Animal poems
/ page 10 of 37 /
Purgatorio (English)
© Dante Alighieri
To run o'er better waters hoists its sail
The little vessel of my genius now,
That leaves behind itself a sea so cruel;
Poems Of Joys
© Walt Whitman
O to make the most jubilant poem!
Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.
O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments! full of grain and trees.
Ode To The Confederate Dead
© Allen Tate
You hear the shout, the crazy hemlocks point
With troubled fingers to the silence which
Smothers you, a mummy, in time.
The Beaks Of Eagles
© Robinson Jeffers
An eagle's nest on the head of an old redwood on one of the
precipice-footed ridges
The Four Seasons : Spring
© James Thomson
Come, gentle Spring! ethereal Mildness! come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.
Of The Nature Of Things: Book IV - Part 04 - Some Vital Functions
© Lucretius
In these affairs
We crave that thou wilt passionately flee
Queen Mab: Part I.
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
FAIRY
'Spirit! who hast dived so deep;
Spirit! who hast soared so high;
Thou the fearless, thou the mild,
Accept the boon thy worth hath earned,
Ascend the car with me!'
Summer Toils
© Kristijonas Donelaitis
"Of course, it is not nice for a gray-headed man,
To be shamed by the work of a young nincompoop,
When he intends to get more dollars for his pay,
And e'en is not ashamed to pry out more seed grain.
O what became of the bewhiskered Prussian days,
When hired help was so cheep and so obedient?
New Year's Night, 1916
© Duncan Campbell Scott
The Earth moans in her sleep
Like an old mother
Whose sons have gone to the war,
Who weeps silently in her heart
Till dreams comfort her.
The Ballad of the Rousabout
© Henry Lawson
Some take the track for faith in mensome take the track for doubt
Some flee a squalid home to work their own salvation out.
Some dared not see a mothers tears nor meet a fathers face
Born of good Christian families some leap, head-long, from Grace.
Modern Talk
© Sheldon Allan Silverstein
And then a guy gets grabbed by an army recruiter
He says we're gonna put you in the khaki suiter
So do not cry and don't you lie but take this test to qualify
The guys says blblblblblbl huhuh till then
And he's right back out on the street again
Masnawi
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
In the prologue to the Masnavi Rumi hailed Love and its sweet madness that heals all infirmities, and he exhorted the reader to burst the bonds to silver and gold to be free. The Beloved is all in all and is only veiled by the lover. Rumi identified the first cause of all things as God and considered all second causes subordinate to that. Human minds recognize the second causes, but only prophets perceive the action of the first cause. One story tells of a clever rabbit who warned the lion about another lion and showed the lion his own image in a well, causing him to attack it and drown. After delivering his companions from the tyrannical lion, the rabbit urges them to engage in the more difficult warfare against their own inward lusts. In a debate between trusting God and human exertion, Rumi quoted the prophet Muhammad as saying, "Trust in God, yet tie the camel's leg."8 He also mentioned the adage that the worker is the friend of God; so in trusting in providence one need not neglect to use means. Exerting oneself can be giving thanks for God's blessings; but he asked if fatalism shows gratitude.
God is hidden and has no opposite, not seen by us yet seeing us. Form is born of the formless but ultimately returns to the formless. An arrow shot by God cannot remain in the air but must return to God. Rumi reconciled God's agency with human free will and found the divine voice in the inward voice. Those in close communion with God are free, but the one who does not love is fettered by compulsion. God is the agency and first cause of our actions, but human will as the second cause finds recompense in hell or with the Friend. God is like the soul, and the world is like the body. The good and evil of bodies comes from souls. When the sanctuary of true prayer is revealed to one, it is shameful to turn back to mere formal religion. Rumi confirmed Muhammad's view that women hold dominion over the wise and men of heart; but violent fools, lacking tenderness, gentleness, and friendship, try to hold the upper hand over women, because they are swayed by their animal nature. The human qualities of love and tenderness can control the animal passions. Rumi concluded that woman is a ray of God and the Creator's self.
Heine In Paris
© Kenneth Slessor
LATE: a cold smear of sunlight bathes the room;
The gilt lime of winter, a sun grown melancholy old,
Streams in the glass. Outside, ten thousand chimneys fume,
Looping the weather-birds with rings of gold;
Shakuntala Act 1
© Kalidasa
King Dushyant in a chariot, pursuing an antelope, with a bow and quiver, attended by his Charioteer.
Suta (Charioteer). [Looking at the antelope, and then at the king]
When I cast my eye on that black antelope, and on thee, O king, with thy braced bow, I see before me, as it were, the God Mahésa chasing a hart (male deer), with his bow, named Pináca, braced in his left hand.
George Mullen's Confession
© James Whitcomb Riley
For the sake of guilty conscience, and the heart that ticks the
time
Of the clockworks of my nature, I desire to say that I'm
A weak and sinful creature, as regards my daily walk
The last five years and better. It ain't worth while to talk--
An Alphabet Zoo
© Carolyn Wells
A was an apt Alligator,
Who wanted to be a head-waiter;
He said, "I opine
In that field I could shine,
Because I am such a good skater."
The Heroic Enthusiasts - Part The Second =Third Dialogue=.
© Giordano Bruno
LIB. Reclining in the shade of a cypress-tree, the enthusiast finding
his mind free from other thoughts, it happened that the heart and the
eyes spoke together as if they were animals and substances of different
intellects and senses, and they made lament of that which was the
beginning of his torment and which consumed his soul.
