Patience poems
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In Celebration
© Mark Strand
You sit in a chair, touched by nothing, feeling
the old self become the older self, imagining
A Day on the Big Branch
© Howard Nemerov
Still half drunk, after a night at cards,
with the grey dawn taking us unaware
Immortality
© Matthew Arnold
Foil'd by our fellow-men, depress'd, outworn,
We leave the brutal world to take its way,
And, Patience! in another life, we say
The world shall be thrust down, and we up-borne.
At a Solemn Musick
© Delmore Schwartz
Let the musicians begin,
Let every instrument awaken and instruct us
In love’s willing river and love’s dear discipline:
We wait, silent, in consent and in the penance
Of patience, awaiting the serene exaltation
Which is the liberation and conclusion of expiation.
In the Naked Bed, in Plato’s Cave
© Delmore Schwartz
In the naked bed, in Plato’s cave,
Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall,
Old Paul and Old Tim
© William Schwenck Gilbert
When rival adorers come courting a maid,
There's something or other may often be said,
Why HE should be pitched upon rather than HIM.
This wasn't the case with Old PAUL and Old TIM.
Metamorphoses: Book The Thirteenth
© Ovid
The End of the Thirteenth Book.
Translated into English verse under the direction of
Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison,
William Congreve and other eminent hands
A Little Dog
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
"And why are you abusing God, and praising
With mock effacement
And false abasement
Your own heart's kindness, deeming it amazing
That you should do this duty for my sake,
Sirmione
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Give me your hand, Beloved! I cannot see;
So close from shadowy--branching tree to tree
Dark leaves hang over us. How vast and still
Night sleeps! and yet a murmur, a low thrill,
Four Riddles
© Lewis Carroll
I
There was an ancient City, stricken down
With a strange frenzy, and for many a day
They paced from morn to eve the crowded town,
And danced the night away.
Seaweed
© James Russell Lowell
Not always unimpeded can I pray,
Nor, pitying saint, thine intercession claim;
Too closely clings the burden of the day,
And all the mint and anise that I pay
But swells my debt and deepens my self-blame.
A Womans Sonnets: IX
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
The day draws nigh, methinks, when I could stay
Calm in thy presence with no dream of ill,
When, having put all earthliness away,
I could be near thee, touching thee, and still
The Spagnoletto. Act II
© Emma Lazarus
Ball in the Palace of DON JOHN. Dance. DON JOHN and MARIA
together. DON TOMMASO, ANNICCA. LORDS and LADIES, dancing or
promenading.
My Part
© Edgar Albert Guest
I may never be a hero, I am past the limit now,
There are pencil marks of silver Time has left upon my brow;
I shall win no service medals, I shall hear no cannons' roar,
I shall never fight a battle higher up than eagles soar,
But I hope my children's children may recall my name with pride
As a man who never whimpered when his soul was being tried.
Requiem
© George Meredith
Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless,
Where passion is silent and hearts never crave;
Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream,
In patience and peace thou art gone-to thy grave!
Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning,
Dead tho' a thousand hands stretch'd out to save.
Down-Hall. A Ballad.
© Matthew Prior
I sing not old Jason who travell'd through Greece
To kiss the fair maids and possess the rich fleece,
Nor sing I AEneas, who, led by his mother,
Got rid of one wife and went far for another.
Derry down, down, hey derry down.
Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D.
© Jonathan Swift
Dear honest Ned is in the gout,
Lies rack'd with pain, and you without:
How patiently you hear him groan!
How glad the case is not your own!
