Life poems
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The Metamorphosis Of Plants.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Happily teach thee the word, which may the mystery
solve!
Closely observe how the plant, by little and little progressing,
The King Of Thule.*
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(* This ballad is also introduced in Faust,
where it is sung by Margaret.)IN Thule lived a monarch,Still faithful to the grave,
To whom his dying mistressA golden goblet gave.Beyond all price he deem'd it,He quaff'd it at each feast;
And, when he drain'd that goblet,His tears to flow ne'er ceas'd.And when he felt death near him,His cities o'er he told,
Poems On Man
© Rabindranath Tagore
Man is immortal; therefore he must die endlessly.
For life is a creative idea;
it can only find itself in changing forms.
The Bridegroom.*
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(Not in the English sense of the word, but the German, where it
has the meaning of betrothed.)I SLEPT,--'twas midnight,--in my bosom woke,As though 'twere day, my love-o'erflowing heart;
To me it seemed like night, when day first broke;What is't to me, whate'er it may impart?She was away; the world's unceasing strifeFor her alone I suffer'd through the heat
Of sultry day; oh, what refreshing lifeAt cooling eve!--my guerdon was complete.The sun now set, and wand'ring hand in hand,His last and blissful look we greeted then;
Prometheus.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Didst thou e'er fancy
That life I should learn to hate,
And fly to deserts,
Because not all
My blossoming dreams grew ripe?
The Wedding.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A FEAST was in a village spread,--
It was a wedding-day, they said.
The parlour of the inn I found,
And saw the couples whirling round,
The Sense Of The Sleight-Of-Hand Man
© Wallace Stevens
One's grand flights, one's Sunday baths,
One's tootings at the weddings of the soul
Occur as they occur. So bluish clouds
Occurred above the empty house and the leaves
Nomad Exquisite
© Wallace Stevens
As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth
The big-finned palm
And green vine angering for life,
Influence
© Ada Cambridge
So do our brooding thoughts and deep desires
Grow in our souls, we know not how or why;
Grope for we know not what, all blind and dumb.
So, when the time is ripe, and one aspires
To free his thought in speech, ours hear the cry,
And to full birth and instant knowledge come.
To Stella, Written On The Day Of Her Birth. March 13, 1723-4, But Not On The Subject, When I Was Sic
© Jonathan Swift
Tormented with incessant pains,
Can I devise poetic strains?
Time was, when I could yearly pay
My verse to Stella's native day:
Worry About Money
© Kathleen Raine
And read that the widow with the young son
Must give first to the prophetic genius
From the little there is in the bin of flour and the cruse of oil.
The River
© Kathleen Raine
In my second dream
Pure I was and free
By the rapid stream,
My crystal house the sky,
The pure crystalline sky.
Seed
© Kathleen Raine
From star to star, from sun and spring and leaf,
And almost audible flowers whose sound is silence,
And in the common meadows, springs the seed of life.
On the Earl of Essex
© Henry King
Essex twice made unhappy by a Wife,
Yet Marry'd worse unto the Peoples strife:
He who by two Divorces did untie
His Bond of Wedlock and of Loyalty:
Paradise Seed
© Kathleen Raine
Where is the seed
Of the tree felled,
Of the forest burned,
Or living root
