Future poems
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Foreshadowings
© Henry Kendall
FIFTEEN miles and then the harbour! Here we cannot choose but stand,
Faces thrust towards the day-break, listening for our native land!
The Dunciad: Book I.
© Alexander Pope
The Mighty Mother, and her son who brings
The Smithfield muses to the ear of kings,
Mrs. Effingham's Swan Song
© Muriel Stuart
I am growing old: I have kept youth too long,
But I dare not let them know it now.
The Sixth Olympic Ode Of Pindar
© Henry James Pye
A sudden thought I raptur'd feel,
Which, as the whetstone points the steel,
Brightens my sense, and bids me warbling raise
To the soft-breathing flute, the kindred notes of praise.
An Ode - Presented To The King, On His Majesty's Arrival In Holland, After The Queen's Death
© Matthew Prior
At Mary's tomb (sad sacred place!)
The Virtues shall their vigils keep,
And every Muse and every Grace
In solemn state shall ever weep.
The Task: Book III. -- The Garden
© William Cowper
As one who, long in thickets and in brakes
Entangled, winds now this way and now that
Francis Parkman
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
HE rests from toil; the portals of the tomb
Close on the last of those unwearying hands
That wove their pictured webs in History's loom,
Rich with the memories of three distant lands.
The Peaks Of Valor
© Edgar Albert Guest
These are the peaks of valor; keeping clean your father's name,
Too brave for petty profit to risk the brand of shame,
Adventuring for the future, yet mindful of the past,
For God, for country and for home, still valorous to the last.
Santa Paula by Lee McCarthy: American Life in Poetry #148 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
I've written about the pleasures of poetry that offers us vivid scenes but which lets us draw our own conclusions about the implications of what we're being shown. The poet can steer us a little by the selection of details, but a lot of the effect of the poem is in what is not said, in what we deduce. Lee McCarthy is a California poet, and here is something seen from across the street, something quite ordinary yet packed with life.
The Black Charger
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
There's a terrible steed that rests not night nor day,
But onward and onward, for ever away,
Il Cinque Maggio (English)
© Alessandro Manzoni
HE was -- As motionless as lay,
First mingled with the dead,
The Route March
© Henry Lawson
Shall you hear the children singing, O my brothers?
Shall you hear the children singing in the sunshine or the rain?
Therell be sobs beneath the ringing
Of the cheers, and neath the singing
Therell be tears of orphan children when
Our Boys come back again!
Under The Old Elm
© James Russell Lowell
Placid completeness, life without a fall
From faith or highest aims, truth's breachless wall,
Surely if any fame can bear the touch,
His will say 'Here!' at the last trumpet's call,
The unexpressive man whose life expressed so much.
Hellas: A Lyrical Drama
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
The curtain of the Universe
Is rent and shattered,
The splendour-wingèd worlds disperse
Like wild doves scattered.
Out From Behind His Mask
© Walt Whitman
As on the road, or at some crevice door, by chance, or open'd window,
Pausing, inclining, baring my head, You specially I greet,
To draw and clench your Soul, for once, inseparably with mine,
Then travel, travel on.
The Little Dog
© Jean de La Fontaine
'TWOULD endless prove, and nothing would avail,
Each lover's pain minutely to detail:
Their arts and wiles; enough 'twill be no doubt,
To say the lady's heart was found so stout,
She let them sigh their precious hours away,
And scarcely seemed emotion to betray.
An Arctic Vision
© Francis Bret Harte
While the blows are falling thick
From his California pick,
You may recognize the Thor
Of the vision that I saw,--
Freed from legendary glamour,
See the real magician's hammer.
