Life poems
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On My Wife's Birth-Day
© Christopher Smart
'Tis Nancy's birth-day--raise your strains,
Ye nymphs of the Parnassian plains,
And sing with more than usual glee
To Nancy, who was born for me.
What God is like to him I serve
© Anne Bradstreet
What God is like to him I serve,
What Saviour like to mine?
A Song To David
© Christopher Smart
I
O THOU, that sit'st upon a throne,
With harp of high majestic tone,
To praise the King of kings;
Sonnet
© Charles Lamb
The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed,
And 'gins to sprinkle on the earth below
The Copper Beech by Marie Howe: American Life in Poetry #66 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Some of the most telling poetry being written in our country today has to do with the smallest and briefest of pleasures. Here Marie Howe of New York captures a magical moment: sitting in the shelter of a leafy tree with the rain falling all around.
The Copper Beech
The Wanderer: A Vision: Canto I
© Richard Savage
The solar fires now faint and wat'ry burn,
Just where with ice Aquarius frets his urn!
If thaw'd, forth issue, from its mouth severe,
Raw clouds, that sadden all th' inverted year.
Hudibras: Part 2 - Canto III
© Samuel Butler
Doubtless the pleasure is as great
Of being cheated as to cheat;
As lookers-on feel most delight,
That least perceive a jugler's slight;
And still the less they understand,
The more th' admire his slight of hand.
On Church Communion - Part II.
© John Byrom
If once establish'd the essential part,
The inward Church, the Temple of the Heart,
Or house of God, the substance, and the sum
Of what is pray'd for in - thy kingdom come;
To make an outward correspondence true,
We must recur to Christ's example too.
An old life
© Donald Hall
Snow fell in the night.
At five-fifteen I woke to a bluish
mounded softness where
the Honda was. Cat fed and coffee made,
Visions for the Entertainment and Instruction of Younger Minds: Happiness
© Nathaniel Cotton
Ye ductile youths, whose rising sun
Hath many circles still to run;
The Ambush
© Nimah Nawwab
He watched the old movie unfold,
The head-covered man bashing his van into a building,
Nodding his head: Yes another one, they are terrorists,
The calm way he uttered those words
The look in his young eyes,
Made me ache.
"Cease smilng, Dear! a little while be sad "
© Ernest Christopher Dowson
Cease smiling, Dear! a little while be sad,
Here in the silence, under the wan moon;
Sweet are thine eyes, but how can I be glad,
Knowing they change so soon?
On The Death Of President Garfield
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
I SEE the Nation, as in antique ages,
Crouched with rent robes, and ashes on her head:
Her mournful eyes are deep with dark presages,
Her soul is haunted by a formless dread!
Objector
© William Stafford
I bow and cross my fork and spoon: somewhere
other citizens more fearfully bow
in a place terrorized by their kind of oppressive state.
Our signs both mean, "You hostages over there
will never be slaughtered by my act." Our vows
cross: never to kill and call it fate.
Upon The Pismire
© John Bunyan
Must we unto the pismire go to school,
To learn of her in summer to provide
The Voices
© John Greenleaf Whittier
"WHY urge the long, unequal fight,
Since Truth has fallen in the street,
Or lift anew the trampled light,
Quenched by the heedless million's feet?
Remembering Mountain Men
© William Stafford
I put my foot in cold water
and hold it there: early mornings
they had to wade through broken ice
to find the traps in the deep channel
This Life
© William Stafford
We would climb the highest dune,
from there to gaze and come down:
the ocean was performing;
we contributed our climb.
Returned To Say
© William Stafford
When I face north a lost Cree
on some new shore puts a moccasin down,
rock in the light and noon for seeing,
he in a hurry and I beside him
