Truth poems
/ page 138 of 257 /
W.h.
© Louise Imogen Guiney
1778-1830
Between the wet trees and the sorry steeple,
Keep, Time, in dark Soho, what once was Hazlitt,
Seeker of Truth, and finder oft of Beauty;
from The Task, Book IV: The Winter Evening
© William Cowper
(excerpt)
Hark! ’tis the twanging horn! o’er yonder bridge,
After the Pleasure Party: Lines Traced Under an Image of Amor Threatening
© Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Fear me, virgin whosoever
Taking pride from love exempt,
Fear me, slighted. Never, never
Brave me, nor my fury tempt:
Downy wings, but wroth they beat
Tempest even in reason's seat.
Open the Gates
© Pierre Reverdy
Open the gates—the gates of the Temple,
Swift to Thy sons, who Thy truths have displayed.
The Tongues We Speak
© Patricia Goedicke
I have arrived here after taking many steps
Over the kitchen floors of friends and through their lives.
Wall, Cave, and Pillar Statements, after Asôka
© Alan Dugan
In order to perfect all readers
the statements should be carved
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;
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!
The Past
© Henry Timrod
To-days most trivial act may hold the seed
Of future fruitfulness, or future dearth;
Oh, cherish always every word and deed!
The simplest record of thyself hath worth.
Wyatt Resteth Here
© Henry Howard
Wyatt resteth here, that quick could never rest;
Whose heavenly gifts increased by disdain,
And virtue sank the deeper in his breast;
Such profit he of envy could obtain.
Yarrow Revisited
© André Breton
The gallant Youth, who may have gained,
Or seeks, a "winsome Marrow,"
Thoughts about the Person from Porlock
© Stevie Smith
Coleridge received the Person from Porlock
And ever after called him a curse,
Then why did he hurry to let him in?
He could have hid in the house.
The Loneliness of the Military Historian
© Margaret Atwood
But it’s no use asking me for a final statement.
As I say, I deal in tactics.
Also statistics:
for every year of peace there have been four hundred
years of war.
There Is No Word
© Tony Hoagland
There isn’t a word for walking out of the grocery store
with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack
that should have been bagged in double layers
from The Triumph of Love
© Geoffrey Hill
Rancorous, narcissistic old sod—what
makes him go on? We thought, hoped rather,
he might be dead. Too bad. So how
much more does he have of injury time?
Sonnet CX: Alas, 'tis True I have Gone here and there
© William Shakespeare
Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there
And made myself a motley to the view,
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
© André Breton
The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
