Life poems
/ page 707 of 844 /
The Deserted Palace
© Robert Laurence Binyon
``My feet are dead, the cold rain beats my face!''
``Courage, sweet love, this tempest is our friend!''
``Yet oh, shall we not rest a little space?
This city sleeps; some corner may defend
Senlin: His Dark Origins
© Conrad Aiken
He lights his pipe with a pointed flame.
'Yet, there were many autumns before I came,
And many springs. And more will come, long after
There is no horn for me, or song, or laughter.
The Birds by Linda Pastan: American Life in Poetry #86 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Linda Pastan, who lives in Maryland, is a master of the kind of water-clear writing that enables us to see into the depths. This is a poem about migrating birds, but also about how it feels to witness the passing of another year.
Nocturne Of Remembered Spring
© Conrad Aiken
I. Moonlight silvers the tops of trees,
Moonlight whitens the lilac shadowed wall
And through the evening fall,
Clearly, as if through enchanted seas,
The Last Blossom
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
THOUGH young no more, we still would dream
Of beauty's dear deluding wiles;
The leagues of life to graybeards seem
Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles.
Sonnet. "I cannot sleep for thinking of thy face"
© Frances Anne Kemble
I cannot sleep for thinking of thy face,
Which thrusts itself between the dark and me,
Improvisations: Light And Snow
© Conrad Aiken
How many times have I sat here,
How many times will I sit here again,
Thinking these same things over and over in solitude
As a child says over and over
The first word he has learned to say.
Life's Lesson Book
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Life is a ponderous lesson-book, and Fate
The teacher. When I came to love's fair leaf
My teacher turned the page and bade me wait.
"Learn first," she said, "love's grief";
And o'er and o'er through many a long tomorrow
She kept me conning that sad page of sorrow.
A Letter From Li Po
© Conrad Aiken
Fanfare of northwest wind, a bluejay wind
announces autumn, and the equinox
rolls back blue bays to a far afternoon.
Somewhere beyond the Gorge Li Po is gone,
One Hour Ater The Dance Of Death
© Franz Werfel
I lay in the abyss, where twisting squeezing
The lowest form of life pushed itself peristaltically.
Where slippery and slimy worm and eel entwined,
I was a worm myself, overwhelmed with exhaustion.
Sweethearts
© Dame Mary Gilmore
ITS gettin bits o posies,
N feelin mighty good;
A-thrillin cause she loves you,
An wondrin why she should;
Of The Dangers Attending Altruism On The High Seas.
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Observe these Pirates bold and gay,
That sail a gory sea:
Notice their bright expression:--
The handsome one is me.
The Works of God
© George Sandys
Great God! how manifold, how infinite
Are all Thy works! with what a clear foresight
Rules and visions
© Dimitris P. Kraniotis
Life counts
the rules;
the sunset, their exceptions.
Rain drinks up
The Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature
© Joseph Warton
Ye green-rob'd Dryads, oft' at dusky Eve
By wondering Shepherds seen, to Forests brown,
The Brewing Of Soma
© John Greenleaf Whittier
The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke
Up through the green wood curled;
"Bring honey from the hollow oak,
Bring milky sap," the brewers spoke,
In the childhood of the world.
To A Star
© Frances Anne Kemble
Thou little star, that in the purple clouds
Hang'st, like a dewdrop, in a violet bed;
Grandad And A Pramload Of Clocks
© John Lindley
Wheeling them in,
the yard gate at half-mast
with its ticking hinge,
the tin bucket with a hairnet of webs,
An Answer
© George Frederick Cameron
So, say:It must be good to die, my friend!
It must be good and more than good, I deem;
'Tis all the replication I may send
For deeper swimming seek a deeper stream.
