Power poems
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The Principles of Concealment
© David Wagoner
If you’re caught in the open
In an exposed position, alone,
The Times
© Charles Churchill
The time hath been, a boyish, blushing time,
When modesty was scarcely held a crime;
To Shakespeare
© Frances Anne Kemble
Oft, when my lips I open to rehearse
Thy wondrous spell of wisdom, and of power,
The Legends Of The Rhine
© Francis Bret Harte
Beetling walls with ivy grown,
Frowning heights of mossy stone;
Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle upon the Restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the Estates and Honours of his Ancestors
© André Breton
High in the breathless Hall the Minstrel sate,
And Emont's murmur mingled with the Song.—
The words of ancient time I thus translate,
A festal strain that hath been silent long:—
Absolution
© Edith Nesbit
He stood beside her, young and strong, and swayed
With pity for the sorrow in her eyes--
Which, as she raised them to his own, conveyed
Into his soul a sort of sad surprise--
Shooting Star
© Wole Soyinka
1 In a concussion,
the mind severs the pain:
you don’t remember flying off a motorcycle,
and landing face first
in a cholla.
The Heretic In The Temple
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
Lone did I go within the ancient place,
With hushèd voice, and slow and reverent tread;
An Old Tale Re-Told
© Madison Julius Cawein
Well, the laughter of Yule was turned to tears
For them and for us. We saw the glare
Of torches that hurried from chamber to stair;
And we heard the castle re-echo her name,
But neither to them nor to us she came.
And that was the last of Clara of Clare.
Time to Come
© Walt Whitman
O, Death! a black and pierceless pall
Hangs round thee, and the future state;
No eye may see, no mind may grasp
That mystery of fate.
Sunflower Sutra
© Allen Ginsberg
I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery.
Book Of Proverbs
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
CALL on the present day and night for nought,
Save what by yesterday was brought.
Questions Of Life
© John Greenleaf Whittier
A bending staff I would not break,
A feeble faith I would not shake,
Nor even rashly pluck away
The error which some truth may stay,
Whose loss might leave the soul without
A shield against the shafts of doubt.
To the Noblest and Best of Ladies, the Countess of Denbigh
© Richard Crashaw
Persuading her to resolution in religion, and to
Render herself without further delay into the
Communion of the Catholic Church
Paradise Lost: Book XII (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
AS one who in his journey bates at Noone,
Though bent on speed, so heer the Archangel paus'd
Betwixt the world destroy'd and world restor'd,
If Adam aught perhaps might interpose;
Then with transition sweet new Speech resumes.
Venus' Advice To The Muses
© Matthew Prior
Thus to the Muses spoke the Cyprian Dame,
Adorn my altars, and revere my name.
from The Testament of Love
© John Hall Wheelock
from Book I, Introduction
Man’s Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense,
Guinevere
© Alfred Tennyson
`Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
