Peace poems
/ page 176 of 319 /
Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
To the Swimmer
© Countee Cullen
Now as I watch you, strong of arm and endurance, battling and struggling
With the waves that rush against you, ever with invincible strength returning
Into my heart, grown each day more tranquil and peaceful, comes a fierce longing
Of mind and soul that will not be appeased until, like you, I breast yon deep and boundless expanse of blue.
Eclogue the Second: HASSAN; or, the Camel-driver.
© William Taylor Collins
Ah! little thought I of the blasting wind,
The thirst or pinching hunger that I find!
Bethink thee, Hassan, where shall thirst assuage,
When fails this cruise, his unrelenting rage?
Soon shall this scrip its precious load resign;
Then what but tears and hunger shall be thine?
The Stream's Secret
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
What thing unto mine ear
Wouldst thou convey,what secret thing,
O wandering water ever whispering?
Surely thy speech shall be of her.
Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,
What message dost thou bring?
Paradise Lost: Book X
© Patrick Kavanagh
So having said, he thus to Eve in few:
"Say, Woman, what is this which thou hast done?"
To whom sad Eve, with shame nigh overwhelm'd,
Confessing soon, yet not before her Judge
Bold or loquacious, thus abash'd replied,
"The Serpent me beguil'd, and I did eat."
Epigrams: On my First Son
© Benjamin Jonson
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Burning Island
© Gary Snyder
O Wave God who broke through me today
Sea Bream
massive pink and silver
cool swimming down with me watching
staying away from the spear
Making Peace
© Denise Levertov
A voice from the dark called out,
“The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.”
Upon the Hill and Grove at Bilbrough
© Andrew Marvell
TO THE LORD FAIRFAX
See how the archèd earth does here
Beowulf (modern English translation)
© Pierre Reverdy
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
Modern Love: XLVII
© George Meredith
Their sense is with their senses all mixed in,
Destroyed by subtleties these women are!
Amoretti LXXI: I joy to see how in your drawen work
© Edmund Spenser
I joy to see how in your drawen work,
Your selfe unto the Bee ye doe compare;
Pastoral Dialogue
© Anne Killigrew
Remember when you love, from that same hour
Your peace you put into your lover’s power;
On the Funeral of Charles the First at Night, in St. Georges Chapel, Windsor
© William Lisle Bowles
The castle clock had tolled midnight:
With mattock and with spade,
And silent, by the torches light,
His corse in earth we laid.
Chomei at Toyama
© Ted Hughes
Swirl sleeping in the waterfall!
On motionless pools scum appearing
disappearing!
Constantinople
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Greiv'd at a view which strikes vpon my Mind
The short liv'd Vanity of Human kind
In Gaudy Objects I indulge my Sight,
And turn where Eastern Pomp gives gay delight.
To J. S.
© Alfred Tennyson
The wind, that beats the mountain, blows
More softly round the open wold,
And gently comes the world to those
That are cast in gentle mould.
When the Frost is on the Punkin
© James Whitcomb Riley
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,
