Life poems
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Oscar Of Alva: A Tale
© George Gordon Byron
How sweetly shines through azure skies,
The lamp of heaven on Lora's shore;
Where Alva's hoary turrets rise,
And hear the din of arms no more!
Pretence. Part I - Table-Talk
© John Kenyon
The youth, who long hath trod with trusting feet,
Starts from the flash which shows him life's deceit;
Then, with slow footstep, ponders, undeceived,
On all his heart, for many a year, believed;
But hence he eyes the world with sharpened view,
And learns, too soon, to separate false from true.
The Fallen Oak
© Giovanni Pascoli
Where its shade was, the oak itself now sprawls,
lifeless, no longer vying with the wind.
The people say: I see nowit was tall!
Remonstrance.
© Sidney Lanier
"Opinion, let me alone: I am not thine.
Prim Creed, with categoric point, forbear
God's Answer
© Roderic Quinn
BANNISTER, who lived for gain,
Counting love and mateship weak,
Bannister of Coolah Creek
Once, and once alone, 'tis said,
Lessons For A Child
© George MacDonald
If thou wouldst be like him, little one, go
And be kind with a kindness undefiled;
Who gives for the pleasure of thanks, my child,
God's gladness cannot know.
Amans Amare
© Daniel Henry Deniehy
A cottage small be mine, with porch
Enwreathed with ivy green,
And brightsome flowers with dew-filled bells,
Mid brown old wattles seen.
The Season
© Alfred Austin
So sings the river through the summer days,
And I, submissive, follow what I praise.
What if my boyish blood would rather stay
Where lawns invite, where bonnibels delay,
Though but a youth and not averse from these,
To conflict called, I abdicate my ease,
Gisli: The Chieftain
© Isabella Valancy Crawford
To the Goddess Lada prayed
Gisli, holding high his spear
Bound with buds of spring, and laughed
All his heart to Lada's ear.
Elegy On The Death Of Dr. Channing
© James Russell Lowell
I do not come to weep above thy pall,
And mourn the dying-out of noble powers,
The poet's clearer eye should see, in all
Earth's seeming woe, seed of immortal flowers.
She Gave Me A Rose
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
She gave a rose,
And I kissed it and pressed it.
I love her, she knows,
And my action confessed it.
She gave me a rose,
And I kissed it and pressed it.
Praise And Prayer
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
DOUBT spake no word in me as there I kneeled.
Loathing, I could not praise: I could not thank
Lethe.
© Robert Crawford
The waves of Lethe wash till we forget
Our earthy life and love; and 'twould appear
Before Time's tune possessed us, before we
Let fall the shadow of our meaning here
What's The Use
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
WHAT'S the use o' folks a-frownin'
When the way's a little rough?
Somewhere there is a simple life
© Anna Akhmatova
Somewhere there is a simple life and a world,
Transparent, warm and joyful. . .
There at evening a neighbor talks with a girl
Across the fence, and only the bees can hear
This most tender murmuring of all.
England And Spain
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Illustrious names! still, still united beam,
Be still the hero's boast, the poet's theme:
So when two radiant gems together shine,
And in one wreath their lucid light combine;
Each, as it sparkles with transcendant rays,
Adds to the lustre of its kindred blaze.
Marching by Jim Harrison: American Life in Poetry #51 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Walt Whitman's poems took in the world through a wide-angle lens, including nearly everything, but most later poets have focused much more narrowly. Here the poet and novelist Jim Harrison nods to Whitman with a sweeping, inclusive poem about the course of life.
Marching
Loves Autumn [To My Wife.]
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
I WOULD not lose a single silvery ray
Of those white locks which like a milky way
Streak the dusk midnight of thy raven hair;
