Peace poems
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Olney Hymn 48: Joy And Peace In Believing
© William Cowper
Sometimes a light surprises
The Christian while he sings;
A Dialogue between Old England and New
© Anne Bradstreet
New England. 1 Alas, dear Mother, fairest Queen and best,
2 With honour, wealth, and peace happy and blest,
3 What ails thee hang thy head, and cross thine arms,
4 And sit i' the dust to sigh these sad alarms?
Yussouf
© James Russell Lowell
A stranger came one night to Yussouf's tent,
Saying, 'Behold one outcast and in dread,
Against whose life the bow of power is bent,
Who flies, and hath not where to lay his head;
I come to thee for shelter and for food,
To Yussouf, called through all our tribes "The Good."
In The Lane
© Madison Julius Cawein
When the hornet hangs in the hollyhock,
And the brown bee drones i' the rose;
And the west is a red-streaked four-o'clock,
And summer is near its close-
It's oh, for the gate and the locust lane,
And dusk and dew and home again!
The Patriot Engineer
© George Meredith
'Sirs! may I shake your hands?
My countrymen, I see!
I've lived in foreign lands
Till England's Heaven to me.
A hearty shake will do me good,
And freshen up my sluggish blood.'
Saul And David
© Anthony Evan Hecht
It was a villainous spirit, snub-nosed, foul
Of breath, thick-taloned and malevolent,
That squatted within him wheresoever he went
.......And possessed the soul of Saul.
Three Island Songs
© Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
O, THE gray rocks of the islands and the hemlock green above them,
The foam beneath the wild rose bloom, the star above the shoal.
When I am old and weary I'll wake my heart to love them,
For the blue ways of the islands are wound about my soul.
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The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still
© Siegfried Sassoon
The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still
And I remember things I'd best forget.
I Was Sick And In Prison
© Jones Very
Thou hast not left the rough-barked tree to grow
Without a mate upon the river's bank;
A Promise. "In the dark, lonely night"
© Frances Anne Kemble
In the dark, lonely night,
When sleep and silence keep their watch o'er men;
The Sky Watcher
© William Wilfred Campbell
Black rolls the phantom chimney-smoke
Beneath the wintry moon;
Brother Jonathan's Lament for Sister Caroline
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
SHE has gone,- she has left us in passion and pride,-
Our stormy-browed sister, so long at our side!
She has torn her own star from our firmament's glow,
And turned on her brother the face of a foe!
Elegy IV. Anno Aet. 18. To My Tutor, Thomas Young, Chaplain Of The English Merchants Resident At Ham
© William Cowper
Hence, my epistle--skim the Deep--fly o'er
Yon smooth expanse to the Teutonic shore!
Scattering Flowers
© George Hitchcock
There is a dark tolling in the air,
an unbearable needle in the vein,
the horizon flaked with feathers of rust.
From the caves of drugged flowers
fireflies rise through the night:
they bear the sweet gospel of napalm.
Evening.
© Robert Crawford
The light is drawn out of the leaves and grass,
And the sweet flowers grow pale in the gray air,
As if their beauty's essence e'en did pass
With the departing light from all things fair,
Lines On Seeing Schiller's Skull.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[This curious imitation of the ternary metre
of Dante was written at the age of 77.]WITHIN a gloomy charnel-house one dayI view'd the countless skulls, so strangely mated,
And of old times I thought, that now were grey.Close pack'd they stand, that once so fiercely hated,
And hardy bones, that to the death contended,Are lying cross'd,--to lie for ever, fated.
My Sweetest Lesbia
© Thomas Campion
My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love,
And though the sager sort our deeds reprove,
Let us not weigh them. Heaven's great lamps do dive
Into their west, and straight again revive,
But soon as once set is our little light,
Then must we sleep one ever-during night.
Summer
© Samuel Johnson
O Phoebus! down the western sky,
Far hence diffuse thy burning ray,
Thy light to distant worlds supply,
And wake them to the cares of day.
The German Parnassus.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
With her modest pinions, see,
Philomel encircles me!
In these bushes, in yon grove,
Trilogy of Passion: II. ELEGY.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
WHAT hope of once more meeting is there now
In the still-closed blossoms of this day?
Both heaven and hell thrown open seest thou;
What wav'ring thoughts within the bosom play
No longer doubt! Descending from the sky,
She lifts thee in her arms to realms on high.
