War poems
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Satisfied With Life
© Edgar Albert Guest
I have known the green trees and the skies overhead
And the blossoms of spring and the fragrance they shed;
I have known the blue sea, and the mountains afar
And the song of the pines and the light of a star;
And should I pass now, I could say with a smile
That my pilgrimage here has been well worth my while.
Stable by Claudia Emerson Andrews: American Life in Poetry #26 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
Descriptive poetry depends for its effects in part upon the vividness of details. Here the Virginia poet, Claudia Emerson, describes the type of old building all of us have seen but may not have stopped to look at carefully. And thoughtfully.
Stable
Custer: Book Third
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Were every red man slaughtered in a day,
Still would that sacrifice but poorly pay
For one insulted woman captive's woes.
Granite And Cypress
© Robinson Jeffers
White-maned, wide-throated, the heavy-shouldered children of
the wind leap at the sea-cliff.
Koya San
© Robert Laurence Binyon
High on the mountain, shrouded in vast trees,
The stillness had the chastity of frost.
I trod the fallen pallors of the moon.
The path was paven stone: I was not lost,
But followed whither it should lead me soon
Into the mountains midmost secrecies.
Don Juan: Canto The Tenth
© George Gordon Byron
When Newton saw an apple fall, he found
In that slight startle from his contemplation--
Horatian Epode To The Duchess Of Malfi
© Allen Tate
Duchess: Who am I?
Bosola: Thou art a box of worm-seed, at best but a
salvatory of green mummy.
Waiting For Spring
© John Newton
Though cloudy skies, and northern blasts,
Retard the gentle spring awhile;
The sun will conqu'ror prove at last,
And nature wear a vernal smile.
Little Trotty Wagtail
© John Clare
Little trotty wagtail he went in the rain,
And tittering, tottering sideways he neer got straight again,
He stooped to get a worm, and looked up to get a fly,
And then he flew away ere his feathers they were dry.
Book Third [Residence at Cambridge]
© William Wordsworth
IT was a dreary morning when the wheels
Rolled over a wide plain o'erhung with clouds,
And nothing cheered our way till first we saw
The long-roofed chapel of King's College lift
Turrets and pinnacles in answering files,
Extended high above a dusky grove.
The Secret
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
WHAT says the wind to the waving trees?
What says the wave to the river?
Seventy-Six
© William Cullen Bryant
What heroes from the woodland sprung,
When, through the fresh awakened land,
The thrilling cry of freedom rung,
And to the work of warfare strung
The yeoman's iron hand!
Truth
© William Cowper
Man, on the dubious waves of error toss'd,
His ship half founder'd, and his compass lost,
The World's Advance
© George Meredith
Judge mildly the tasked world; and disincline
To brand it, for it bears a heavy pack.
Metamorphoses: Book The Fifth
© Ovid
The End of the Fifth Book.
Translated into English verse under the direction of
Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison,
William Congreve and other eminent hands
The Old Swimmin' Hole
© James Whitcomb Riley
Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep
Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep,
Pity Me, Loo!
© Henry Clay Work
On the sunset borders of the mountains I stray,
Of a dear home dreaming 'yond the snow peaks far away,
While the bubbling brook beside me goes dancing along,
As it seeks the "Golden Gate" of the ocean blue;
And a lone bird murmurs in the bush-top his song-
"Pity me, Loo!" "Pity me, Loo!" "Pity me, Loo!"
