Smile poems
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Lines Written As A School Exercise At Hawkshead, Anno Aetatis 14
© William Wordsworth
"AND has the Sun his flaming chariot driven
Two hundred times around the ring of heaven,
Since Science first, with all her sacred train,
Beneath yon roof began her heavenly reign?
I Was Not False To Thee
© Caroline Norton
I WAS not false to thee, and yet
My cheek alone looked pale;
Niobe
© Robert Laurence Binyon
``Zeus, and ye Gods, that rule in heaven above,
Is there naught holy, or to your hard hearts dear?
Have ye forgotten utterly to love,
Or to be kind, in that untroubled sphere?
If aught ye cherish, still by that I pray,
Destroy the life that ye have cursed this day!
Idyll XIX. Love Stealing Honey
© Theocritus
Once thievish Love the honeyed hives would rob,
When a bee stung him: soon he felt a throb
Through all his finger-tips, and, wild with pain,
Blew on his hands and stamped and jumped in vain.
Gotham - Book I
© Charles Churchill
Far off (no matter whether east or west,
A real country, or one made in jest,
The Children
© Edgar Albert Guest
The children bring us laughter, and the children bring us tears;
They string our joys, like jewels bright, upon the thread of years;
They bring the bitterest cares we know, their mothers' sharpest pain,
Then smile our world to loveliness, like sunshine after rain.
Our Saviours Boyhood
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
With what a flood of wondrous thoughts
Each Christian breast must swell
When, wandering back through ages past,
With simple faith they dwell
On quiet Nazareths sacred sod,
Where the Child Saviours footsteps trod.
Sonnet L.
© Charlotte Turner Smith
FROM THE NOVEL OF CELESTINA.
FAREWELL, ye lawns!--by fond remembrance blest,
As witnesses of gay unclouded hours;
Where, to maternal friendships' bosom prest,
The Centennial Year
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
A Hundred years and she had sat, a queen
Sheltering her children, opening wide her gates
To all the inflowing tribes of earth. At first
Storms raged around her; but her stumbling feet
Intimations
© Madison Julius Cawein
Is it uneasy moonlight,
On the restless field, that stirs?
Or wild white meadow-blossoms
The night-wind bends and blurs?
The Borough. Letter XV: Inhabitants Of The Alms-House. Clelia
© George Crabbe
Another term is past; ten other years
In various trials, troubles, views, and fears:
Of these some pass'd in small attempts at trade;
Houses she kept for widowers lately made;
For now she said, "They'll miss th' endearing
Fairy Favours
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Wouldst thou wear the gift of immortal bloom?
Wouldst thou smile in scorn at the shadowy tomb?
Drink of this cup! it is richly fraught
With balm from the gardens of genii brought;
Drink, and the spoiler shall pass thee by,
When the young all scatter'd like rose-leaves lie.
Fragment
© Frances Anne Kemble
FROM AN EPISTLE WRITTEN WHEN THE THERMOMETER STOOD AT 98° IN THE SHADE.
The Making Of Friends
© Edgar Albert Guest
If nobody smiled and nobody cheered and nobody helped us along,
If each every minute looked after himself and good things all went to the
strong,
If nobody cared just a little for you, and nobody thought about me,
And we stood all alone to the battle of life, what a dreary old world it
would be!
Song Of A Tribe Of The Ancient Egyptians
© Rupert Brooke
(The Priests within the Temple)
She was wrinkled and huge and hideous? She was our Mother.
She was lustful and lewd?but a God; we had none other.
In the day She was hidden and dumb, but at nightfall moaned in the shade;
We shuddered and gave Her Her will in the darkness; we were afraid.
Scotch Drink
© Robert Burns
Let other poets raise a fracas
Bout vines, and wines, an drucken Bacchus,
An crabbit names an stories wrack us,
An grate our lug:
I sing the juice Scotch bear can mak us,
In glass or Jug.
Lycus the Centaur
© Thomas Hood
FROM AN UNROLLED MANUSCRIPT OF APOLLONIUS CURIUS
(The Argument: Lycus, detained by Circe in her magical dominion, is beloved by a Water Nymph, who, desiring to render him immortal, has recourse to the Sorceress. Circe gives her an incantation to pronounce, which should turn Lycus into a horse; but the horrible effect of the charm causing her to break off in the midst, he becomes a Centaur).
Solomon on the Vanity of the World, A Poem. In Three Books. - Power. Book III.
© Matthew Prior
Come then, my soul: I call thee by that name,
Thou busy thing, from whence I know I am;
For, knowing that I am, I know thou art,
Since that must needs exist which can impart:
But how thou camest to be, or whence thy spring,
For various of thee priests and poets sing.
Lepanto
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade. . .
