Strength poems
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The Stream's Secret
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
What thing unto mine ear
Wouldst thou convey,what secret thing,
O wandering water ever whispering?
Surely thy speech shall be of her.
Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,
What message dost thou bring?
"I loved you first: but afterwards your love"
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda. Dante
Ogni altra cosa, ogni pensier va fore,
Paradise Lost: Book X
© Patrick Kavanagh
So having said, he thus to Eve in few:
"Say, Woman, what is this which thou hast done?"
To whom sad Eve, with shame nigh overwhelm'd,
Confessing soon, yet not before her Judge
Bold or loquacious, thus abash'd replied,
"The Serpent me beguil'd, and I did eat."
Beowulf (modern English translation)
© Pierre Reverdy
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
I Sing the Body Electric
© Walt Whitman
1
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
Lincoln, Man of the People
© Edwin Markham
When the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour
Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,
You Ask Me, Why, Tho' Ill at Ease
© Alfred Tennyson
You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,
Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas.
Song of the Open Road
© Walt Whitman
1
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Lines to Accompany Flowers for Eve
© John Betjeman
who took heroin, then sleeping pills, and who lies in a New York hospital
The florist was told, cyclamen or azalea;
The Man Who Married Magdalene
© Louis Simpson
The man who married Magdalene
Had not forgiven her.
God might pardon every sin ...
Love is no pardoner.
The Columbiad: Book VIII
© Joel Barlow
On fame's high pinnacle their names shall shine,
Unending ages greet the group divine,
Whose holy hands our banners first unfurl'd,
And conquer'd freedom for the grateful world.
Paradise Regain'd: Book II (1671)
© Patrick Kavanagh
MEan while the new-baptiz'd, who yet remain'd
At Jordan with the Baptist, and had seen
The New Year. Rosh-Hashanah, 5643
© Emma Lazarus
Not while the snow-shroud round dead earth is rolled,
And naked branches point to frozen skies,-
When orchards burn their lamps of fiery gold,
The grape glows like a jewel, and the corn
A sea of beauty and abundance lies,
Then the new year is born.
The Dirge Of The Winds
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
The four winds of earth, the North, South, East, and West,
Shrieked and groaned, sobbed and wailed, like the soul of unrest.
Love's Nocturn
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Master of the murmuring courts
Where the shapes of sleep convene!—
Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Think not this paper comes with vain pretense
To move your pity, or to mourn th offense.
Letter To Sainte-Beuve
© Charles Baudelaire
On the old oak benches, more shiny and polished
than links of a chain that were, each day, burnished
rubbed by our human flesh, we, still un-bearded,
trailed our ennui, hunched, round-shouldered,
