Strength poems
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To A Caged Lion
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Poor conquered monarch! though that haughty glance
Still speaks thy courage unsubdued by time,
And in the grandeur of thy sullen tread
Lives the proud spirit of thy burning clime;--
Fettered by things that shudder at thy roar,
Torn from thy pathless wilds to pace this narrow floor!
Sir Lark and King Sun
© George MacDonald
"Good morrow, my lord!" in the sky alone
Sang the lark as the sun ascended his throne.
"Shine on me, my lord: I only am come,
Of all your servants, to welcome you home!
I have shot straight up, a whole hour, I swear,
To catch the first gleam of your golden hair."
Paracelsus: Part IV: Paracelsus Aspires
© Robert Browning
Festus.
So strange
That I must hope, indeed, your messenger
Has mingled his own fancies with the words
Purporting to be yours.
An Elegy, To an Old Beauty
© Thomas Parnell
In vain, poor Nymph, to please our youthful sight
You sleep in cream and frontlets all the night,
Your face with patches soil, with paint repair,
Dress with gay gowns, and shade with foreign hair.
If truth in spight of manners must be told,
Why, really fifty-five is something old.
Alsace-Lorraine
© George Meredith
Yet the like aerial growths may chance be the delicate sprays,
Infant of Earth's most urgent in sap, her fierier zeal
For entry on Life's upper fields: and soul thus flourishing pays
The martyr's penance, mark for brutish in man to heel.
The Iron Horse
© James Whitcomb Riley
No song is mine of Arab steed--
My courser is of nobler blood,
And cleaner limb and fleeter speed,
And greater strength and hardihood
Than ever cantered wild and free
Across the plains of Araby.
Davideis: A Sacred Poem Of The Troubles Of David (excerpt)
© Abraham Cowley
BOOK I (excerpt)
I sing the man who Judah's sceptre bore
The Wind And The Whirlwind
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
I have a thing to say. But how to say it?
I have a cause to plead. But to what ears?
How shall I move a world by lamentation,
A world which heeded not a Nation's tears?
Italy : 36. The Nun
© Samuel Rogers
'Tis over; and her lovely cheek is now
On her hard pillow -- there, alas, to be
Nightly, through many and many a dreary hour,
Wan, often wet with tears, and (ere at length
Explanation Of An Ancient Woodcut
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Soon as the spring-sun meets his view,
Repose begets him labour anew;
He feels that he holds within his brain
A little world, that broods there amain,
And that begins to act and to live,
Which he to others would gladly give.
My Lovely One
© John Hall Wheelock
Even as a hawk's in the large heaven's hollow
Are the great ways and gracious of your love,
No lesser heart or wearier wing may follow
In those' broad gyres where you rest and move.
The Conversation Of Eiros And Charmion
© Edgar Allan Poe
Dreams are with us no more;but of these mysteries
anon. I rejoice to see you looking life-like and rational.
The film of the shadow has already passed from off your
eyes. Be of heart, and fear nothing. Your allotted days of
stupor have expired, and to-morrow I will myself induct you
into the full joys and wonders of your novel existence.
The Dark Lady Sonnets (127 - 154)
© William Shakespeare
CXXVII
In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now is black beauty's successive heir,
The Tower of the Dream
© Charles Harpur
But not thus always are our dreams benign;
Oft are they miscreationsgloomier worlds,
Crowded tempestuously with wrongs and fears,
More ghastly than the actual ever knew,
And rent with racking noises, such as should
Go thundering only through the wastes of hell.
