Nature poems
/ page 169 of 287 /Vespers ["Once I believed in you..."]
© Louise Gluck
Once I believed in you; I planted a fig tree.
Here, in Vermont, country
of no summer. It was a test: if the tree lived,
it would mean you existed.
The Fair Youth Sonnets (18 - 77, 87 - 126)
© William Shakespeare
Comprising the largest grouping of poems, the Fair Youth sonnets are addressed to the same young man in the Procreation Sonnets. But their themes and subjects are more drastically varied.
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The French Revolution as It Appeared to Enthusiasts at Its Commencement
© André Breton
Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
London By Lamplight
© George Meredith
There stands a singer in the street,
He has an audience motley and meet;
Above him lowers the London night,
And around the lamps are flaring bright.
To Mrs. Leonard on The Death of Her Husband
© Phillis Wheatley
GRIM Monarch! see depriv'd of vital breath,
A young Physician in the dust of death!
When I Am Asked
© Paul Eluard
When I am asked
how I began writing poems,
I talk about the indifference of nature.
A Winter Hymn
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
O WEARY winds! O winds that wail!
O'er desert fields and ice-locked rills!
O heavens that brood so cold and pale
Above the frozen Norland hills!
The Deserted Village
© Mark van Doren
Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheared the labouring swain,
To a Lady on the Death of Her Husband
© Phillis Wheatley
To join for ever on the hills of light:
To thine embrace this joyful spirit moves
To thee, the partner of his earthly loves;
He welcomes thee to pleasures more refin'd,
And better suited to th' immortal mind.
In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 55
© Alfred Tennyson
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?
Imaginary Suicides
© Kostas Karyotakis
They turn the key in the door, take out
their old, well-hidden letters,
read them quietly, then drag
their feet a final time.
The House-Top
© Herman Melville
No sleep. The sultriness pervades the air
And blinds the brain-a dense oppression, such
The Redbreast Chasing The Butterfly
© William Wordsworth
ART thou the bird whom Man loves best,
The pious bird with the scarlet breast,
Our little English Robin;
The bird that comes about our doors
H. S. Mauberley (Life and Contacts) [Part I]
© Ezra Pound
E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start i
The Rover's Apology
© William Schwenck Gilbert
Oh, gentlemen, listen, I pray;
Though I own that my heart has been ranging,
Paradise Lost: Book IV
© Patrick Kavanagh
"Which of those rebel Spirits adjudg'd to Hell
Com'st thou, escap'd thy prison? and, transform'd,
Why satt'st thou like an enemy in wait,
Here watching at the head of these that sleep?"
In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 124
© Alfred Tennyson
That which we dare invoke to bless;
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
He, They, One, All; within, without;
The Power in darkness whom we guess;
"Nature's the same as Rome, was reflected in it"
© Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
Nature's the same as Rome, was reflected in it.
We see images of its civic might
In the clear air, as in the sky-blue circus,
In the forum of fields, the colonnade of the grove.