Time poems
/ page 496 of 792 /HMS Pinafore: Act I
© William Schwenck Gilbert
SCENE - Quarter-deck of H.M.S. Pinafore. Sailors, led by
Boatswain, discovered cleaning brasswork, splicing rope, etc.
The Golf Ball and the Loan
© Robert Fuller Murray
I drove a golf-ball into the air;
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
The Chapel of the Hermits
© John Greenleaf Whittier
"I do believe, and yet, in grief,
I pray for help to unbelief;
For needful strength aside to lay
The daily cumberings of my way.
Madame Of Dreams
© William Stanley Braithwaite
To John Russell Hayes
KNOW a household made of pure delight,
To The Rev. Mr. Newton : An Invitation Into The Country
© William Cowper
The swallows in their torpid state
Compose their useless wing,
And bees in hives as idly wait
The call of early spring.
Bell Birds
© Henry Kendall
By channels of coolness the echoes are calling,
And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling;
Within and Without: Part III: A Dramatic Poem
© George MacDonald
SCENE I.-Night. London. A large meanly furnished room; a single
candle on the table; a child asleep in a little crib. JULIAN
sits by the table, reading in a low voice out of a book. He looks
older, and his hair is lined with grey; his eyes look clearer.
Mazeppa
© George Gordon Byron
'Twas after dread Pultowa's day,
When fortune left the royal Swede--
Around a slaughtered army lay,
No more to combat and to bleed.
In Memory: James T. Fields
© John Greenleaf Whittier
As a guest who may not stay
Long and sad farewells to say
Glides with smiling face away,
Faute De Mieux
© Dorothy Parker
Travel, trouble, music, art,
A kiss, a frock, a rhyme-
I never said they feed my heart,
But still they pass my time.
Le Mauvais Moine (The Bad Monk)
© Charles Baudelaire
Les cloîtres anciens sur leurs grandes murailles
Etalaient en tableaux la sainte Vérité,
Dont l'effet réchauffant les pieuses entrailles,
Tempérait la froideur de leur austérité.
The Force Of Prayer, Or, The Founding Of Bolton, A Tradition
© William Wordsworth
"What is good for a bootless bene?"
With these dark words begins my Tale;
And their meaning is, whence can comfort spring
When Prayer is of no avail?
The Black Preacher: A Breton Legend
© James Russell Lowell
Something like this, then, my guide had to tell,
Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell;
But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench,
He talking his _patois_ and I English-French,
I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone,
In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own.
The Old-Time Family
© Edgar Albert Guest
It makes me smile to hear 'em tell each other nowadays
The burdens they are bearing, with a child or two to raise.
Of course the cost of living has gone soaring to the sky
And our kids are wearing garments that my parents couldn't buy.
Now my father wasn't wealthy, but I never heard him squeal
Because eight of us were sitting at the table every meal.
The Rock Of The Betrayed
© Caroline Norton
IT was a Highland chieftain's son
Gazed sadly from the hill:
And they saw him shrink from the autumn wind,
As its blast came keen and chill.
II.
Raleighs Cell In The Tower
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
HERE writ was the World's History by his hand
Whose steps knew all the earth; albeit his world
Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines)
© Pablo Neruda
Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.
Joe Golightly - Or, The First Lord's Daughter
© William Schwenck Gilbert
A tar, but poorly prized,
Long, shambling, and unsightly,
Thrashed, bullied, and despised,
Was wretched JOE GOLIGHTLY.
Phantasmagoria Canto VI ( Dyscomfyture )
© Lewis Carroll
As one who strives a hill to climb,
Who never climbed before:
Who finds it, in a little time,
Grow every moment less sublime,
And votes the thing a bore:
On Station Farewells
© Edgar Albert Guest
IN parting from a dear old friend for months, perhaps, or years,
There's bound to be some bitter sobs, an' generally tears,