Life poems
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The Dying Hour
© Caroline Norton
OH! watch me; watch me still
Thro' the long night's dreary hours,
Uphold by thy firm will
Worn Nature's sinking powers!
II.
The Tournament
© Sidney Lanier
Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies,
And the knights still hurried amain
To the tournament under the ladies' eyes,
Where the jousters were Heart and Brain.
The Symphony
© Sidney Lanier
And yet shall Love himself be heard,
Though long deferred, though long deferred:
O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred:
Music is Love in search of a word."
The Vanity of All Worldly Things
© Anne Bradstreet
As he said vanity, so vain say I,
Oh! Vanity, O vain all under sky;
Sonnet LIV: Yet Read at Last
© Michael Drayton
Yet read at last the story of my woe,
The dreary abstracts of my endless cares,
The Dead Babe
© Eugene Field
Last night, as my dear babe lay dead,
In agony I knelt and said:
"0 God! what have I done,
Or in what wise offended Thee,
That Thou should'st take away from me
My little son?
The Power Of Prayer
© Sidney Lanier
You, Dinah! Come and set me whar de ribber-roads does meet.
De Lord, HE made dese black-jack roots to twis' into a seat.
Umph, dar! De Lord have mussy on dis blin' ole nigger's feet.
The Mocking-Bird
© Sidney Lanier
Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray
That o'er the general leafage boldly grew,
He summ'd the woods in song; or typic drew
The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay
The Jacquerie A Fragment
© Sidney Lanier
Chapter I.Once on a time, a Dawn, all red and bright
Leapt on the conquered ramparts of the Night,
And flamed, one brilliant instant, on the world,
Then back into the historic moat was hurled
The Dying Words Of Stonewall Jackson
© Sidney Lanier
"Order A. P. Hill to prepare for battle."
"Tell Major Hawks to advance the Commissary train."
"Let us cross the river and rest in the shade."
The Crystal
© Sidney Lanier
Thee, Socrates,
Thou dear and very strong one, I forgive
Thy year-worn cloak, thine iron stringencies
That were but dandy upside-down, thy words
Of truth that, mildlier spoke, had mainlier wrought.
Street Cries
© Sidney Lanier
Oft seems the Time a market-town
Where many merchant-spirits meet
Who up and down and up and down
Cry out along the street
Sonnett - XXVII
© James Russell Lowell
I thought our love at full, but I did err;
Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I could not see
Strange Jokes
© Sidney Lanier
Well: Death is a huge omnivorous Toad
Grim squatting on a twilight road.
He catcheth all that Circumstance
Hath tossed to him.
He curseth all who upward glance
As lost to him.
Spring Greeting
© Sidney Lanier
From the German of Herder.All faintly through my soul to-day,
As from a bell that far away
Is tinkled by some frolic fay,
Floateth a lovely chiming.
Special Pleading
© Sidney Lanier
Time, hurry my Love to me:
Haste, haste! Lov'st not good company?
Here's but a heart-break sandy waste
'Twixt Now and Then. Why, killing haste
Were best, dear Time, for thee, for thee!
Souls And Rain-Drops
© Sidney Lanier
Light rain-drops fall and wrinkle the sea,
Then vanish, and die utterly.
One would not know that rain-drops fell
If the round sea-wrinkles did not tell.
Resurrection
© Sidney Lanier
Sometimes in morning sunlights by the river
Where in the early fall long grasses wave,
Light winds from over the moorland sink and shiver
And sigh as if just blown across a grave.
