Truth poems
/ page 212 of 257 /
Elegy XIII: His Parting From Her
© John Donne
SINCE she must go, and I must mourn, come night,
Environ me with darkness, whilst I write ;
Elijah Browning
© Edgar Lee Masters
I was among multitudes of children
Dancing at the foot of a mountain.
A breeze blew out of the east and swept them as leaves,
Driving some up the slopes.... All was changed.
Oaks Tutt
© Edgar Lee Masters
My mother was for woman's rights
And my father was the rich miller at London Mills.
I dreamed of the wrongs of the world and wanted to right them.
When my father died, I set out to see peoples and countries
Herman Altman
© Edgar Lee Masters
Did I follow Truth wherever she led,
And stand against the whole world for a cause,
And uphold the weak against the strong?
If I did I would be remembered among men
Ariel And Caliban
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
I.
Before PROSPERO'S cell. Moonlight.
ARIEL.
So Prospero is gone and I am free
The Spooniad
© Edgar Lee Masters
[The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River, planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but unfortunately did not live to complete even the first book. The fragment was found among his papers by William Marion Reedy and was for the first time published in Reedy's Mirror of December 18th, 1914.]
Of John Cabanis' wrath and of the strife
Of hostile parties, and his dire defeat
Who led the common people in the cause
The Emigrant Mother
© William Wordsworth
Once having seen her clasp with fond embrace
This Child, I chanted to myself a lay,
Endeavouring, in our English tongue, to trace
Such things as she unto the Babe might say:
And thus, from what I heard and knew, or guessed,
My song the workings of her heart expressed.
Voltaire Johnson
© Edgar Lee Masters
Why did you bruise me with your rough places
If you did not want me to tell you about them?
And stifle me with your stupidities,
If you did not want me to expose them?
The Evening Company
© James Whitcomb Riley
Within the sitting-room, the company
Had been increased in number. Two or three
Young couples had been added: Emma King,
Ella and Mary Mathers--all could sing
Like veritable angels--Lydia Martin, too,
And Nelly Millikan.--What songs they knew!--
Editor Whedon
© Edgar Lee Masters
To be able to see every side of every question;
To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;
To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,
To use great feelings and passions of the human family
O Glorious France
© Edgar Lee Masters
You have become a forge of snow-white fire,
A crucible of molten steel, O France!
Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
Ami Green
© Edgar Lee Masters
Not "a youth with hoary head and haggard eye,"
But an old man with a smooth skin
And black hair!
I had the face of a boy as long as I lived,
That There Dog O' Mine
© Henry Lawson
Macquarie the shearer had met with an accident. To tell the truth, he had been in a drunken row at a wayside shanty, from which he had escaped with three fractured ribs, a cracked head, and various minor abrasions. His dog, Tally, had been a sober but savage participator in the drunken row, and had escaped with a broken leg.
Macquarie afterwards shouldered his swag and staggered and struggled along the track ten miles to the Union-Town Hospital. Lord knows how he did it. He didn't exactly know himself. Tally limped behind all the way on three legs. The doctors examined the man's injuries and were surprised at his endurance.
In State
© Forceythe Willson
I.
O Keeper of the Sacred Key,
And the Great Seal of Destiny,
Whose eye is the blue canopy,
Look down upon the warring world, and tell us what the end will be.
Thursos Landing
© Robinson Jeffers
In the night Reave dreamed that Helen
Lay with him in the deep grave, he awoke loathing her,
But when the weak moment between sleep and waking
Was past, his need of her and his judgment of her
Knew their suspended duel; and he heard her breathing,
Irregularly, gently in the dark.
Mrs. George Reece
© Edgar Lee Masters
To this generation I would say:
Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty.
It may serve a turn in your life.
My husband had nothing to do
Chords
© Madison Julius Cawein
When love delays, when love delays and Joy
Steals a strange shadow o'er the happy hills,
And Hope smiles from To-morrow, nor fulfills
One promise of To-day, thy sight would cloy
This soul with loved despair
By seeing thee so fair.
Sersmith the Dentist
© Edgar Lee Masters
Do you think that odes and sermons,
And the ringing of church bells,
And the blood of old men and young men,
Martyred for the truth they saw
Anne Rutledge
© Edgar Lee Masters
Out of me unworthy and unknown
The vibrations of deathless music;
'With malice toward none, with charity for all.'
Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,
