Life poems
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What Calls Us by David Bengtson: American Life in Poetry #42 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
Here is a poem by David Bengtson, a Minnesotan, about the simple pleasure of walking through deep snow to the mailbox to see what's arrived. But, of course, the pleasure is not only in picking up the mail with its surprises, but in the complete experience—being fully alive to the clean cold air and the sound of the wind around the mailbox door.
The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part IV: Vita Nova: XC
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
THE PRIDE OF UNBELIEF
When I complained that I had lost my hope
Of life eternal with the eternal God;
When I refused to read my horoscope
Chione
© Archibald Lampman
Scarcely a breath about the rocky stair
Moved, but the growing tide from verge to verge,
Fried Beauty by R. S. Gwynn: American Life in Poetry #166 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Texas poet R. S. Gwynn is a master of the light touch. Here he picks up on Gerard Manley Hopkins' sonnet âPied Beauty,â? which many of you will remember from school, and offers us a picnic instead of a sermon. I hope you enjoy the feast!
Fried Beauty
On the Death of E. Waller, Esq.
© Aphra Behn
How, to thy Sacred Memory, shall I bring
(Worthy thy Fame) a grateful Offering?
The Meeting
© John Greenleaf Whittier
The elder folks shook hands at last,
Down seat by seat the signal passed.
Farewell To Italy
© Frances Anne Kemble
Farewell awhile, beautiful Italy!
My lonely bark is launched upon the sea
The Kingdom of Love
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
In the dawn of the day, when the sea and the earth
Reflected the sunrise above,
Of The Nature Of Things: Book V - Part 01 - Proem
© Lucretius
O who can build with puissant breast a song
Worthy the majesty of these great finds?
Piscataqua River
© Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Thou singest by the gleaming isles,
By woods, and fields of corn,
Thou singest, and the sunlight smiles
Upon my birthday morn.
Morning Hymn
© George MacDonald
O Lord of life, thy quickening voice
Awakes my morning song!
In gladsome words I would rejoice
That I to thee belong.
Finis
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
A MOMENT'S gleam, hint of sunnier weather,
Borne from the storm-clouds and the mists of fate;
Dawned, with a tender "Peradventure" hither,
A soft "Perchance it is not yet too late!"
The Princes' Ques -Part the Eighth
© William Watson
Now as it chanced, the day was almost spent
When down the lonely mountain-side he went,
Fragments Of An Unfinished Poem
© James Russell Lowell
I am a man of forty, sirs, a native of East Haddam,
And have some reason to surmise that I descend from Adam;
The Norsemen
© John Greenleaf Whittier
GIFT from the cold and silent Past!
A relic to the present cast,
Love In A Cottage
© Daniel Henry Deniehy
A cottage small be mine, with porch
Enwreathed with ivy green,
And brightsome flowers with dew-filled bells,
'Mid brown old wattles seen.
Loves Me? Loves Me Not?
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
Under the earth goes the last new-comer,
What were the life of her, winter-summer!
What if her silent grave holds one only
Who loved her well, and who left her lonely?
