Birthday poems
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Our Oldest Friend
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
I GIVE you the health of the oldest friend
That, short of eternity, earth can lend,--
A friend so faithful and tried and true
That nothing can wean him from me and you.
A Meeting
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Quite carelessly I turned the newsy sheet;
A song I sang, full many a year ago,
Smiled up at me, as in a busy street
One meets an old-time friend he used to know.
Beautiful Twenty-Second
© Julia A Moore
Beautiful twenty-second,
Beautiful twenty-second,
May the people ever keep it,
Beautiful twenty-second.
Nothin' To Say
© James Whitcomb Riley
Nothin' to say, my daughter! Nothin' at all to say!
Gyrls that's in love, I've noticed, ginerly has their way!
Yer mother did, afore you, when her folks objected to me--
Yit here I am, and here you air; and yer mother--where is she?
The Task : Complete
© William Cowper
In man or woman, but far most in man,
And most of all in man that ministers
And serves the altar, in my soul I loathe
All affectation. 'Tis my perfect scorn;
Object of my implacable disgust.
For The Burns Centennial Celebration
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
His birthday.--Nay, we need not speak
The name each heart is beating,--
Each glistening eye and flushing cheek
In light and flame repeating!
The Library
© George Crabbe
When the sad soul, by care and grief oppress'd,
Looks round the world, but looks in vain for rest;
Child Thoughts
© William Henry Drummond
WRITTEN TO COMMEMORATE THE ANNIVER-
SARY OF MY BROTHER TOM 'S BIRTHDAY
The School-Boy
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
So ran my lines, as pen and paper met,
The truant goose-quill travelling like Planchette;
Too ready servant, whose deceitful ways
Full many a slipshod line, alas! betrays;
Hence of the rhyming thousand not a few
Have builded worse--a great deal--than they knew.
"O Lady, Leave Thy Silken Thread"
© Thomas Hood
O Lady, leave thy silken thread
And flowery tapestrie:
There's living roses on the bush,
And blossoms on the tree;
Four Poems About Jamaica
© William Matthews
1. Montego Bay, 10:00 P.M.
A chandelier, a tiara,
a hive of lights. A cruise ship
Count Gismond--Aix in Provence
© Robert Browning
I thought they loved me, did me grace
To please themselves; 't was all their deed;
God makes, or fair or foul, our face;
If showing mine so caused to bleed
My cousins' hearts, they should have dropped
A word, and straight the play had stopped.
To Whittier: On HIs Seventy-Fifth Birthday
© James Russell Lowell
New England's poet, rich in love as years,
Her hills and valleys praise thee, her swift brooks
To a Young Lady, on Her Birthday
© Samuel Johnson
This tributary verse receive, my fair,
Warm with an ardent lover's fondest prayer,
Bryant On His Birthday
© John Greenleaf Whittier
We praise not now the poet's art,
The rounded beauty of his song;
Who weighs him from his life apart
Must do his nobler nature wrong.
Christmas Hymn
© Edith Nesbit
O CHRIST, born on the holy day,
I have no gift to give my King;
No flowers grow by my weary way;
I have no birthday song to sing.
L'Homme Moyen Sensuel
© Ezra Pound
Yet Radway went. A circumspectious prig!
And then that woman like a guinea-pig
Accosted, that's the word, accosted him,
Thereon the amorous calor slightly frosted him.
(I burn, I freeze, I sweat, said the fair Greek,
I speak in contradictions, so to speak.)
The Well-Dressed Children
© Robert Graves
Here's flowery taffeta for Mary's new gown:
Here's black velvet, all the rage, for Dick's birthday coat.
Pearly buttons for you, Mary, all the way down,
Lace ruffles, Dick, for you; you'll be a man of note.
The Twa Gordons
© George MacDonald
There was John Gordon an' Archibold,
An' a yerl's twin sons war they;
Quhan they war are an' twenty year auld
They fell oot on their ae birthday.
