Pet poems
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The Mirror
© Robert Laurence Binyon
I
Where is all the beauty that hath been?
Where the bloom?
Dust on boundless wind? Grass dropt into fire?
Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur
© Alfred Tennyson
That story which the bold Sir Bedivere,
First made and latest left of all the knights,
Told, when the man was no more than a voice
In the white winter of his age, to those
With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds.
Against Gregariousness
© Clive James
Facing the wind, the hovering stormy petrels
Tap-dance on the water.
They pluck the tuna hatchlings
As Pavlova, had she been in a tearing hurry,
Might once have picked up pearls
From a broken necklace.
Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock
© Washington Allston
1
I can support it no longer.
Laughing ruefully at myself
For all I claim to have suffered
I get up. Damned nightmarer!
Paradise Lost: Book IX (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
To whom the Virgin Majestie of Eve,
As one who loves, and some unkindness meets,
With sweet austeer composure thus reply'd,
Fæsulan Idyl
© Heather Fuller
She drew back
The boon she tendered, and then, finding not
The ribbon at her waist to fix it in,
Dropt it, as loth to drop it, on the rest.
Cassandra Southwick
© John Greenleaf Whittier
To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing rise today,
From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked the spoil away;
Yes, he who cooled the furnace around the faithful three,
And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set His handmaid free!
The Dream
© Caroline Norton
Ah! bless'd are they for whom 'mid all their pains
That faithful and unalter'd love remains;
Who, Life wreck'd round them,--hunted from their rest,--
And, by all else forsaken or distress'd,--
Claim, in one heart, their sanctuary and shrine--
As I, my Mother, claim'd my place in thine!
Elegy X
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Yet the dead youth must go on alone.
In silence the elder Lament brings him
as far as the gorge where it shimmers in the moonlight:
The Foutainhead of Joy. With reverance she names it,
saying: "In the world of mankind it is a life-bearing stream."
Tristram And Iseult
© Matthew Arnold
Tristram. Is she not come? The messenger was sure
Prop me upon the pillows once again
Raise me, my page! this cannot long endure.
Christ, what a night! how the sleet whips the pane!
What lights will those out to the northward be?
A la France
© Victor Marie Hugo
Personne pour toi. Tous sont d'accord. Celui-ci,
Nommé Gladstone, dit à tes bourreaux : merci !
Rain After A Vaudeville Show
© Stephen Vincent Benet
The last pose flickered, failed. The screen's dead white
Glared in a sudden flooding of harsh light
In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 105
© Alfred Tennyson
To-night ungather'd let us leave
This laurel, let this holly stand:
We live within the stranger's land,
And strangely falls our Christmas-eve.
