Power poems
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To The Indifferent Women
© Gilman Charlotte Anna Perkins
You who are happy in a thousand homes,Or overworked therein, to a dumb peace;Whose souls are wholly centered in the lifeOf that small group you personally love;Who told you that you need not know or careAbout the sin and sorrow of the world?
Do you believe the sorrow of the worldDoes not concern you in your little homes? --That you are licensed to avoid the careAnd toil for human progress, human peace,And the enlargement of our power of loveUntil it covers every field of life?
The one first duty of all human lifeIs to promote the progress of the worldIn righteousness, in wisdom, truth and love;And you ignore it, hidden in your homes,Content to keep them in uncertain peace,Content to leave all else without your care
By Bread Alone
© Gilbert Ruth
Love, love, I cannot live by bread aloneThe bread we break and eat monotonouslyUpon my lips turns back, turns back to stone.
Resurge
© William Gay
Come forth, O Man, from darkness into light,Renounce the dust, break through thy sordid bars,For ever leave the crawling shapes of Night,And move erect among thy native stars:No longer grovel in a foetid cellWhen all the spaces of the sky are thine,With Sloth and Want no more a beggar dwellWhen thou canst claim a heritage divine;Awake and live! nor dream the dreams of deathThat brood, fantastic, fearful, o'er thy grave,Thou art not of the stuff that perisheth,Nor unto Fate and Time art thou a slave;Thy power extends beyond the starry Pole,And worlds and suns revolve within thy soul
The Widow's Croone
© Galt John
And maun I lanely spin the tow, And ca' the weary wheel,For cauld they lie,--where do they lie, The winsome and the leil?
Sistrum
© Fuller Margaret
Triune, shaping, restless power,Life-flow from life's natal hour,No music chords are in thy sound;By some thou'rt but a rattle found;Yet, without thy ceaseless motion,To ice would turn their dead devotion
To Sir Toby,
© Philip Morin Freneau
." The motions of his spirit are black as night, ." And his affections dark as Erebus.." SHAKESPEARE.
Oak and Olive
© Flecker James Elroy
I And bred in Gloucestershire,I walked in Hellas years ago With friends in white attire:And I remember how my soul Drank wine as pure as fire.
The Petition for an Absolute Retreat
© Anne Finch - Countess of Winchilsea
(Inscribed to the Right Honourable Catharine Countess of Thanet, mentioned in the poem under the name of Arminda)
Two Bodies
© Annie Finch
Two bodies, balanced in mass and power,move in a bed through the dark,under the earliest human hour.A night rocks, like an ark.
The Puff-adder
© Fairbridge Kingsley
Here where the grey rhenoster clothes the hill, Drowsing beside a boulder in the sun,Slumbrous-inert, so gloomy and so still, On the warm steep where aimless sheep-paths run,A short thick length of chevron-pattern's skin, A wide flat head so lazy on the sand,Unblinking eyes that warn of power within, Lies he, -- the limbless terror of the land
To a Lady, Asking him how Long he would Love her
© Sir George Etherege
It is not, Celia, in our power To say how long our love will last;It may be we within this hour May lose those joys we now do taste:The blessed, that immortal be,From change in love are only free.
Ah, Silly Pug, wert thou so Sore Afraid
© Elizabeth I
Ah, silly Pug, wert thou so sore afraid?Mourn not, my Wat, nor be thou so dismayed
The Sleep of the Condor
© Toru Dutt
Beyond the steep ramparts of the high Cordilliferes,Beyond the dun fogs where the black eagle's eyrie's,Higher, far higher than the bold craters, like funnels,Whence springs out the lava from its deep boiling tunnels,With wings that hang down, jagged, red in some places,The condor looks silent o'er limitless spaces
Ode to the Cambro-Britons and their Harp, His Ballad of Agincourt
© Michael Drayton
Fair stood the wind for France,When we our sails advance;Nor now to prove our chance Longer will tarry;But putting to the main,At Caux, the mouth of Seine,With all his martial train Landed King Harry.
La Belle et la Bête
© Mark Doty
"My heart," he said, "is the heartof a beast." What could she dobut love him? First she must resist:the copper bowls gleaming on the rack
The Bracelet
© John Donne
Not that in colour it was like thy hair,For armlets of that thou mayst let me wear;Nor that thy hand is oft embrac'd and kiss'd,For so it had that good which oft I miss'd;Not for that seely old morality,That as those links are tied our love should be;Nor for the luck sake; but the bitter cost
Cooper's Hill (1655)
© Sir John Denham
Sure there are poets which did never dreamUpon Parnassus, nor did taste the streamOf Helicon, we therefore may supposeThose made not poets, but the poets those
Cooper's Hill (1642)
© Sir John Denham
Sure we have poets that did never dreamUpon Parnassus, nor did taste the streamOf Helicon, and therefore I supposeThose made not poets, but the poets those
