Freedom poems
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The Dead To The Living
© Edith Nesbit
Work while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
IN the childhood of April, while purple woods
Metamorphoses: Book The Fourth
© Ovid
The End of the Fourth 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 Heritage
© Rudyard Kipling
Our Fathers in a wondrous age,
Ere yet the Earth was small,
Ensured to us a heritage,
And doubted not at all
Undivine Comedy
© Zygmunt Krasinski
THE MAN:
(Casting away his cloak) I need you no longer. My best men have perished and those kneeling over there are stretching out their arms to the victors and bellowing for mercy! (He looks all around him.) They are not coming up this side yet. There is still time. Let us rest a while. Ha, now they have battered their way up the northern tower. New troops have plunged into the tower and they are looking to see if Count Henry is hidden somewhere there. I am here, here - but you shall not judge me! I have already started on my way. I am going toward the judgment of God. (He mounts a fragment of a bastion overhanging the very precipice.) I see it, all black, with dark expanses, flowing toward me, my eternity, without shores, without islands, without end, and in its midst is God, like an eternally burning sun - ever shining - and illuminating nothing. (Advances a step farther. ) They run, they've seen me! Jesus, Mary! O poetry, be you as cursed as I am for all the ages! Arms of mine, go before and cut me a path through those ramparts! (He leaps into the precipice.)
The Greek National Anthem
© Rudyard Kipling
We knew thee of old,
Oh divinely restored,
By the light of thine eyes
And the light of they Sword.
For All We Have And Are
© Rudyard Kipling
For all we have and are,
For all our children's fate,
Stand up and take the war.
The Hun is at the gate!
The Fabulists
© Rudyard Kipling
When all the world would keep a matter hid,
Since Truth is seldom Friend to any crowd,
Men write in Fable, as old AEsop did,
Jesting at that which none will name aloud.
And this they needs must do, or it will fall
Unless they please they are not heard at all.
A Toast To Our Native Land
© Robert Seymour Bridges
Huge and alert, irascible yet strong,
We make our fitful way 'mid right and wrong.
Covenent
© Rudyard Kipling
1914
We thought we ranked above the chance of ill.
Others might fall, not we, for we were wise--
Merchants in freedom. So, of our free-will
Madness
© Henry James Pye
Here some grave Man whose head with prudence fraught
Was ne'er disturb'd by one eccentric thought,
Who without meaning rolls his leaden eyes,
And being stupid, fancies he is wise,
May with sagacious sneers my case deplore,
And urge the use of rest, and Hellebore.
A Defence Of English Spring
© Alfred Austin
Unnamed, unknown, but surely bred
Where Thames, once silver, now runs lead,
The Borough. Letter XII: Players
© George Crabbe
DRAWN by the annual call, we now behold
Our Troop Dramatic, heroes known of old,
And those, since last they march'd, enlisted and
A Birthday
© Aleister Crowley
Then Easter, and the days of all delight!
God's sun lit noontide and his moon midnight,
While above all, true centre of our world,
True source of light, our great love passion-pearled
Gave all its life and splendour to the sea
Above whose tides stood our stability.
Love's Ordeal
© George MacDonald
In a lovely garden walking
Two lovers went hand in hand;
Two wan, worn figures, talking
They sat in the flowery land.
Antonio Melidori
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
SCENE I.
[A place not far from the summit of Mount Psiloriti, in the Isle of Candia. Philota discovered with a basket of grapes upon her head; she looks eagerly upward. Time, a little before sunset.]
PHILOTA.
Forgotten
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
FORGOTTEN! Can it be a few swift rounds
Of Time's great chariot wheels have crushed to naught
The memory of those fearful sights and sounds,
With speechless misery fraught--
Wherethro' we hope to gain the Hesperian height,
Where Freedom smiles in light?
Aurora Leigh: Book One
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I, alas,
A wild bird scarcely fledged, was brought to her cage,
And she was there to meet me. Very kind.
Bring the clean water, give out the fresh seed.
The Retrospect: CWM Elan, 1812
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
Woods, to whose depths retires to die
The wounded Echo's melody,
And whither this lone spirit bent
The footstep of a wild intent:
