Sad poems
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Town Eclogues: Monday; Roxana or the Drawing-Room
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
ROXANA from the court retiring late,
Sigh'd her soft sorrows at St. JAMES's gate:
Such heavy thoughts lay brooding in her breast,
Not her own chairmen wth more weight opprest;
They groan the cruel load they're doom'd to bear ;
She in these gentler sounds express'd her care.
Twilight
© Guillaume Apollinaire
Brushed by the shadows of the dead
On the grass where day expires
Columbine strips bare admires
her body in the pond instead
Erinna
© Sara Teasdale
They sent you in to say farewell to me,
No, do not shake your head; I see your eyes
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.
The Boy Enlists
© Edgar Albert Guest
His mother's eyes are saddened, and her cheeks
are stained with tears,
Rescue The Slave
© Anonymous
This song was composed while George Latimer, the fugitive slave, was
confined in Leverett Street Jail, Boston, expecting to be carried back
to Virginia by James B. Gray, his claimant.
Eclogue 10: Gallus
© Publius Vergilius Maro
This now, the very latest of my toils,
Vouchsafe me, Arethusa! needs must I
On The Way To Church
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
There is one I know. I see her sometimes pass
In the morning streets upon her way to Mass,
A calm sweet woman with unearthly eyes.
Men turn to look at her, but ever stop,
Reading in those blue depths the death of hope
And a wise chastisement for thoughts unwise.
The Child's Funeral
© William Cullen Bryant
Fair is thy site, Sorrento, green thy shore,
Black crags behind thee pierce the clear blue skies;
The sea, whose borderers ruled the world of yore,
As clear and bluer still before thee lies.
Venus And Adonis
© William Shakespeare
TO THE
RIGHT HONORABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY,
EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, AND BARON OF TICHFIELD.
RIGHT HONORABLE,
Sonnet: On Being Cautioned Against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic
© Charlotte Turner Smith
Is there a solitary wretch who hies
To the tall cliff, with starting pace or slow,
The Pleasures of Hope: Part 1
© Thomas Campbell
At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering bills below,
Let Us Consider
© Russell Edson
Let us consider the farmer who makes his straw hat his
sweetheart; or the old woman who makes a floor lamp her son;
or the young woman who has set herself the task of scraping
her shadow off a wall....
Travel Papers
© Carolyn Forche
Au silence de celle qui laisse rêveur.
—René Char
By boat to Seurasaari where
the small fish were called vendace.
A man blew a horn of birchwood
toward the nightless sea.
Poems
© Anselm Hollo
i
thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger. I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter; I forgot that there abides the old in the new, and that there also thou abidest.
Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my endless life who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar. When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of the One in the play of the many.
ii
Answered
© Madison Julius Cawein
Do you remember how that night drew on?
That night of sorrow, when the stars looked wan
Resolution and Independence
© André Breton
There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
