Life poems
/ page 60 of 844 /The Comparison, the Choice, and the Enjoyment.
© Mather Byles
I.
Who on the Earth, or in the Skies,
Thy Beauties can declare?
Jesus, dear Object of my Eyes,
My Everlasting Fair.
On Visiting the Graves of Hawthorne and Thoreau
© Jones Very
Beneath these shades, beside yon winding stream,
Lies Hawthorne's manly form, the mortal part!
Thomas Decker: VIII
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
O sweetest heart of all thy time save one,
Star seen for loves sake nearest to the sun,
Hung lamplike oer a dense and doleful city,
Not Shakespeares very spirit, howeer more great,
Than thine toward man was more compassionate,
Nor gave Christ praise from lips more sweet with pity.
How Salvator Won
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
The gate was thrown open, I rode out alone,
More proud than a monarch who sits on a throne.
I am but a jockey, yet shout upon shout
Went up from the people who watched me ride out;
And the cheers that rang forth from that warm-hearted crowd,
Were as earnest as those to which monarch e'er bowed.
To My Mother Earth
© George MacDonald
O Earth, Earth, Earth,
I am dying for love of thee,
For thou hast given me birth,
And thy hands have tended me.
The Will And The Wing
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
To have the will to soar, but not the wings,
Eyes fixed forever on a starry height,
Whence stately shapes of grand imaginings
Flash down the splendors of imperial light;
Mary Of Magdala
© Edith Nesbit
Mary of Magdala came to bed;
There were no soft curtains round her head;
She had no mother to hold of worth
The little baby she brought to birth.
Preparatory Meditations - First Series: 29
© Edward Taylor
My shattered fancy stole away from me
(Wits run a-wooling over Eden's park)
And in God's garden saw a golden tree,
Whose heart was all divine, and gold its bark.
Whose glorious limbs and fruitful branches strong
With saints and angels bright are richly hung.
The Princes' Quest - Part the First
© William Watson
There was a time, it passeth me to say
How long ago, but sure 'twas many a day
Beauty
© Mathilde Blind
And yet your beauty breeds a strange despair,
And pang of yearning in the helpless heart;
To shield you from time's fraying wear and tear,
That from yourself yourself would wrench apart,
How save you, fairest, but to set you where
Mortality kills death in deathless art?
Grandfather by Andrei Guruianu: American Life in Poetry #12 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Perhaps your family passes on the names of loved ones to subsequent generations. This poem by Andrei Guruianu speaks to the loving and humbling nature of sharing another's name.
Down By the Carib Sea
© James Weldon Johnson
Sol, Sol, mighty lord of the tropic zone,
Here I wait with the trembling stars
To see thee once more take thy throne.
The Death-Day Of Korner
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
A song for the death-day of the brave
A song of pride!
The youth went down to a hero's grave,
With the sword, his bride.
Devotion. -- A Vision
© Gerald Griffin
Methought I roved on shining walks,
'Mid odorous groves and wreathed bowers.
The Fallen Elm
© Alfred Austin
The popinjay screamed from tree to tree,
Then was lost in the burnished leaves;
The sky was as blue as a southern sea,
And the swallow came back to the eaves.
The Cypress-Tree Of Ceylon
© John Greenleaf Whittier
THEY sat in silent watchfulness
The sacred cypress-tree about,
And, from beneath old wrinkled brows,
Their failing eyes looked out.