Life poems
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Thar's More In the Man Than Thar Is In The Land
© Sidney Lanier
I knowed a man, which he lived in Jones,
Which Jones is a county of red hills and stones,
And he lived pretty much by gittin' of loans,
And his mules was nuthin' but skin and bones,
And his hogs was flat as his corn-bread pones,
And he had 'bout a thousand acres o' land.
The Shepherd's Tree
© John Clare
Huge elm, with rifted trunk all notched and scarred,
Like to a warrior's destiny! I love
To stretch me often on thy shadowed sward,
And hear the laugh of summer leaves above;
The Mores
© John Clare
Far spread the moorey ground a level scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green
That never felt the rage of blundering plough
Though centurys wreathed spring's blossoms on its brow
The Instinct Of Hope
© John Clare
Is there another world for this frail dust
To warm with life and be itself again?
Something about me daily speaks there must,
And why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?
The Flood
© John Clare
On Lolham Brigs in wild and lonely mood
I've seen the winter floods their gambols play
Through each old arch that trembled while I stood
Bent o'er its wall to watch the dashing spray
The Nightingale's Nest
© John Clare
Up this green woodland-ride let's softly rove,
And list the nightingale she dwells just here.
Hush ! let the wood-gate softly clap, for fear
The noise might drive her from her home of love ;
What Is Life?
© John Clare
And what is Life? An hour-glass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still-repeated dream.
Its length? A minute's pause, a moment's thought.
And Happiness? A bubble on the stream,
That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.
The Parisian Orgy
© Arthur Rimbaud
O cowards! There she is!
Pile out into the stations!
The sun with its fiery lungs blew clear
the boulevards that, one evening,
the Barbarians filled.
I Am
© John Clare
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows
My friends forsake me like a memory lost,
I am the self-consumer of my woes
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied, stifled throes
And yet I am, and livelike vapors tossed
Tiny Warrior
© Sharmagne Leland-St. John
You never saw the spring my love
Or the red tailed hawk circling high above
On feathered wings my love
You only knew the snow
Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken
© Henry Francis Lyte
Jesus, I my cross have taken, all to leave and follow Thee.
Destitute, despised, forsaken, Thou from hence my all shall be.
Perish every fond ambition, all Ive sought or hoped or known.
Yet how rich is my condition! God and heaven are still mine own.
Girl in Love
© Rainer Maria Rilke
That's my window. This minute
So gently did I alight
From sleep-was still floating in it.
Where has my life its limit
And where begins the night?
L. e. l.
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
'Whose heart was breaking for a little love.'
Downstairs I laugh, I sport and jest with all;
Exhortation: Summer 1919
© Claude McKay
Through the pregnant universe rumbles life's terrific thunder,
And Earth's bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break,
Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder:
Africa! long ages sleeping, O my motherland, awake!
Sonnet XXXV. Life And Death. 7.
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
THE wish behind the thought is the soul's star
Of faith, and out of earth we build our heaven.
Life to each unschooled child of time has given
A fairy wand with which he thinks to unbar
Within the Circuit of This Plodding Life
© Henry David Thoreau
Within the circuit of this plodding life
There enter moments of an azure hue,
A Wish
© Alexander Pushkin
The days drag on, each moment multiplies
Within my wounded heart the pain and sadness
Of an unhappy love and, dark, gives rise.
To sleepless dreams, the haunting dreams of madness
Enslaved
© Claude McKay
Oh when I think of my long-suffering race,
For weary centuries despised, oppressed,
Enslaved and lynched, denied a human place
In the great life line of the Christian West;
Bob's Lane
© Edward Thomas
Women he liked, did shovel-bearded Bob,
Old Farmer Hayward of the Heath, but he
Loved horses. He himself was like a cob
And leather-coloured. Also he loved a tree.
Toys
© Margaret Widdemer
SHE loves the flowers, the wind that bends the fir;
When the Spring comes she dances; and her mirth
