Life poems
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A Spiritual Manifestation
© John Greenleaf Whittier
To-day the plant by Williams set
Its summer bloom discloses;
The wilding sweethrier of his prayers
Is crowned with cultured roses.
Love After Love
© Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
In The Harbour: A Quiet Life. (From The French)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Let him who will, by force or fraud innate,
Of courtly grandeurs gain the slippery height;
Mr Cogito And The Imagination
© Zbigniew Herbert
he would rarely soar
on the wings of a metaphor
and then he fell like Icarus
into the embrace of the Great Mother
A Pre-Existence
© Madison Julius Cawein
An intimation of some previous life,
Or dark dream, in the present dim-divined,
Of some uncertain sleep--or lived or dreamed
In some dead life--between a dusk and dawn;
Charles Augustus Fortescue
© Hilaire Belloc
The nicest child I ever knew
Was Charles Augustus Fortescue.
He never lost his cap, or tore
His stockings or his pinafore:
In eating Bread he made no Crumbs,
He was extremely fond of sums,
In Praise Of Writing Letters
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
Blest be the Man! his Memory at least,
Who found the Art, thus to unfold his Breast,
And taught succeeding Times an easy way
Their secret Thoughts by Letters to convey;
To baffle Absence, and secure Delight,
Which, till that Time, was limited to Sight.
Nothing But Death
© Pablo Neruda
And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.
Whom The Gods Love
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Whom the gods love die young. Ah, do not doubt of it.
Laura did well to die. Our loss was a gain for her,
Ours who so loved her laughter, ours who at thought of it
Shrink from a wound yet tender, wailing in vain for her.
Boris Godunov
© Alexander Pushkin
Boyars, The People, Inspectors, Officers, Attendants, Guests,
a Boy in attendance on Prince Shuisky, a Catholic Priest, a
Polish Noble, a Poet, an Idiot, a Beggar, Gentlemen, Peasants,
Guards, Russian, Polish, and German Soldiers, a Russian
Prisoner of War, Boys, an old Woman, Ladies, Serving-women.
Balin and Balan
© Alfred Tennyson
Then Balan added to their Order lived
A wealthier life than heretofore with these
And Balin, till their embassage returned.
Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine
© Hilaire Belloc
But since I would not, since I could not stay,
Let me remember even in this my day
How, when the ephemeral vision's lure is past
All, all, must face their Passion at the last
WeBee and Ilive by the quaffing
© Emily Dickinson
WeBee and Ilive by the quaffing
'Tisn't all Hockwith us
Life has its Ale
But it's many a lay of the Dim Burgundy
We chantfor cheerwhen the Winesfail
Worth Forest
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Come, Prudence, you have done enough to--day--
The worst is over, and some hours of play
We both have earned, even more than rest, from toil;
Our minds need laughter, as a spent lamp oil,
Coole Park And Ballylee, 1931
© William Butler Yeats
Under my window-ledge the waters race,
Otters below and moor-hens on the top,
L'Envoy of Chaucer to Bukton
© Geoffrey Chaucer
My Master Bukton, when of Christ our King
Was asked, What is truth or soothfastness?
Meditation
© Mikhail Lermontov
With sadness I survey our present generation!
Their future seems so empty, dark, and cold,
The Young Man's Song
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
At last the curse has run its date!
The heavens grow clear above,
And on the purple plains of Hate,
We'll build the throne of Love!
The Long Love
© Sir Thomas Wyatt
The long love that in my thought doth harbour,
And in mine heart doth keep his residence,
Into my face presseth with bold pretence,
And therein campeth, spreading his banner.
The Wishing Gate Destroyed
© William Wordsworth
HOPE rules a land forever green:
All powers that serve the bright-eyed Queen
Are confident and gay;
Clouds at her bidding disappear;
Points she to aught?--the bliss draws near,
And Fancy smooths the way.
