Power poems
/ page 69 of 324 /
The Brus Book XVII
© John Barbour
[Only Berwick remains in English hands; a burgess offers to betray it]
The lordis off the land war fayne
London Types: Bus Driver
© William Ernest Henley
He's called The General from the brazen craft
And dash with which he sneaks a bit of road
The Storie Of William Canynge
© Thomas Chatterton
ANENT a brooklette as I laie reclynd,
Listeynge to heare the water glyde alonge,
Fragments from 'Genius Lost'
© Charles Harpur
Prelude
I SEE the boy-bard neath lifes morning skies,
While hopes bright cohorts guess not of defeat,
And ardour lightens from his earnest eyes,
And faiths cherubic wings around his being beat.
Tarantula, Or The Dance Of Death
© Anthony Evan Hecht
During the plague I came into my own.
It was a time of smoke-pots in the house
Against infection. The blind head of bone
Grinned its abuse
Lynching
© Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
Have you ever heard of lynching in the great United States?
'Tis an awful, awful story that the Negro man relates,
How the mobs the laws have trampled, both the human and divine,
In their killing helpless people as their cruel hearts incline.
The Rose
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
As late each flower that sweetest blows
I pluck'd, the Garden's pride!
Within the petals of a Rose
A sleeping Love I 'spied.
The Sage Enamoured And The Honest Lady
© George Meredith
Our world believes it stabler if the soft
Are whipped to show the face repentance wears.
Then hear it, in a moan of atheist gloom,
Deplore the weedy growth of hypocrites;
Count Nature devilish, and accept for doom
The chasm between our passions and our wits!
The Eve of St. John
© Sir Walter Scott
The baron of Smaylho'me rose with day,
He spurr'd his courser on,
Without stop or stay, down the rocky way,
That leads to Brotherstone.
The Witch of Wenham
© John Greenleaf Whittier
I.
Along Crane River's sunny slopes
Blew warm the winds of May,
And over Naumkeag's ancient oaks
The green outgrew the gray.
The Famous Speech-Maker Of England Or Baron (Alias Barren) Lovels Charge At The Assizes At Exon, Ap
© Jonathan Swift
From London to Exon,
By special direction,
Came down the world's wonder,
Sir Salathiel Blunder,
Laurance - [Part 3]
© Jean Ingelow
But when that other heard, "It is the end,"
His heart was sick, and he, as by a power
Far stronger than himself, was driven to her.
Reason rebelled against it, but his will
Required it of him with a craving strong
As life, and passionate though hopeless pain.
The Idumean Cantos 1-12
© Basilio Ponce de Leon
Along the bridge corpulence
In the form of great pigs
Hopping on pogo-sticks
Is headed for their own
Pilgrimage down Southward.
The Faithful Friend
© Caroline Norton
O, FRIEND! whose heart the grave doth shroud from human joy or woe,
Know'st thou who wanders by thy tomb, with footsteps sad and slow?
Know'st thou whose brow is dark with grief? whose eyes are dim with tears?
Whose restless soul is sinking with its agony of fears?
Whose hope hath fail'd, whose star hath sunk, whose firmest trust deceived,
Since, leaning on thy faithful breast, he loved and believed?
Autumnal
© Katharine Tynan
THE Autumn leaves are dying quietly,
Scarlet and orange, underfoot they lie;
They had their youth and prime
And now's the dying time;
Alas, alas, the young, the beloved, must die!
Don Juan: Canto The Seventh
© George Gordon Byron
O Love! O Glory! what are ye who fly
Around us ever, rarely to alight?
Ode I: The Remonstrance Of Shakespeare
© Mark Akenside
If, yet regardful of your native land,
Old Shakespeare's tongue you deign to understand,
Stonewall Jackson
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
THE fashions and the forms of men decay,
The seasons perish, the calm sunsets die,
Ne'er with the same bright pomp of cloud or ray
To flush the golden pathways of the sky;
The Angel In The House. Book I. Canto II.
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
IV A Distinction
The lack of lovely pride, in her
Who strives to please, my pleasure numbs,
And still the maid I most prefer
Whose care to please with pleasing comes.
