Life poems
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Miss Killmansegg And Her Precious Leg. A Legend
© Thomas Hood
Who hath not felt that breath in the air,
A perfume and freshness strange and rare,
The Bride Of The Greek Isle
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Fear! I'm a Greek, and how should I fear death?
A slave, and wherefore should I dread my freedom?
I will not live degraded ~ Sardanapalus
Friar Lubin. (From The French)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
ENVOY
When an evil deed 's to do
Friar Lubin is stout and true;
Glimmers a ray of goodness through it,
Friar Lubin cannot do it.
The Columbiad: Book VII
© Joel Barlow
He spoke; his moving armies veil'd the plain,
His fleets rode bounding on the western main;
O'er lands and seas the loud applauses rung,
And war and union dwelt on every tongue.
The Joys Of Home
© Edgar Albert Guest
Curling smoke from a chimney low,
And only a few more steps to go,
Faces pressed at a window pane
Watching for someone to come again,
And I am the someone they wait to see--
These are the joys life gives to me.
My Shy Hand
© Wilfred Owen
My shy hand shades a hermitage apart, -
O large enough for thee, and thy brief hours.
Life there is sweeter held than in God's heart,
Stiller than in the heavens of hollow flowers.
The Conversazzhony
© Eugene Field
What conversazzhyonies wuz I really did not know,
For that, you must remember, wuz a powerful spell ago;
The camp wuz new 'nd noisy, 'nd only modrit sized,
So fashionable sossiety wuz hardly crystallized.
The Bibliomaniac's Prayer
© Eugene Field
Keep me, I pray, in wisdom's way
That I may truths eternal seek;
I need protecting care to-day,--
My purse is light, my flesh is weak.
The Bibliomaniac's Bride
© Eugene Field
The women-folk are like to books,--
Most pleasing to the eye,
Whereon if anybody looks
He feels disposed to buy.
Prometheus, Or, The Poet's Forethought. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Of Prometheus, how undaunted
On Olympus' shining bastions
His audacious foot he planted,
Myths are told and songs are chanted,
Full of promptings and suggestions.
She Came And Went
© James Russell Lowell
As a twig trembles, which a bird
Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent,
So is my memory thrilled and stirred;
I only know she came and went.
Hymn
© Sir Walter Raleigh
Rise, O my soul! with thy desires to heaven,
And with divinest contemplation use
Thy time, when time's eternity is given,
And let vain thoughts no more thy thoughts abuse;
But down in darkness let them lie;
So live thy better, let thy worse thoughts die.
Hafbur And Signy
© William Morris
It was the Kings son Hafbur
Woke up amid the night,
And gan to tell of a wondrous dream
In swift words nowise light.
Ode to Melancholy
© Mary Darby Robinson
SORC'RESS of the Cave profound!
Hence, with thy pale, and meagre train,
Nor dare my roseate bow'r profane,
Where light-heel'd mirth despotic reigns,
Slightly bound in feath'ry chains,
And scatt'ring blisses round.
Vull a Man
© William Barnes
No, Im a man, Im vull a man,
You beat my manhood, if you can.
Youll be a man if you can teake
All steates that household life do meake.
Sister's cake
© Eugene Field
I'd not complain of Sister Jane, for she was good and kind,
Combining with rare comeliness distinctive gifts of mind;
Nay, I'll admit it were most fit that, worn by social cares,
She'd crave a change from parlor life to that below the stairs,
And that, eschewing needlework and music, she should take
Herself to the substantial art of manufacturing cake.
Fourteenth Sunday After Trinity
© John Keble
Ten cleansed, and only one remain!
Who would have thought our nature's stain
Veni, Vidi, Vixi (French & English)
© Victor Marie Hugo
J'ai bien assez vécu, puisque dans mes douleurs
Je marche, sans trouver de bras qui me secourent,
Puisque je ris à peine aux enfants qui m'entourent,
Puisque je ne suis plus réjoui par les fleurs ;
Pittypat and Tippytoe
© Eugene Field
All day long they come and go--
Pittypat and Tippytoe;
Footprints up and down the hall,
Playthings scattered on the floor,
Our biggest fish
© Eugene Field
When in the halcyon days of old, I was a little tyke,
I used to fish in pickerel ponds for minnows and the like;
And oh, the bitter sadness with which my soul was fraught
When I rambled home at nightfall with the puny string I'd caught!
And, oh, the indignation and the valor I'd display
When I claimed that all the biggest fish I'd caught had got away!
