Power poems
/ page 148 of 324 /
The Fan : A Poem. Book II.
© John Gay
But see, fair Venus comes in all her state;
The wanton Loves and Graces round her wait;
With her loose robe officious Zephyrs play,
And strow with odoriferous flowers the way.
In her right hand she waves the fluttering fan,
And thus in melting sounds her speech began.
Critics Nightwatch
© Gwen Harwood
Once more he tried, before he slept,
to rule his ranks of words. They broke
from his planned choir, lolled, slouched and kept
their tone, their pitch, their meaning crude;
huddled in cliches; when pursued
turned with mock elegance to croak
Enceladus
© Alfred Noyes
And hungered, yet no comrade of the wolf,
And cold, but with no power upon the sun,
A master of this world that mastered him!
Between The Gates
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Between the gates of birth and death
An old and saintly pilgrim passed,
With look of one who witnesseth
The long-sought goal at last.
The Power Of God
© John Crowe Ransom
But my pity would plague me still! In the fare of my state
I would summon my ministers often to reprobate:
Sonnet LIX: Unhappy Pen
© Samuel Daniel
Unhappy pen and ill-accepted papers,
That intimate in vain my chaste desires,
The Australian Bell-Bird
© Jean Ingelow
And 'Oyez, Oyez' following after me
On my great errand to the sundown went.
Lost, lost, and lost, whenas the cross road flee
Up tumbled hills, on each for eyes attent
A carriage creepeth.
The Christian Tourists
© John Greenleaf Whittier
No aimless wanderers, by the fiend Unrest
Goaded from shore to shore;
No schoolmen, turning, in their classic quest,
The leaves of empire o'er.
Epistle To A Friend, In Answer To Some Lines Exhorting The Author To Be Cheerful, And To Banish Care
© George Gordon Byron
'OH! banish care'--such ever be
The motto of thy revelry!
Perchance of mine, when wassail nights
Renew those riotous delights,
Charms of Precedence - A Tale
© William Shenstone
"Sir, will you please to walk before?"-
"No, pray, Sir-you are next the door."-
Sun-Dial, In The Churchyard Of Bremhill
© William Lisle Bowles
So passes silent o'er the dead thy shade,
Brief Time; and hour by hour, and day by day,
The pleasing pictures of the present fade,
And like a summer vapour steal away!
'Snapdragon' a Riddle for a Flower Book
© John Henry Newman
I am rooted in the wall
Of buttress'd tower or ancient hall;
Prison'd in an art-wrought bed.
Cased in mortar, cramp'd with lead;
Of a living stock alone
Brother of the lifeless stone.
Loves Caprices
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
COME, sweetheart, hear me! I have loved thee well,
God knoweth. Through all these years my holiest thoughts,
Like those pure doves nurtured in antique temples,
Have fluttered ever round thine image fair,
Sonnet VIII
© Caroline Norton
TO MY BOOKS.
SILENT companions of the lonely hour,
Friends, who can never alter or forsake,
Who for inconstant roving have no power,
Seen in a Glass
© Kathleen Raine
Behind the tree, behind the house, behind the stars
In the presence that I cannot see
Otherwise than as house and stars and tree.
To Pennsylvania
© John Greenleaf Whittier
O STATE prayer-founded! never hung
Such choice upon a people's tongue,
Such power to bless or ban,
As that which makes thy whisper Fate,
The Borough. Letter III: The Vicar--The Curate
© George Crabbe
THE VICAR.
WHERE ends our chancel in a vaulted space,
Fireflies
© Rabindranath Tagore
My fancies are fireflies,
Specks of living light
twinkling in the dark.
