Peace poems
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A Thrush Before Dawn
© Alice Meynell
A voice peals in this end of night
A phrase of notes resembling stars,
Single and spiritual notes of light.
What call they at my window-bars?
The South, the past, the day to be,
An ancient infelicity.
And So To-Day
© Carl Sandburg
And so to-day--they lay him away--
the boy nobody knows the name of--
the buck private--the unknown soldier--
the doughboy who dug under and died
when they told him to--that's him.
The Wild Geese
© Katharine Tynan
Wild geese fly overhead
In the wild Autumn weather.
Souls of the newly-dead
Crying and flying together.
Senex To His Friend
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
YOUR hair is scant, my friend, and mine is scanter,
On heads snowed white by Time, the disenchanter;
In place of joyous beams and jovial twinkles,
Behold, old boy, our faces scored with wrinkles!
The Truce And The Peace
© Robinson Jeffers
(NOVEMBER, 1918)
Peace now for every fury has had her day,
Hymn After The Emancipation Proclamation
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
GIVER of all that crowns our days,
With grateful hearts we sing thy praise;
Through deep and desert led by Thee,
Our promised land at last we see.
Improvement
© Edgar Albert Guest
The joy of life is living it, or so it seems to me;
In finding shackles on your wrists, then struggling till you're free;
Lycus the Centaur
© Thomas Hood
FROM AN UNROLLED MANUSCRIPT OF APOLLONIUS CURIUS
(The Argument: Lycus, detained by Circe in her magical dominion, is beloved by a Water Nymph, who, desiring to render him immortal, has recourse to the Sorceress. Circe gives her an incantation to pronounce, which should turn Lycus into a horse; but the horrible effect of the charm causing her to break off in the midst, he becomes a Centaur).
Solomon on the Vanity of the World, A Poem. In Three Books. - Power. Book III.
© Matthew Prior
Come then, my soul: I call thee by that name,
Thou busy thing, from whence I know I am;
For, knowing that I am, I know thou art,
Since that must needs exist which can impart:
But how thou camest to be, or whence thy spring,
For various of thee priests and poets sing.
Asoka
© Robert Laurence Binyon
I
Gentle as fine rain falling from the night,
The first beams from the Indian moon at full
Steal through the boughs, and brighter and more bright
Lepanto
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade. . .
Alaric In Italy
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Heard ye the Gothic trumpet's blast?
The march of hosts as Alaric passed?
The Hills
© Madison Julius Cawein
There is no joy of earth that thrills
My bosom like the far-off hills!
A Pastoral Entertainment
© James Thomson
While in heroic numbers some relate
The amazing turns of wise eternal fate;
Exploits of heroes in the dusty field,
That to their name immortal honour yield;
Widows
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
The world was widowed by the death of Christ:
Vainly its suffering soul for peace has sought
And found it not.
For nothing, nothing, nothing has sufficed
To bring back comfort to the stricken house
From whence has gone the Master and the Spouse.
Elegy On The Death Of Mr. Phillips
© Thomas Chatterton
No more I hail the morning's golden gleam,
No more the wonders of the view I sing;
Friendship requires a melancholy theme,
At her command the awful lyre I string!
To A Person Who Wrote Ill, And Spake Worse, Against Me
© Matthew Prior
Lie Philo untouch'd, on my peaceable shelf,
Nor take it amiss that so little I heed thee;
The Rosciad
© Charles Churchill
Unknowing and unknown, the hardy Muse
Boldly defies all mean and partial views;
With honest freedom plays the critic's part,
And praises, as she censures, from the heart.
