Power poems
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Merops
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
What care I, so they stand the same,
Things of the heavenly mind,
How long the power to give them fame
Tarries yet behind?
Musketaquid
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Because I was content with these poor fields,
Low open meads, slender and sluggish streams,
And found a home in haunts which others scorned,
The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,
Monadnoc
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
I heard and I obeyed,
Assured that he who pressed the claim,
Well-known, but loving not a name,
Was not to be gainsaid.
Threnody
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
The south-wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire,
Saadi
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trees in groves,
Kine in droves,
In ocean sport the scaly herds,
Wedge-like cleave the air the birds,
The Rhodora
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
On being asked, Whence is the flower?In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The Problem
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles;
Yet not for all his faith can see,
Would I that cowled churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?
Initial Love
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
He palmistry can understand,
Imbibing virtue by his hand
As if it were a living root;
The pulse of hands will make him mute;
With all his force he gathers balms
Into those wise thrilling palms.
Ode To Beauty
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Who gave thee, O Beauty!
The keys of this breast,
Too credulous lover
Of blest and unblest?
Two Rivers
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
I see the inundation sweet,
I hear the spending of the steam
Through years, through men, through Nature fleet,
Through love and thought, through power and dream.
Celestial Love
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Higher far,
Upward, into the pure realm,
Over sun or star,
Over the flickering Dæmon film,
Overnight at the Riverside Tower
© Tu Fu
Evening colors linger on mountain paths.
Out beyond this study perched over River Gate,
At the cliff's edge, frail clouds stay
All night. Among waves, a lone, shuddering
Ballad of the Old Cypress
© Tu Fu
In front of the temple of Chu-ko Liang there is an old cypress. Its branches
are like green bronze; its roots like rocks; around its great girth of forty
spans its rimy bark withstands the washing of the rain. Its jet-colored top
rises two thousand feet to greet the sky. Prince and statesman have long since
The New Poetry Handbook
© Mark Strand
21 If a man finishes a poem,
he shall bathe in the blank wake of his passion
and be kissed by white paper.
The Quest Eternal
© Andrew Barton Paterson
In the march of the boys through Palestine when the noontide fervour glowed,
Over the desert in thirsty line our sunburnt squadrons rode.
They looked at the desert lone and drear, stone ridges and stunted scrub,
And said, "We should have had Ginger here, I bet he'd have found a pub!"
The Hypnotist
© Andrew Barton Paterson
With dragging footsteps and downcast head
The hypnotiser went home to bed,
And since that very successful test
He has given the magic art a rest;
Had he tried the ladies, and worked it right,
What curious tales might have come to light!
The Seven Ages of Wise
© Andrew Barton Paterson
The next the Student,
Burning the midnight oil with Adam Smith
For Cobden Medals.
Song of the Artesian Water
© Andrew Barton Paterson
Now the stock have started dying, for the Lord has sent a drought;
But we're sick of prayers and Providence -- we're going to do without;
With the derricks up above us and the solid earth below,
We are waiting at the lever for the word to let her go.
The Ballad of the Calliope
© Andrew Barton Paterson
When the gentle off-shore breeze,
That had scarcely stirred the trees,
Dropped down to utter stillness, and the glass began to fall,
Away across the main
Lowered the coming hurricane,
And far away to seaward hung the cloud-wrack like a pall.
The Deficit Demon
© Andrew Barton Paterson
One day as Dibbs bragged of his prowess in daylight the Deficit met him,
Settled his hash in one act and made him to all man a byword,
Sent hin, a raving ex-Premier, to dwell in the shades of oblivion,
And the people put forward a champion known as Sir Patrick the Portly.
