Pet poems
/ page 75 of 126 /
Aspromonte
© Alfred Austin
So you think he is defeated, O ye comfortably seated,
And that Victory is meted in your loaded huckster's scales?
O ye fools! though justice tarry, yet by heaven broad and starry,
Right, howe'er it may miscarry, ere the end arrive, prevails.
Killing Him: A Radio Play
© John Wesley
LISTEN TO THE RADIO PLAY
JOE, a doctoral candidate in literature
RACHEL, his fiancée
POET/CRITIC
The Child Of The Islands - Autumn
© Caroline Norton
I.
BROWN Autumn cometh, with her liberal hand
Binding the Harvest in a thousand sheaves:
A yellow glory brightens o'er the land,
My Lady Of Verne
© Madison Julius Cawein
It all comes back as the end draws near;
All comes back like a tale of old!
Shall I tell you all? Will you lend an ear?
You, with your face so stern and cold;
You, who have found me dying here ...
Imitations of Horace
© Alexander Pope
While you, great patron of mankind, sustain
The balanc'd world, and open all the main;
Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend,
At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
How shall the Muse, from such a monarch steal
An hour, and not defraud the public weal?
Peach Blooms
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
O! tenderly beautiful, beyond compare,
Flushed from pale pink to deepest rosebud hue--
Nurslings of tranquil sunshine and mild air,
Of shadowless dawn, and silvery twilight dew--
Ye blush and burn, as if your flickering grace
Were love's own tint on Spring's enamored face!
Jenny
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
It was a careless life I led
When rooms like this were scarce so strange
Not long ago. What breeds the change,
The many aims or the few years?
Because to-night it all appears
Something I do not know again.
Locksley Hall
© Alfred Tennyson
Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn:
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.
The Princess: Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
© Alfred Tennyson
Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font.
The firefly wakens; waken thou with me.
To The Dead in the Graveyard Underneath My Window
© Adelaide Crapsey
Written in A Moment of Exasperation
How can you lie so still? All day I watch
J'aime un petit enfant, et je suis un vieux fou.
© Victor Marie Hugo
Grandfather?
What?
I want to go away.
To go where?
Wherever I want.
Let us leave.
Blue Monday
© Diane Wakoski
Blue Monday. Monday at 3:00 and
Monday at 5. Monday at 7:30 and
Monday at 10:00. Monday passed under the rippling
California fountain. Monday alone
a shark in the cold blue waters.
The Garden Buddha by Peter Pereira: American Life in Poetry #132 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004
© Ted Kooser
Children at play give personalities to lifeless objects, and we don't need to give up that pleasure as we grow older. Poets are good at discerning life within what otherwise might seem lifeless. Here the poet Peter Pereira, a family physician in the Seattle area, contemplates a smiling statue, and in that moment of contemplation the smile is given by the statue to the man.
The Garden Buddha
Gift of a friend, the stone Buddha sits zazen,
prayer beads clutched in his chubby fingers.
Through snow, icy rain, the riot of spring flowers,
he gazes forward to the city in the distanceâalways
Sappho
© James Wright
The twilight falls; I soften the dusting feathers,
And clean again.
The house has lain and moldered for three days.
The windows smeared with rain, the curtains torn,
The mice come in,
The kitchen blown with cold.
The Wolfe New Ballad Of Jane Roney And Mary Brown
© William Makepeace Thackeray
An igstrawnary tail I vill tell you this veek
I stood in the Court of A'Beckett the Beak,
Vere Mrs. Jane Roney, a vidow, I see,
Who charged Mary Brown with a robbin of she.
LArt Des Transports De LAme
© André Marie de Chénier
L'art, des transports de l'âme est un faible interprète:
L'art ne fait que des vers; le coeur seul est poète.
On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet
© Henry James Pye
Condemned to Hope’s delusive mine,
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blasts, or slow decline,
Our social comforts drop away.
The Vision Of Piers Plowman - Part 15
© William Langland
Ac after my wakynge it was wonder longe
Er I koude kyndely knowe what was Dowel.
The Princess (part 4)
© Alfred Tennyson
But when we planted level feet, and dipt
Beneath the satin dome and entered in,
There leaning deep in broidered down we sank
Our elbows: on a tripod in the midst
A fragrant flame rose, and before us glowed
Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold.
