Truth poems
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Mourning and Longing
© William Cowper
The Saviour hides His face;
My spirit thirsts to prove
Renew'd supplies of pardoning grace,
And never-fading love.
Hatred of Sin
© William Cowper
Holy Lord God! I love Thy truth,
Nor dare Thy least commandment slight;
Yet pierced by sin the serpent's tooth,
I mourn the anguish of the bite.
The Nakedness of Truth (I know it well)
© Paul Eluard
Despair has no wings,
Nor has love,
No countenance:
They do not speak.
The Human Face
© Paul Eluard
Of all the springtimes of the world
This one is the ugliest
Of all of my ways of being
To be trusting is the best
Sonnet XI
© Edmund Spenser
DAyly when I do seeke and sew for peace,
And hostages doe offer for my truth:
she cruell warriour doth her selfe addresse,
to battell, and the weary war renew'th.
Sonnet LXV
© Edmund Spenser
THe doubt which ye misdeeme, fayre loue, is vaine
That fondly feare to loose your liberty,
when loosing one, two liberties ye gayne,
and make him bond that bondage earst dyd fly.
Merlin II
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
The rhyme of the poet
Modulates the king's affairs,
Balance-loving nature
Made all things in pairs.
Monadnoc
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
I heard and I obeyed,
Assured that he who pressed the claim,
Well-known, but loving not a name,
Was not to be gainsaid.
Threnody
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
The south-wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire,
Ode To William H. Channing
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though loth to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My buried thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.
Saadi
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trees in groves,
Kine in droves,
In ocean sport the scaly herds,
Wedge-like cleave the air the birds,
Uriel
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
IT fell in the ancient periods
Which the brooding soul surveys,
Or ever the wild Time coin'd itself
Into calendar months and days.
Blight
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give me truths,
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition. If I knew
Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
Merlin
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
I
Thy trivial harp will never please
Or fill my craving ear;
Its chords should ring as blows the breeze,
Dæmonic Love
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man was made of social earth,
Child and brother from his birth;
Tethered by a liquid cord
Of blood through veins of kindred poured,
Each And All
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home in his nest at even;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now;
For I did not bring home the river and sky;
He sang to my ear; they sang to my eye.
Answers
© Mark Strand
Why did you travel?
Because the house was cold.
Why did you travel?
Because it is what I have always done between sunset and sunrise.
The Story Of Our Lives
© Mark Strand
1
We are reading the story of our lives
which takes place in a room.
The room looks out on a street.
That V.C.
© Andrew Barton Paterson
He lay as flat as any fish;
His nose had worn a little furrow;
He only had one frantic wish,
That like an ant-bear he could burrow.
The Hypnotist
© Andrew Barton Paterson
With dragging footsteps and downcast head
The hypnotiser went home to bed,
And since that very successful test
He has given the magic art a rest;
Had he tried the ladies, and worked it right,
What curious tales might have come to light!
