Time poems
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Sonnet CXXIII
© William Shakespeare
No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
They are but dressings of a former sight.
Sonnet CXX
© William Shakespeare
That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow which I then did feel
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel.
Sonnet CXVII
© William Shakespeare
Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
Forgot upon your dearest love to call,
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;
Sonnet CXVI
© William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
On Dante's Monument, 1818
© Giacomo Leopardi
Though all the nations now
Peace gathers under her white wings,
Sonnet CXV
© William Shakespeare
Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer:
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
"Most people have a way of making friends"
© Lesbia Harford
Most people have a way of making friends
That's very queer.
They don't choose whom they like, but anyone
In some way near.
Marginalia by Deborah Warren : American Life in Poetry #219 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
As we all know, getting older isn't hard to do. Time continues on. In this poem, Deborah Warren of Massachusetts asks us to think about the life lived between our past and present selves, as indicated in the marginal comments of an old book. There's something beautiful about books allowing us to talk to who we once were, and this poem captures this beauty.
Marginalia
Milton
© Robert Laurence Binyon
An Ode
Soul of England, dost thou sleep,
Lulled or dulled, thy mighty youth forgotten?
Of the world's wine hast thou drunk too deep?
Sonnet CVIII
© William Shakespeare
What's in the brain that ink may character
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love or thy dear merit?
Midnight Song of Wu
© Li Po
In Chang'an city is the disk of the moon,
The sound of pounding clothes in ten thousand households.
The autumn wind is blowing without cease,
All the time I think of Yuguan pass.
When will we pacify the pillaging Hu,
So my husband can end his long journey?
Sonnet CVII
© William Shakespeare
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
Sonnet CVI
© William Shakespeare
When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Lovely Mary Donnelly
© William Allingham
Oh, lovely Mary Donnelly, my joy, my only best
If fifty girls were round you, Id hardly see the rest;
Be what it may the time o day, the place be where it will
Sweet looks o Mary Donnelly, they bloom before me still.
Farewell to the Plague Spirit
© Mao Zedong
So many green and blue hills, but to what avail?
This tiny creature left Hua Tuo powerless!
Sonnet CIX
© William Shakespeare
O, never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from myself depart
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:
