Power poems
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To Dora
© William Wordsworth
"'A little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on!'"
--What trick of memory to 'my' voice hath brought
This mournful iteration? For though Time,
Aechdeacon Barbour
© John Greenleaf Whittier
THROUGH the long hall the shuttered windows shed
A dubious light on every upturned head;
On locks like those of Absalom the fair,
On the bald apex ringed with scanty hair,
Mycerinus
© Matthew Arnold
'Not by the justice that my father spurn'd,
Not for the thousands whom my father slew,
Altars unfed and temples overturn'd,
Cold hearts and thankless tongues, where thanks are due;
Fell this dread voice from lips that cannot lie,
Stern sentence of the Powers of Destiny.
The Dead Democrat
© George Essex Evans
Her yoke is heavy to be borne,
Her bitter paths are choked with thorn,
But glorious shines, through mist and haze,
The splendour of her coming days.
Our loftiest tribute shall be then,
He served his fellow-men.
Obermann Once More
© Matthew Arnold
Glion?--Ah, twenty years, it cuts
All meaning from a name!
White houses prank where once were huts.
Glion, but not the same!
Progress
© Matthew Arnold
The Master stood upon the mount, and taught.
He saw a fire in his disciples eyes;
The old law, they said, is wholly come to naught!
Behold the new world rise!
To Milton
© Oscar Wilde
By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,
Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land
Which bare a triple empire in her hand
When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!
David
© Charles Lamb
It is not always to the strong
Victorious battle shall belong.
This found Goliath huge and tall:
Mightiest giant of them all,
Who in the proud Philistian host
Defiëd Israel with boast.
Thyrsis, a Monody
© Matthew Arnold
How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,
Self-Dependence
© Matthew Arnold
Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.
Memorials Of A Tour In Scotland 1814 I. Suggested By A Beautiful Ruin Upon One Of The Islands Of Lo
© William Wordsworth
A PLACE CHOSEN FOR THE RETREAT OF A SOLITARY INDIVIDUAL, FROM WHOM THIS HABITATION ACQUIRED THE NAME OF THE BROWNIE'S CELL
I
To barren heath, bleak moor, and quaking fen,
Or depth of labyrinthine glen;
The Buried Life
© Matthew Arnold
Ah! well for us, if even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
Our heart, and have our lips unchain'd;
For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain'd!
Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse
© Matthew Arnold
Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountain-side.
Memorial Verses
© Matthew Arnold
Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.
But one such death remain'd to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb--
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.
The Scholar Gypsy
© Matthew Arnold
But, 'mid their drink and clatter, he would fly.
And I myself seem half to know thy looks,
And put the shepherds, wanderer! on thy trace;
And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks
I ask if thou hast passed their quiet place;
The Song-God.
© Robert Crawford
The Song-god helps me mightily, and runs
Before life's purpose like a primal power,
Spirit in sense of all that I am still;
Whose flame burns in the heart, consuming there
Dedication
© Rudyard Kipling
The Cities are full of pride,
Challenging each to each -
This from her mountain-side,
That from her burthened beach.
Thirty-nine
© Eugene Field
O hapless day! O wretched day!
I hoped you'd pass me by--
Alas, the years have sneaked away
And all is changed but I!
The Columbiad: Book VII
© Joel Barlow
He spoke; his moving armies veil'd the plain,
His fleets rode bounding on the western main;
O'er lands and seas the loud applauses rung,
And war and union dwelt on every tongue.
