the landscape far and wide;
Calmly bright, all ills undreading,
Emma wanderd by my side.
A Character
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
YES, madame, I know you better, far better than those can know
Whose plummet of judgment never is dropped to the depths below;
Whose test is a surface-seeming, the glitter of lights that gleam
With a moment's rainbow lustre on the shifting face of the stream.
Soul-Advances
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
HE, who with fervent toil and will austere,
His innate forces and high faculties
Develops ever, with firm aim, and wise,
He only keeps his spiritual vision clear,
Krishna
© Sri Aurobindo
At last I find a meaning of soul's birth
Into this universe terrible and sweet,
I who have felt the hungry heart of earth
Aspiring beyond heaven to Krishna's feet.
At The Birth Of An Age
© Robinson Jeffers
V
GUDRUN (standing this side of the closing curtains; 'with Chrysothemis.
Carling has left her, going
A Sea Dream
© John Greenleaf Whittier
We saw the slow tides go and come,
The curving surf-lines lightly drawn,
The gray rocks touched with tender bloom
Beneath the fresh-blown rose of dawn.
You Will Forget Me
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
You will forget me. The years are so tender,
They bind up the wounds which we think are so deep,
When Sam'l Sings
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Hyeah dat singin' in de medders
Whaih de folks is mekin' hay?
By The Bivouac's Fitful Flame
© Walt Whitman
BY the bivouac's fitful flame,
A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow;-but first
Madrigal: My Thoughts Hold Mortal Strife
© William Henry Drummond
My thoughts hold mortal strife,
I do detest my life,
The Mother
© Nettie Palmer
IN the sorrow and the terror of the nations,
In a world shaken through by lamentations,
The Wind Of Onset
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
WITH potent north winds rushing swiftly down,
Blended in glorious chant, on yester-night
Old Winter came with locks and beard of white.
The hoarfrost glittering on his ancient crown:
Maesia's Song
© Robert Greene
SWEET are the thoughts that savor of content;
The quiet mind is richer than a crown;
Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent;
The poor estate scorns Fortune's angry frown.
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss,
Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss.
The Cross Roads
© Robert Southey
There was an old man breaking stones
To mend the turnpike way,
He sat him down beside a brook
And out his bread and cheese he took,
For now it was mid-day.
Ballade Of Tristram's Last Harping
© Gertrude Bartlett
Beloved, now is done our life's brief day;
Not with the day howe'er doth Love expire.
Within thine arms the night to dream away
This is the end of Love's supreme desire.
From: A Poet's Hope
© William Ellery Channing
Lady, there is a hope that all men have,
Some mercy for their faults, a grassy place
To rest in, and a flower-strewn, gentle grave;
Another hope which purifies our race,
That when that fearful bourn forever past,
They may find rest, - and rest so long to last.
Antigone
© George Meredith
The buried voice bespake Antigone.
'O sister! couldst thou know, as thou wilt know,
The Beam In Grenley Church
© William Barnes
In church at Grenley woone mid zee
A beam vrom wall to wall; a tree
That's longer than the church is wide,
An' zoo woone end o'n's drough outside,--
Not cut off short, but bound all round
Wi' lead, to keep en seäfe an' sound.
The Quaker Alumni
© John Greenleaf Whittier
From the well-springs of Hudson, the sea-cliffs of Maine,
Grave men, sober matrons, you gather again;
And, with hearts warmer grown as your heads grow more cool,
Play over the old game of going to school.
