Peace poems
/ page 254 of 319 /
The Old Issue
© Rudyard Kipling
Here is nothing new nor aught unproven," say the Trumpets,
"Many feet have worn it and the road is old indeed.
"It is the King--the King we schooled aforetime! "
(Trumpets in the marshes-in the eyot at Runnymede!)
La Nuit Blanche
© Rudyard Kipling
A much-discerning Public hold
The Singer generally sings
And prints and sells his past for gold.
A Nativity
© Rudyard Kipling
1914-18
The Babe was laid in the Manger
Between the gentle kine --
All safe from cold and danger --
A Womans Sonnets: V
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Whate'er the cost to me, with this farewell,
I shall not see thee, speak to thee again.
If some on Earth must feel the pangs of Hell,
Mine only be it who have earned my pain.
The True Beatitude (Bouts-Rimes)
© Rupert Brooke
New sulphur on the sin-incarnadined . . .
Ah, Love! still temporal, and still atmospheric,
Teleologically unperturbed,
We share a peace by no divine divined,
An earthly garden hidden from any cleric,
Untrodden of God, by no Eternal curbed.
Written At Trenton Falls
© Frances Anne Kemble
O God! how full of happiness I stood!
Looking into the eyes that were my day,
And felt my soul, borne like that rushing flood,
In eddying tumults of delight away.
The Paradox
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
I am the mother of sorrows,
I am the ender of grief;
I am the bud and the blossom,
I am the late-falling leaf.
Parables
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
WE clutch our joys as children do their flowers;
We look at them, but scarce believe them ours,
Till our hot palms have smirched their colors rare
And crushed their dewy beauty unaware.
The Legend of Mirth
© Rudyard Kipling
The Four Archangels, so the legends tell,
Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, Azrael,
Being first of those to whom the Power was shown
Stood first of all the Host before The Throne,
Justice
© Rudyard Kipling
October, 1918
Across a world where all men grieve
And grieving strive the more,
The great days range like tides and leave
Jubal and Tubal Cain
© Rudyard Kipling
Canadian
Jubal sang of the Wrath of God
And the curse of thistle and thorn--
But Tubal got him a pointed rod,
In the Matter of One Compass
© Rudyard Kipling
Oh, drunken Wave! Oh, driving Cloud!
Rage of the Deep and sterile Rain,
By love upheld, by God allowed,
We go, but we return again!
The Pro-Consuls
© Rudyard Kipling
They that dig foundations deep,
Fit for realms to rise upon,
Little honour do they reap
Of their generation,
Any more than mountains gain
Stature till we reach the plain.
An Imperial Rescript
© Rudyard Kipling
Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser decreed,
To ease the strong of their burden, to help the weak in their need,
He sent a word to the peoples, who struggle, and pant, and sweat,
That the straw might be counted fairly and the tally of bricks be set.
A Poem On The Last Day - Book III
© Edward Young
Each gesture mourns, each look is black with care,
And every groan is loaden with despair.
Reader, if guilty, spare the Muse, and find
A truer image pictured in thy mind.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
© Rudyard Kipling
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
'eering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
At The Executed Murderer's Grave
© James Wright
6.
Staring politely, they will not mark my face
From any murderer's, buried in this place.
Why should they? We are nothing but a man.
Snow Maiden
© Alexander Blok
She hailed from a very distant country,
Nocturnal child of ancient times;
She had no kin to greet her entry
Not even skies with a welcome shine.
