Smile poems
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The Pleasures of Hope: Part 1
© Thomas Campbell
At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering bills below,
Paradise Lost: Book XI (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
He added not, for Adam at the newes
Heart-strook with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discover'd soon the place of her retire.
Paradise Lost: Book IX
© Patrick Kavanagh
So gloz'd the Tempter, and his proem tun'd.
Into the heart of Eve his words made way,
Though at the voice much marvelling; at length,
Not unamaz'd, she thus in answer spake:
In Mine One Monument I Lye
© Richard Lovelace
In mine one monument I lye,
And in my self am buried;
Sure, the quick lightning of her eye
Melted my soul ith' scabberd dead;
And now like some pale ghost I walk,
And with another's spirit talk.
Aside
© Ishmael Reed
Mail-day, and over the world in a thousand drag-nets
The bundles of letters are dumped on the docks and beaches,
And all that is dear to the personal conscious reaches
Around us again like filings around iron magnets,
And war stands aside for an hour and looks at our faces
Of total absorption that seem to have lost their places.
The Usurper
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
FOR weeks the languid southern wind had blown,
Fraught with Floridian balm; thro' winter skies
We seemed to catch the smile of April's eyes;
A queenly waif, from her far temperate zone
Rules For The Road
© Edwin Markham
Stand straight:
Step firmly, throw your weight:
The heaven is high above your head,
The good gray road is faithful to your tread.
The Passing Show
© Ambrose Bierce
I
I know not if it was a dream. I viewed
A city where the restless multitude,
Between the eastern and the western deep
Had reared gigantic fabrics, strong and rude.
The Three Graves. A Fragment Of A Sexton's Tale
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The grapes upon the Vicar's wall
Were ripe as ripe could be;
And yellow leaves in sun and wind
Were falling from the tree.
The Peasant Girl Of The Rhone
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
There is but one place in the world:
Thither where he lies buried!
Anon
Red Stains
© Allen Tate
In a pyloned desert where the scorpion reigns
My love and I plucked poppies breathing tales
Home
© Edgar Albert Guest
It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home,
A heap o’ sun an’ shadder, an’ ye sometimes have t’ roam
Conscription Camp
© Ishmael Reed
Your landscape sickens with a dry disease
Even in May, Virginia, and your sweet pines
Like Frenchmen runted in a hundred wars
Are of a child’s height in these battlefields.
The Weepen Leady
© William Barnes
When, leäte o' nights, above the green
By thik wold house, the moon do sheen,
When Lydia Smiles
© Madison Julius Cawein
Ah, me! what were this world to me
Without her smile!--What poetry,
What glad hesperian paths I find
Of love, that lead my soul and mind
To happy hills of Arcady,
When Lydia smiles!
On Liberty and Slavery
© George Moses Horton
Alas! and am I born for this,
To wear this slavish chain?
Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil and pain!
City Without a Name
© Czeslaw Milosz
1
Who will honor the city without a name
If so many are dead and others pan gold
Or sell arms in faraway countries?
