Life poems
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To A Friend
© Matthew Arnold
Who prop, thou ask'st in these bad days, my mind?--
He much, the old man, who, clearest-souled of men,
Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen,
And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind.
Isolation: To Marguerite
© Matthew Arnold
We were apart; yet, day by day,
I bade my heart more constant be.
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee;
Nor fear'd but thy love likewise grew,
Like mine, each day, more tried, more true.
To A Picture Of Eleonora Duse With The Greek Fire, In "Francesca da Rimini"
© Sara Teasdale
Francesca's life that was a limpid flame
Agleam against the shimmer of a sword,
Which falling, quenched the flame in blood outpoured
To free the house of Rimino from shame
The Scholar Gypsy
© Matthew Arnold
But, 'mid their drink and clatter, he would fly.
And I myself seem half to know thy looks,
And put the shepherds, wanderer! on thy trace;
And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks
I ask if thou hast passed their quiet place;
Growing Old
© Matthew Arnold
What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
Yes, but not for this alone.
The Song-God.
© Robert Crawford
The Song-god helps me mightily, and runs
Before life's purpose like a primal power,
Spirit in sense of all that I am still;
Whose flame burns in the heart, consuming there
Chloris
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
WHAT time the rosy-flushing West
Sleeps soft on copse and dingle,
Wherein the sunset shadows rest,
Or richly float and mingle;
To emma abbott
© Eugene Field
There--let thy hands be folded
Awhile in sleep's repose;
The patient hands that wearied not,
But earnestly and nobly wrought
To cinna
© Eugene Field
Cinna, the great Venusian told
In songs that will not die
How in Augustan days of old
Your love did glorify
To a Usurper
© Eugene Field
Aha! a traitor in the camp,
A rebel strangely bold,--
A lisping, laughing, toddling scamp,
Not more than four years old!
An Exile's Death
© Victor Marie Hugo
Of what does this poor exile dream?
His garden plot, his dewy mead,
Perchance his tools, perchance his team,
But ever of murdered France indeed;
The wind
© Eugene Field
"Out in the garden abides the Queen of the beautiful Roses--
Her do I love and to-night wooed her with passionate singing;
Told I my love in those songs, and answer she gave in her blushes--
She shall be bride of the Wind, and she is the Queen of the Roses!"
Where The Children Used To Play
© James Whitcomb Riley
O from our life's full measure
And rich hoard of worldly treasure
We often turn our weary eyes away,
And hand in hand we wander
Down the old path winding yonder
To the orchard where the children used to play.
The peter-bird
© Eugene Field
Out of the woods by the creek cometh a calling for Peter,
And from the orchard a voice echoes and echoes it over;
Down in the pasture the sheep hear that strange crying for Peter,
Over the meadows that call is aye and forever repeated.
So let me tell you the tale, when, where, and how it all happened,
And, when the story is told, let us pay heed to the lesson.
Failure
© Madison Julius Cawein
There are some souls
Whose lot it is to set their hearts on goals
That adverse Fate controls.
