Life poems
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The Cellar Door
© John Clare
By the old tavern door on the causey there lay
A hogshead of stingo just rolled from a dray,
Lord Roberts
© Rudyard Kipling
He passed in the very battle-smoke
Of the war that he had descried.
Three hundred mile of cannon spoke
When the Master-Gunner died.
Loot
© Rudyard Kipling
If you've ever stole a pheasant-egg be'ind the keeper's back,
If you've ever snigged the washin' from the line,
If you've ever crammed a gander in your bloomin' 'aversack,
You will understand this little song o' mine.
The Long Trail
© Rudyard Kipling
The Lord knows what we may find, dear lass,
And The Deuce knows we may do
But we're back once more on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
We're down, hull-down, on the Long Trail -- the trail that is always new!
In The Gray Of The Evening. Autumn.
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
WHEN o'er yon forest solitudes
The sky of autumn evening broods--
A heaven whose warp, but palely bright,
Shot through with woofs of crimson light,
Metamorphoses: Book The Fourth
© Ovid
The End of the Fourth Book.
Translated into English verse under the direction of
Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison,
William Congreve and other eminent hands
L'Envoi
© Rudyard Kipling
There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield,
And the ricks stand gray to the sun,
Singing: -- "Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover,
And your English summer's done."
The Last of the Light Brigade
© Rudyard Kipling
There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.
On An Air Of Rameau
© Arthur Symons
A melancholy desire of ancient things
Floats like a faded perfume out of the wires;
Pallid lovers, what unforgotten desires,
Whispered once, are retold in your whisperings?
The Lament of the Border Cattle Thief
© Rudyard Kipling
O woe is me for the merry life
I led beyond the Bar,
And a treble woe for my winsome wife
That weeps at Shalimar.
Songs of the Night Watches (complete)
© Jean Ingelow
Come out and hear the waters shoot, the owlet hoot, the owlet hoot;
Yon crescent moon, a golden boat, hangs dim behind the tree, O!
The dropping thorn makes white the grass, O sweetest lass, and sweetest
lass;
Come out and smell the ricks of hay adown the croft with me, O!”
Justice
© Rudyard Kipling
October, 1918
Across a world where all men grieve
And grieving strive the more,
The great days range like tides and leave
The Irish Guards
© Rudyard Kipling
1918We're not so old in the Army List,
But we're not so young at our trade,
For we had the honour at Fontenoy
Of meeting the Guards'Brigade.
Undivine Comedy
© Zygmunt Krasinski
THE MAN:
(Casting away his cloak) I need you no longer. My best men have perished and those kneeling over there are stretching out their arms to the victors and bellowing for mercy! (He looks all around him.) They are not coming up this side yet. There is still time. Let us rest a while. Ha, now they have battered their way up the northern tower. New troops have plunged into the tower and they are looking to see if Count Henry is hidden somewhere there. I am here, here - but you shall not judge me! I have already started on my way. I am going toward the judgment of God. (He mounts a fragment of a bastion overhanging the very precipice.) I see it, all black, with dark expanses, flowing toward me, my eternity, without shores, without islands, without end, and in its midst is God, like an eternally burning sun - ever shining - and illuminating nothing. (Advances a step farther. ) They run, they've seen me! Jesus, Mary! O poetry, be you as cursed as I am for all the ages! Arms of mine, go before and cut me a path through those ramparts! (He leaps into the precipice.)
A Poem On The Last Day - Book III
© Edward Young
Each gesture mourns, each look is black with care,
And every groan is loaden with despair.
Reader, if guilty, spare the Muse, and find
A truer image pictured in thy mind.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
© Rudyard Kipling
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
'eering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
Giffen's Debt
© Rudyard Kipling
Imprimis he was "broke." Thereafter left
His Regiment and, later, took to drink;
Then, having lost the balance of his friends,
"Went Fantee" -- joined the people of the land,
