War poems
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The American Soldier
© Philip Morin Freneau
A Picture from the Life
To serve with love,
And shed your blood,
Approved may be above,
The Purgatory Of St. Patrick - Act I
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
KING. Yes, from this rocky height,
Nigh to the sun, that with one starry light
Its rugged brow doth crown,
Headlong among the salt waves leaping down
Let him descend who so much pain perceives;
There let him raging die who raging lives.
Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun
© Emily Jane Brontë
Ah! why, because the dazzling sun
Restored my earth to joy
Have you departed, every one,
And left a desert sky?
How precious are thy thoughts of peace
© James Montgomery
How precious are thy thoughts of peace,
O God! to me; how great their sum!
New every morn, they never cease;
They were, they are, and yet shall come,
In number and in compass more
Than ocean's sand, or ocean's shore.
from The Task, Book VI: The Winter Walk at Noon
© William Cowper
(excerpt)
Thus heav’n-ward all things tend. For all were once
Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand
© Walt Whitman
Whoever you are holding me now in hand,
Without one thing all will be useless,
I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.
Speakin' O' Christmas
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
BREEZES blowin' middlin' brisk,
Snow-flakes thro' the air a-whisk,
The Canon Of Aughrim
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
You ask me of English honour, whether your Nation is just?
Justice for us is a word divine, a name we revere,
Alas, no more than a name, a thing laid by in the dust.
The world shall know it again, but not in this month or year.
Alton Locke's Song
© Charles Kingsley
Weep, weep, weep and weep,
For pauper, dolt, and slave!
Hark! from wasted moor and fen,
Feverous alley, stifling den,
Swells the wail of Saxon men-
Work! or the grave!
Here on Earth
© Rahel Bluwstein
Here on Earth - not in high clouds-
On this mother earth that is close:
To sorrow in her sadness, exult in her meager joy
That knows, so well, how to console.
The Shepherds Calendar - May
© John Clare
Come queen of months in company
Wi all thy merry minstrelsy
The restless cuckoo absent long
And twittering swallows chimney song
W. Gilmore Simms
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
THE swift mysterious seasons rise and set;
The omnipotent years pass o'er us, bright or dun;--
Dawns blush, and mid-days burn, 'till scarce aware
Of what deep meaning haunts our twilight air,
Nonsense Alphabet
© Edward Lear
A was an Area Arch
Where washerwomen sat;
They made a lot of lovely starch
To starch Papa's cravat.
The cat’s song
© Marge Piercy
Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts.
To Mr. Lawrence
© Patrick Kavanagh
Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,
Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,
