Trust poems
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The True Knowledge
© Oscar Wilde
Thou knowest all; I seek in vain
What lands to till or sow with seed -
The land is black with briar and weed,
Nor cares for falling tears or rain.
On Angels
© Czeslaw Milosz
All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers.
Fit the Sixth ( Hunting of the Snark )
© Lewis Carroll
He dreamed that he stood in a shadowy Court,
Where the Snark, with a glass in its eye,
Dressed in gown, bands, and wig, was defending a pig
On the charge of deserting its sty.
Fit the Second ( Hunting of the Snark )
© Lewis Carroll
"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
"They are merely conventional signs!
A Valentine
© Lewis Carroll
And cannot pleasures, while they last,
Be actual unless, when past,
They leave us shuddering and aghast,
With anguish smarting?
And cannot friends be firm and fast,
And yet bear parting?
Dismantling the House
© Stephen Dunn
Rent a flatbed with a winch.
With the right leverage
anything can be hoisted, driven off.
The Temper (I)
© George Herbert
How should I praise thee, Lord! How should my rhymes
Gladly engrave thy love in steel,
If what my soul doth feel sometimes,
My soul might ever feel!
The Death of Lincoln
© William Cullen Bryant
Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare,
Gentle and merciful and just!
from The Seasons: Spring
© James Thomson
As rising from the vegetable World
My Theme ascends, with equal Wing ascend,
In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 118
© Alfred Tennyson
Contemplate all this work of Time,
The giant labouring in his youth;
Nor dream of human love and truth,
As dying Nature's earth and lime;
The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue
© Geoffrey Chaucer
But for to tellen yow of his array,
His hors weren goode, but he was nat gay;
Of fustian he wered a gypon
Al bismótered with his habergeon;
For he was late y-come from his viage,
And wente for to doon his pilgrymage.
The Lover: A Ballad
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
At length, by so much importunity press'd,
Take, C, at once, the inside of my breast;
from The Seasons: Winter
© James Thomson
Father of light and life! thou Good Supreme!
O teach me what is good! teach me Thyself!
Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,
From every low pursuit; and feed my soul
With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure,
Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!
To Ben Jonson
© Thomas Carew
'Tis true, dear Ben, thy just chastising hand
Hath fix'd upon the sotted age a brand
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
© André Breton
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
To Kathleen, after Neruda
© Craig Erick Chaffin
your hips formed in India, your face
barely imagined by Da Vinci.
Your eyes threaten green lightning
from the Atlantic. You could crush me
A Complaint
© André Breton
There is a change—and I am poor;
Your love hath been, nor long ago,
A fountain at my fond heart's door,
Whose only business was to flow;
And flow it did; not taking heed
Of its own bounty, or my need.
The March into Virginia Ending in the First Manassas (July, 1861)
© Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
All they feel is this: ’tis glory,
A rapture sharp, though transitory,
Yet lasting in belaureled story.
So they gayly go to fight,
Chatting left and laughing right.
Paradise Lost: Book I
© Patrick Kavanagh
So spake th' apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but rack'd with deep despair.
And him thus answer'd soon his bold compeer:
