Truth poems
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Prince Athanase
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel,
Had grown quite weak and gray before his time;
Nor any could the restless griefs unravel
from The Botanic Garden, “The Economy of Vegetation”: Canto I
© Erasmus Darwin
Argument
The Genius of the place invites the Goddess of Botany, 1. She descends, is received by Spring, and the Elements, 59. Addresses the Nymphs of Fire. Star-light Night seen in the Camera Obscura, 81. I. Love created the Universe. Chaos explodes. All the Stars revolve. God, 97. II. Shooting Stars. Lightning. Rainbow. Colours of the Morning and Evening Skies. Exterior Atmosphere of inflammable Air. Twilight. Fire-balls. Aurora Borealis. Planets. Comets. Fixed Stars. Sun’s Orb, 115. III. 1. Fires of the Earth’s Centre. Animal Incubation, 137. 2. Volcanic Mountains. Venus visits the Cyclops, 149. IV. Heat confined on the Earth by the Air. Phosphoric lights in the Evening. Bolognian Stone. Calcined Shells. Memnon’s Harp, 173. Ignis fatuus. Luminous Flowers. Glow-worm. Fire-fly. Luminous Sea-insects. Electric Eel. Eagle armed with Lightning, 189. V. 1. Discovery of Fire. Medusa, 209. 2. The chemical Properties of Fire. Phosphorus. Lady in Love, 223. 3. Gunpowder, 237. VI. Steam-engine applied to Pumps, Bellows, Water-engines, Corn-mills, Coining, Barges, Waggons, Flying-chariots, 253. Labours of Hercules. Abyla and Calpe, 297. VII. 1. Electric Machine. Hesperian Dragon. Electric Kiss. Halo round the heads of Saints. Electric Shock. Fairy-rings, 335. 2. Death of Professor Richman, 371. 3. Franklin draws Lightning from the Clouds. Cupid snatches the Thunderbolt from Jupiter, 383. VIII. Phosphoric Acid and Vital Heat produced in the Blood. The great Egg of Night, 399. IX. Western Wind unfettered. Naiad released. Frost assailed. Whale attacked, 421. X. Buds and Flowers expanded by Warmth, Electricity, and Light. Drawings with colourless sympathetic Inks; which appear when warmed by the Fire, 457. XI. Sirius. Jupiter and Semele. Nothern Constellations. Ice-Islands navigated into the Tropic Seas. Rainy Monsoons, 497. XII. Points erected to procure Rain. Elijah on Mount Carmel, 549. Departure of the Nymphs of Fire like Sparks from artificial Fireworks, 587.
[as freedom is a breakfastfood]
© Edward Estlin Cummings
as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong
The Day of Wrath / Dies Iræ
© Ambrose Bierce
Day of Satan's painful duty!
Earth shall vanish, hot and sooty;
So says Virtue, so says Beauty.
Town Eclogues: Tuesday; St. James's Coffee-House
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
SILLIANDER and PATCH. THOU so many favours hast receiv'd,
Wondrous to tell, and hard to be believ'd,
Oh ! H—— D, to my lays attention lend,
Hear how two lovers boastingly contend ;
Like thee successful, such their bloomy youth,
Renown'd alike for gallantry and truth.
To the Lord General Cromwell
© Patrick Kavanagh
Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud,
Not of war only, but detractions rude,
Plain Language From Truthful James
© Francis Bret Harte
Which I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,
Which the same I would rise to explain.
A Broken Prayer
© George MacDonald
I am a denseness 'twixt me and the light;
1 cannot round myself; my purest thought,
Ere it is thought, hath caught the taint of earth,
And mocked me with hard thoughts beyond my will.
An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Paul's, Dr. John Donne
© Thomas Carew
Can we not force from widow'd poetry,
Now thou art dead (great Donne) one elegy
from Dante Études: Book Three: In My Youth Not Unstaind
© Robert Duncan
Now, upon old age: “Our life
has a fixt course and a simple path”
I would not avoid, “that of our right nature”
—then Dante adds, himself quoting:
“and in every part of our life
place is given for certain things”:
Love's Witness
© Aphra Behn
Slight unpremeditated Words are borne
By every common Wind into the Air;
Carelessly utterd, die as soon as born,
And in one instant give both Hope and Fear:
Breathing all Contraries with the same Wind
According to the Caprice of the Mind.
Humboldts Birthday
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
ERE yet the warning chimes of midnight sound,
Set back the flaming index of the year,
Track the swift-shifting seasons in their round
Through fivescore circles of the swinging sphere!
There Is a Safe and Secret Place
© Henry Francis Lyte
There is a safe and secret place,
Beneath the wings divine,
Reserved for all the heirs of grace;
O be that refuge mine!
A Name
© John Greenleaf Whittier
The name the Gallic exile bore,
St. Malo! from thy ancient mart,
Became upon our Western shore
Greenleaf for Feuillevert.
October And May
© Henry James Pye
ADDRESSED TO SAMUEL JAMES ARNOLD, Esq.
: "Behold, with mild and matron mien,
Fand, A Feerie Act III
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
[She looks towards the sea.
Attendant. None.
The sea mist drives too thickly.
England CXVII
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Yet, though treason and fierce unreason should league and lie and defame
and smite,
We that know thee, how far below thee the hatred burns of the sons of
night,
We that love thee, behold above thee the witness written of life in
light.
