Life poems
/ page 581 of 844 /
A Yellow Leaf by Alberto Rios: American Life in Poetry #40 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Arizonan Alberto Rios probably observed this shamel ash often, its year-round green leaves never changing. On this particular day, however, he recognizes a difference—a yellow leaf. In doing so he offers us a glimpse of how something small yet unexpected may stay with us, perhaps even become a secret pleasure.
A Yellow Leaf
Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 3. Prelude
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Amid the hospitable glow,
Like an old actor on the stage,
With the uncertain voice of age,
The singing chimney chanted low
The homely songs of long ago.
Youth Renewed
© Robert Fuller Murray
When one who has wandered out of the way
Which leads to the hills of joy,
To The Lady H.O.
© Caroline Norton
I.
COME o'er the green hills to the sunny sea!
The boundless sea that washeth many lands,
Where shells unknown to England, fair and free,
To Charles Cowden Clarke
© John Keats
Oft have you seen a swan superbly frowning,
And with proud breast his own white shadow crowning;
He slants his neck beneath the waters bright
So silently, it seems a beam of light
The Sage
© Harriet Monroe
Sequoia, growing grandly
Out of the long ago,
Beloved of Time, whose sons
March by to measures slow,
How tenderly you cherish
All little lives below!
Written In A Fit Of Illness. R. S. S.
© William Cowper
In these sad hours, a prey to ceaseless pain,
While feverish pulses leap in every vein,
Maha-Bharata, The Epic Of Ancient India - Book IX - Drona-Badha (Fall Of Drona)
© Romesh Chunder Dutt
On the fall of Bhishma the Brahman chief Drona, preceptor of the Kuru
and Pandav princes, was appointed the leader of the Kuru forces. For
Canto XIII: Kung Walked
© Ezra Pound
And they said: If a man commit murder
Should his father protect him, and hide him?
And Kung said:
He should hide him.
Ogyges
© Henry Kendall
Stand out, swift-footed leaders of the horns,
And draw strong breath, and fill the hollowy cliff
The Seeking Of The Waterfall
© John Greenleaf Whittier
They left their home of summer ease
Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees,
To seek, by ways unknown to all,
The promise of the waterfall.
The Return Of Youth
© William Cullen Bryant
My friend, thou sorrowest for thy golden prime,
For thy fair youthful years too swift of flight;
Elegy XVI: The Expostulation
© John Donne
TO make the doubt clear, that no woman's true,
Was it my fate to prove it strong in you?
Life's Single Standard
© Edgar Albert Guest
There are a thousand ways to cheat and a thousand ways to sin;
There are ways uncounted to lose the game, but there's only one way to win;
And whether you live by the sweat of your brow or in luxury's garb you're
dressed,
You shall stand at last, when your race is run, to be judged by the single
test.
Too Long, O Spirit Of Storm
© Henry Timrod
Too long, O Spirit of Storm,
Thy lightning sleeps in its sheath!
I am sick to the soul of yon pallid sky,
And the moveless sea beneath.
Shakespeare
© Mathilde Blind
The world of men, unrolled before our sight,
Showed like a map, where stream and waterfall
And village-cradling vale and cloud-capped height
Stand faithfully recorded, great and small;
For Shakespeare was, and at his touch, with light
Impartial as the Sun's, revealed the All.
The Twenty-Fifth Of April
© Roderic Quinn
THIS day is Anzac Day!
Made sacred by the memory
Of those who fought and died, and fought and live,
And gave the best that men may give
Chaap Tilak
© Amir Khusro
Chhap tilak sab cheeni ray mosay naina milaikay
Chhap tilak sab cheeni ray mosay naina milaikay
