Truth poems

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Lit Instructor

© William Stafford

Day after day up there beating my wings
with all the softness truth requires
I feel them shrug whenever I pause:
they class my voice among tentative things,

The Voices

© John Greenleaf Whittier

"WHY urge the long, unequal fight,
Since Truth has fallen in the street,
Or lift anew the trampled light,
Quenched by the heedless million's feet?

Soars still thy spirit, Child of Fire?
Dost hear the camps of Europe hum?
On eagle wings dost hover nigher
At the far rolling of the drum?
To see the harvest thou hast sown
Smilest thou now, Napoleon?

The Vision Of Piers Plowman - Part 04

© William Langland

" Cesseth!' seide the Kyng, " I suffre yow no lenger.

Ye shul saughtne, forsothe, and serve me bothe.

The Body of Divinity Versifyed

© Cotton Mather

A God there is, a God of boundless Might,

In Wisdom, Justice, Goodness, Infinite.

Operation Memory

© David Lehman

We were smoking some of this knockout weed when
Operation Memory was announced. To his separate bed
Each soldier went, counting backwards from a hundred
With a needle in his arm. And there I was, in the middle
Of a recession, in the middle of a strange city, between jobs
And apartments and wives. Nobody told me the gun was loaded.

Book Sixth [Cambridge and the Alps]

© William Wordsworth

A passing word erewhile did lightly touch
On wanderings of my own, that now embraced
With livelier hope a region wider far.

Paradise Lost : Book XII.

© John Milton

As one who in his journey bates at noon,

Though bent on speed; so here the Arch-Angel paused

Hermann And Dorothea - IV. Euterpe

© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Mother," he said in confusion:--"You greatly surprise me!" and quickly
Wiped he away his tears, the noble and sensitive youngster.
"What! You are weeping, my son?" the startled mother continued
"That is indeed unlike you! I never before saw you crying!
Say, what has sadden'd your heart? What drives you to sit here all lonely
Under the shade of the pear-tree? What is it that makes you unhappy?"

Unrecorded

© Lucy Maud Montgomery

Ere over him too darkly lay
The prophet shadow of Calvary,
I think he talked in very truth
With the innocent gayety of youth,
Laughing upon some festal day,
Gently, with sinless boyhood's glee.

Sonnet XIV: Alas, Have I Not

© Sir Philip Sidney

Alas, have I not pain enough, my friend,
Upon whose breast a fiercer gripe doth tire,
Than did on him who first stole down the fire,
While Love on me doth all his quiver spend,

The Third Satire Of Dr. John Donne

Compassion checks my spleen, yet Scorn denies
The tears a passage thro' my swelling eyes;
To laugh or weep at sins, might idly show,
Unheedful passion, or unfruitful woe.
Satyr! arise, and try thy sharper ways,
If ever Satyr cur'd an old disease.

Many Are Called

Queen of my life! I do not love you less
Because you choose not me to cast your woes on.
It is enough for me you once said ``Yes.''
Many are called by Love, but few are chosen.

Sonnet XXV: The Wisest Scholar

The wisest scholar of the wight most wise
By Phoebus' doom, with sugar'd sentence says,
That Virtue, if it once met with our eyes,
Strange flames of love it in our souls would raise;

The Poet

There was strength in him and the weak won freely from it,
There was an infinite pity, and hard hearts grew soft thereby,
There was truth so unshrinking and starry-shining,
Men read clear by its light and learned to scorn a lie.