Life poems
/ page 571 of 844 /
Lines Occasioned By A Visit To Whittlebury Forest, Northamptonshire, In August, 1800
© Robert Bloomfield
Genius of the Forest Shades!
Lend thy pow'r, and lend thine ear!
The Old Age Of Queen Maeve
© William Butler Yeats
A certain poet in outlandish clothes
Gathered a crowd in some Byzantine lane,
Requiescit
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
His name is cut upon a stone. His dreams
Were written on Time's hem; and Time has fled
And taken him and them. The grass is green
Upon his grave. I cannot doubt he sleeps.
The Future.
© Caroline Norton
I WAS a laughing child, and gaily dwelt
Where murmuring brooks, and dark blue rivers roll'd,
The Triumph Of Melancholy
© James Beattie
Memory, be still! why throng upon the thought
These scenes deep-stain'd with Sorrow's sable dye?
Hast thou in store no joy-illumined draught,
To cheer bewilder'd Fancy's tearful eye?
From The Inverted Torch: When In The First Great Hour
© Edith Matilda Thomas
Yet as some muser, when the embers fall,
The low lamp flickers out, starts up dismayed,
So I awoke, to find me still Times thrall,
Times sport,nor by thy warm, safe presence stayed.
Nothing and Something
© Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
It is nothing to me, the young man cried:
In his eye was a flash of scorn and pride;
I heed not the dreadful things ye tell:
I can rule myself I know full well.
Margaret Of Cortona
© Edith Wharton
I rave, you say? You start from me, Fra Paolo?
Go, then; your going leaves me not alone.
I marvel, rather, that I feared the question,
Since, now I name it, it draws near to me
With such dear reassurance in its eyes,
And takes your place beside me. . .
Fire
© Dorothea Mackellar
This life that we call our own
Is neither strong nor free;
A flame in the wind of death,
It trembles ceaselessly.
Luna
© Victor Marie Hugo
O France, although you sleep
We call you, we the forbidden!
The shadows have ears,
And the depths have cries.
Manhattan Streets I Saunter'd, Pondering
© Walt Whitman
Manhatten's streets I saunter'd, pondering,
On time, space, reality-on such as these, and abreast with them,
prudence.
Peace
© Ada Cambridge
So still! So calm! Will our life's eve come thus?
No sound of strife, of labour or of pain,
No ring of woodman's axe, no dip of oar.
Will work be done, and night's rest earned, for us?
And shall we wake to see sunrise again?
Or shall we sleep, to see and know no more?
Bessie Dreaming Bear by Marnie Walsh: American Life in Poetry #3 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 20
© Ted Kooser
A poem need not go on at great length to accomplish the work of conveying something meaningful to its readers. In the following poem by the late Marnie Walsh, just a few words, written as if they'd been recorded in exactly the manner in which they'd been spoken, tell us not only about the missing woman in the red high heels, but a little something about the speaker as well.
Bessie Dreaming Bear
we all went to town one day
went to a store
bought you new shoes
red high heels
The Vassal's Lament For The Fallen Tree
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Yes! I have seen the ancient oak
On the dark deep water cast,
And it was not fell'd by the woodman's stroke,
Or the rush of the sweeping blast;
For the axe might never touch that tree,
And the air was still as a summer-sea.
The Vulture (Parody of Poe's "Raven")
© Anonymous
Once upon a midnight chilling, as I held my feet unwilling
O'er a tub of scalding water, at a heat of ninety-four;
Nervously a toe in dipping, dripping, slipping, then out-skipping,
Suddenly there came a ripping whipping, at my chamber's door.
"'Tis the second-floor," I muttered, "flipping at my chamber's door--
Wants a light--and nothing more!"
Immortality
© John Liddell Kelly
Eternal life - a river gulphed in sands!
Undying fame - a rainbow lost in clouds!
What hope of immortality remains
But this: "Some soul that loves and understands
Shall save thee from the darkness that enshrouds";
And this: "Thy blood shall course in others' veins"?
When An Old Man Gets To Thinking
© Edgar Albert Guest
When an old man gets to thinking of the years he's traveled through,
He hears again the laughter of the little ones he knew.
He isn't counting money, and he isn't planning schemes;
He's at home with friendly people in the shadow of his dreams.
Purpose
© Edgar Albert Guest
Not for the sake of the gold,
Not for the sake of the fame,
Not for the prize would I hold
Any ambition or aim:
I would be brave and be true
Just for the good I can do.
