Life poems
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I Strove with None
© Walter Savage Landor
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm'd both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
Finis
© Walter Savage Landor
I STROVE with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm'd both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
The Dragon-Fly
© Walter Savage Landor
Life (priest and poet say) is but a dream;
I wish no happier one than to be laid
Beneath a cool syringas scented shade,
Or wavy willow, by the running stream,
Brimful of moral, where the dragon-fly,
Wanders as careless and content as I.
Autumn
© Walter Savage Landor
MILD is the parting year, and sweet
The odour of the falling spray;
Life passes on more rudely fleet,
And balmless is its closing day.
On His Seventy-fifth Birthday
© Walter Savage Landor
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
The Prayer
© Mikhail Lermontov
When faints the heart for sorrow,
In life's hard, darkened hour,
My spirit breathes a wondrous prayer
Full of love's inward power.
Seraphita
© Ernest Christopher Dowson
But when the storm is highest, and the thunders blare,
And sea and sky are riven, O moon of all my night!
Stoop down but once in pity of my great despair,
And let thine hand, though over late to help, alight
But once upon my pale eyes and my drowning hair,
Before the great waves conquer in the last vain fight.
At His Grave
© Alfred Austin
LEAVE me a little while alone,
Here at his grave that still is strown
With crumbling flower and wreath;
The laughing rivulet leaps and falls,
The thrush exults, the cuckoo calls,
And he lies hushd beneath.
Love's Blindness
© Alfred Austin
Now do I know that Love is blind, for I
Can see no beauty on this beauteous earth,
No life, no light, no hopefulness, no mirth,
Pleasure nor purpose, when thou art not nigh.
Italian Girl's Hymn To The Virgin
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
In the deep hour of dreams,
Through the dark woods, and past the moaning sea,
And by the star-light gleams,
Mother of sorrows! lo, I come to thee!
Sheltered Garden
© Hilda Doolittle
Every way ends, every road,
every foot-path leads at last
to the hill-crest --
then you retrace your steps,
or find the same slope on the other side,
precipitate.
A Sanitary Message
© Francis Bret Harte
Last night, above the whistling wind,
I heard the welcome rain,--
Cities
© Hilda Doolittle
And in these dark cells,
packed street after street,
souls live, hideous yet --
O disfigured, defaced,
with no trace of the beauty
men once held so light.
To The One Upstairs
© Charles Simic
Boss of all bosses of the universe.
Mr. know-it-all, wheeler-dealer, wire-puller,
And whatever else you're good at.
Go ahead, shuffle your zeros tonight.
Dip in ink the comets' tails.
Staple the night with starlight.
Ballade Of The Dream
© Andrew Lang
Sleep, that giv'st what Life denies,
Shadowy bounties and supreme,
Bring the dearest face that flies
Following darkness like a dream!
The Initiate
© Charles Simic
St. John of the Cross wore dark glasses
As he passed me on the street.
St. Theresa of Avila, beautiful and grave,
Turned her back on me.
Paradise Motel
© Charles Simic
Millions were dead; everybody was innocent.
I stayed in my room. The President
Spoke of war as of a magic love potion.
My eyes were opened in astonishment.
In a mirror my face appeared to me
Like a twice-canceled postage stamp.
