Art poems
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Song for a Fishing Party near Burlington, on the Delaware, in 1776
© Odell Jonathan
How sweet is the season, the sky how serene;On Delaware's banks how delightful the scene;The Prince of the Rivers, his waves all asleep,In silence majestic glides on to the Deep.
Darwin
© Robert Norwood
Eternal night and solitude of space;Breath as of vapour crimsoning to flame;Far constellations moving in the sameInvariable order and the paceThat times the sun, or earth's elliptic raceAmong the planets: Life--dumb, blind and lame--Creeping from form to form, until her shameBlends with the beauty of a human face!
Death can not claim what Life so hardly wonOut of her ancient warfare with the Void--O Man! whose day is only now begun,Go forth with her and do what she hath done;Till thy last enemy--Death--be destroyed,And earth outshine the splendour of the sun
Town Eclogues: Wednesday; The Tête à Tête
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
DANCINDA. " NO, fair DANCINDA, no ; you strive in vain" To calm my care and mitigate my pain ;" If all my sighs, my cares, can fail to move," Ah ! sooth me not with fruitless vows of love."
The Dean’s Provocation for Writing the Dressing-Room
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
The Doctor, in a clean starch'd band,His golden snuff box in his hand,With care his diamond ring displays,And artful shows its various Rays;While grave he stalks down -- StreetHis dearest -- to meet
Paradise Regain'd: Book IV (1671)
© John Milton
PErplex'd and troubl'd at his bad successThe Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,Discover'd in his fraud, thrown from his hope,So oft, and the perswasive RhetoricThat sleek't his tongue, and won so much on Eve,So little here, nay lost; but Eve was Eve,This far his over-match, who self deceiv'dAnd rash, before-hand had no better weigh'dThe strength he was to cope with, or his own:But as a man who had been matchless heldIn cunning, over-reach't where least he thought,To salve his credit, and for very spightStill will be tempting him who foyls him still,And never cease, though to his shame the more;Or as a swarm of flies in vintage time,About the wine-press where sweet moust is powr'd,Beat off, returns as oft with humming sound;Or surging waves against a solid rock,Though all to shivers dash't, the assault renew,Vain battry, and in froth or bubbles end;So Satan, whom repulse upon repulseMet ever; and to shameful silence brought,Yet gives not o're though desperate of success,And his vain importunity pursues
Paradise Regain'd: Book III (1671)
© John Milton
SO spake the Son of God, and Satan stoodA while as mute confounded what to say,What to reply, confuted and convinc'tOf his weak arguing, and fallacious drift;At length collecting all his Serpent wiles,With soothing words renew'd, him thus accosts
Paradise Regain'd: Book II (1671)
© John Milton
MEan while the new-baptiz'd, who yet remain'dAt Jordan with the Baptist, and had seenHim whom they heard so late expresly call'dJesus Messiah Son of God declar'd,And on that high Authority had believ'd,And with him talkt, and with him lodg'd, I meanAndrew and Simon, famous after knownWith others though in Holy Writ not nam'd,Now missing him thir joy so lately found,So lately found, and so abruptly gone,Began to doubt, and doubted many days,And as the days increas'd, increas'd thir doubt:Sometimes they thought he might be only shewn,And for a time caught up to God, as onceMoses was in the Mount, and missing long;And the great Thisbite who on fiery wheelsRode up to Heaven, yet once again to come
Lines written under the conviction that it is not wise to read Mathematics in November after one’s fire is out
© James Clerk Maxwell
In the sad November time,When the leaf has left the lime,And the Cam, with sludge and slime, Plasters his ugly channel,While, with sober step and slow,Round about the marshes low,Stiffening students stumping go Shivering through their flannel
Frustration
© Marquis Donald Robert Perry
The things that I can't have I want And what I have seems second-rate,The things I want to do I can't And what I have to do I hate, The things I want at once come late,I am not feeling gay nor gleg, I'm really in an awful state,My life is like a scrambled egg
Le Brave, brave automne!
© Jules Laforgue
Quand reviendra l'automne,Cette saison si triste,Je vais m'la passer bonne,Au point de vue artiste.
McAndrew's Hymn
© Rudyard Kipling
Lord, Thou hast made this world below the shadow of a dream,An', taught by time, I tak' it so--exceptin' always Steam
