Strength poems
/ page 185 of 186 /
The Goblet of Life
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Filled is Life's goblet to the brim;
And though my eyes with tears are dim,
I see its sparkling bubbles swim,
And chant a melancholy hymn
With solemn voice and slow.
The Wreck of the Hesperus
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.
Beyond Limitations
© Robert M. Hensel
Placing one foot in front of the other, I've climbed to higher lenghts
How Shall My Animal
© Dylan Thomas
How shall my animal
Whose wizard shape I trace in the cavernous skull,
Vessel of abscesses and exultation's shell,
Endure burial under the spelling wall,
I Dreamed My Genesis
© Dylan Thomas
I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep, breaking
Through the rotating shell, strong
As motor muscle on the drill, driving
Through vision and the girdered nerve.
You see I cannot see -- your lifetime
© Emily Dickinson
You see I cannot see -- your lifetime --
I must guess --
How many times it ache for me -- today -- Confess --
How many times for my far sake
Two Travellers perishing in Snow
© Emily Dickinson
Two Travellers perishing in Snow
The Forests as they froze
Together heard them strengthening
Each other with the words
They say that "Time assuages" --
© Emily Dickinson
They say that "Time assuages" --
Time never did assuage --
An actual suffering strengthens
As Sinews do, with age --
There is strength in proving that it can be borne
© Emily Dickinson
There is strength in proving that it can be borne
Although it tear --
What are the sinews of such cordage for
Except to bear
The ship might be of satin had it not to fight --
To walk on seas requires cedar Feet
A Word made Flesh is seldom
© Emily Dickinson
A Word made Flesh is seldom
And tremblingly partook
Nor then perhaps reported
But have I not mistook
Which misses most,
© Emily Dickinson
Which misses most,
The hand that tends,
Or heart so gently borne,
'Tis twice as heavy as it was
Because the hand is gone?
Savior! I've no one else to tell
© Emily Dickinson
Savior! I've no one else to tell --
And so I trouble thee.
I am the one forgot thee so --
Dost thou remember me?
Not to discover weakness is
© Emily Dickinson
Not to discover weakness is
The Artifice of strength --
Impregnability inheres
As much through Consciousness
I haven't told my garden yet
© Emily Dickinson
I haven't told my garden yet --
Lest that should conquer me.
I haven't quite the strength now
To break it to the Bee --
An Old Man
© Constantine Cavafy
At the back of the noisy café
bent over a table sits an old man;
a newspaper in front of him, without company.
Shema
© Primo Levi
You who live secure
In your warm houses
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:
Fire
© Dorothea Mackellar
This life that we call our own
Is neither strong nor free;
A flame in the wind of death,
It trembles ceaselessly.
Two Octaves
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
INot by the grief that stuns and overwhelms
All outward recognition of revealed
And righteous omnipresence are the days
Of most of us affrighted and diseased,
The Book of Annandale
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
IPartly to think, more to be left alone,
George Annandale said something to his friends
A word or two, brusque, but yet smoothed enough
To suit their funeral gazeand went upstairs;
Rembrandt to Rembrandt
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
(AMSTERDAM, 1645)
And there you are again, now as you are.
Observe yourself as you discern yourself
In your discredited ascendency;
