All Poems
/ page 1644 of 3210 /
Olney Hymn 54: Love Constraining To Obedience
© William Cowper
No strength of nature can suffice
To serve the Lord aright:
And what she has she misapplies,
For want of clearer light.
The Envoy of Mr. Cogito
© Zbigniew Herbert
let your sister Scorn not leave you
for the informers executioners cowards—they will win
they will go to your funeral and with relief will throw a lump of earth
the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography
Poem to Some of My Recent Poems
© James Tate
My beloved little billiard balls,
my polite mongrels, edible patriotic plums,
The Folly Of Useless Effort
© Confucius
The weeds will but the ranker grow,
If fields too large you seek to till.
To try to gain men far away
With grief your toiling heart will fill,
Twenty Questions
© David Lehman
Why did the moth fly into the flame? Was it for the same reason
That Achilles died young? Who gets more fun out of sex,
The measureless gulfs of air are full of Thee
© Jean Ingelow
The measureless gulfs of air are full of Thee:
Thou Art, and therefore hang the stars; they wait,
And swim, and shine in God who bade them be,
And hold their sundering voids inviolate.
A Letter to her Husband, absent upon Publick employment
© Anne Bradstreet
My head, my heart, mine Eyes, my life, nay more,
My joy, my Magazine of earthly store,
On the Lake (a child)
© Bai Juyi
A little child paddles a little boat,
Drifting about, and picking white lotuses.
He does not know how to hide his tracks,
And duckweed's opened up along his path.
Fulfilment
© Margaret Widdemer
CROSSING through Heaven's doors,
If Heaven may be for me,
I shall not seek gold floors
Nor jasper wall nor sea;
Elegy for the Native Guards
© Natasha Trethewey
Now that the salt of their blood
Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea . . .
—Allen Tate
Freedom's Plow
© Langston Hughes
First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on the world,
On the great wooded world,
On the rich soil of the world,
On the rivers of the world.
Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself
© Edwin Muir
At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
Echoes Of Love's House
© William Morris
Love gives every gift whereby we long to live
Love takes every gift, and nothing back doth give.
Mrs. Benjamin Pantier
© Edgar Lee Masters
I know that he told that I snared his soul
With a snare which bled him to death.
Sonnet 69: Oh Joy, Too High For My Low Style
© Sir Philip Sidney
Oh joy, too high for my low style to show:
Oh bliss, fit for a nobler state than me:
Envy, put out thine eyes, lest thou do see
What oceans of delight in me do flow.
Solitude
© James Lister Cuthbertson
This is the maiden Solitude, too fair
For mortal eyes to gaze on-she who dwells
A Holocaust
© Francis Thompson
'No man ever attained supreme knowledge, unless his heart had been
torn up by the roots.'
When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
© Patrick Kavanagh
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
