Power poems
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To The Fates
© Friedrich Hölderlin
Grant me just one summer, powerful ones,
And just one autumn for ripe songs,
That my heart, filled with that sweet
Music, may more willingly die within me.
In spring and summer winds may blow
© Walter Savage Landor
In spring and summer winds may blow,
And rains fall after, hard and fast;
The tender leaves, if beaten low,
Shine but the more for shower and blast
The Prayer
© Mikhail Lermontov
When faints the heart for sorrow,
In life's hard, darkened hour,
My spirit breathes a wondrous prayer
Full of love's inward power.
Agatha
© Alfred Austin
SHE wanders in the April woods,
That glisten with the fallen shower;
She leans her face against the buds,
She stops, she stoops, she plucks a flower.
At His Grave
© Alfred Austin
LEAVE me a little while alone,
Here at his grave that still is strown
With crumbling flower and wreath;
The laughing rivulet leaps and falls,
The thrush exults, the cuckoo calls,
And he lies hushd beneath.
Song (Untitled #4)
© George Meredith
Two wedded lovers watched the rising moon,
That with her strange mysterious beauty glowing,
Over misty hills and waters flowing,
Crowned the long twilight loveliness of June:
And thus in me, and thus in me, they spake,
The solemn secret of fist love did wake.
Cassandra
© Hilda Doolittle
O Hymen king. Hymen, O Hymen king,
what bitter thing is this?
what shaft, tearing my heart?
what scar, what light, what fire
The Supreme Moment
© Charles Simic
The boot may be hesitating,
Demurring, having misgivings,
Gathering cobwebs,
Dew?
Yes, and apparently no.
Sestina
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
I saw my soul at rest upon a day
As a bird sleeping in the nest of night,
Among soft leaves that give the starlight way
To touch its wings but not its eyes with light;
So that it knew as one in visions may,
And knew not as men waking, of delight.
Transfiguration
© Louisa May Alcott
Mysterious death! who in a single hour
Life's gold can so refine
And by thy art divine
Change mortal weakness to immortal power!
An American in Europe
© Henry Van Dyke
'Tis fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings, -
But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things.
The Frost-King - Song II
© Louisa May Alcott
Brighter shone the golden shadows;
On the cool wind softly came
The low, sweet tones of happy flowers,
Singing little Violet's name.
Olney Hymn 20: Old Testament Gospel
© William Cowper
Israel in ancient days
Not only had a view
Of Sinai in a blaze,
But learn'd the Gospel too;
The types and figures were a glass,
In which thy saw a Saviour's face.
The Testament Of Cressida
© Robert Henryson
Ane doolie sessoun to ane cairful dyte
Suld correspond, and be equivalent.
Madge Linsey, Or The Three Souls
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
Then by Madge Linsey's side knelt he a little while,
"So of our wilful sins pay we the toll.
Even as she were I, had I but followed her.
But the Lord succoured me saving my soul."
"Philip My King."
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
Banned from earth's day--thine inward sight expands
Above the night-bound senses' birth or bars;
Lord of a larger realm, of subtler scope,
Where thou at last shalt press the lips of Hope,
And feel God's angel lift in radiant hands
Thy life from darkness to a place of stars!
The Columbiad: Book X
© Joel Barlow
From that mark'd stage of man we now behold,
More rapid strides his coming paths unfold;
His continents are traced, his islands found,
His well-taught sails on all his billows bound,
His varying wants their new discoveries ply,
And seek in earth's whole range their sure supply.
The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket
© Robert Lowell
(For Warren Winslow, Dead At Sea)
Let man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and
the fowls of the air and the beasts and the whole earth,
and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.
The Leader and the Bad Girl
© Henry Lawson
BECAUSE HE had sinned and suffered, because he loved the land,
And because of his wonderful sympathy, he held mens hearts in his hand.
Born and bred of the people, he knew their every whim,
And because he had struggled through poverty he could draw the poor to him:
Speaker and leader and poet, tall and handsome and strong,
With the eyes of a dog for faith and truth that blazed at the thought of a wrong.
