Good poems
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X Mon. December [1744] hath xxxi days.
© Benjamin Franklin
This World's an Inn, all Travellers are we;And this World's Goods th'Accommodations be
MAY. [1748] III Month.
© Benjamin Franklin
Read much; the Mind, which never can be still,If not intent on Good, is prone to Ill
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
© Edward Fitzgerald
IHas flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight: And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caughtThe Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.
Magwere, Who Waits Wondering
© Fairbridge Kingsley
INear the edge of the big swamp where cane rats live,Grew Magwere the mealie.
"O May I Join the Choir Invisible"
© George Eliot
Longum illud tempus, quum non ero, magis me movet, quam hoc exigium.
Ten Precepts from Dhammapada
© Romesh Chunder Dutt
Return Love for Hatred.1.2 Hatred lives and mortal strife;1.3Love return for bitter hatred,1.4 Hatred dies, and sweet is life! (5)
The Hind and the Panther: Part I
© John Dryden
A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchang'd,Fed on the lawns, and in the forest rang'd;Without unspotted, innocent within,She fear'd no danger, for she knew no sin
Alexander's Feast
© John Dryden
I By Philip's warlike son: Aloft in awful state The godlike hero sate On his imperial throne; His valiant peers were plac'd around;Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound: (So should desert in arms be crown'd
Ode to the Cambro-Britons and their Harp, His Ballad of Agincourt
© Michael Drayton
Fair stood the wind for France,When we our sails advance;Nor now to prove our chance Longer will tarry;But putting to the main,At Caux, the mouth of Seine,With all his martial train Landed King Harry.
Endimion and Phoebe
© Michael Drayton
In Ionia whence sprang old poets' fame,From whom that sea did first derive her name,The blessed bed whereon the Muses lay,Beauty of Greece, the pride of Asia,Whence Archelaus, whom times historify,First unto Athens brought philosophy:In this fair region on a goodly plain,Stretching her bounds unto the bord'ring main,The mountain Latmus overlooks the sea,Smiling to see the ocean billows play:Latmus, where young Endymion used to keepHis fairest flock of silver-fleeced sheep,To whom Silvanus often would resort,At barley-brake to see the Satyrs sport;And when rude Pan his tabret list to sound,To see the fair Nymphs foot it in a round,Under the trees which on this mountain grew,As yet the like Arabia never knew;For all the pleasures Nature could deviseWithin this plot she did imparadise;And great Diana of her special graceWith vestal rites had hallowed all the place
Religio Medici
© Doyle Arthur Conan
God's own best will bide the test And God's own worst will fall;But, best or worst or last or first, He ordereth it all.
A Lay of the Links
© Doyle Arthur Conan
It's up and away from our work to-day, For the breeze sweeps over the down;And it's hey for a game where the gorse blossoms flame, And the bracken is bronzing to brown
La Belle et la Bête
© Mark Doty
"My heart," he said, "is the heartof a beast." What could she dobut love him? First she must resist:the copper bowls gleaming on the rack
[Tutelage]
© John Donne
Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love,And in that sophistry, O, thou dost proveToo subtle; fool, thou didst not understandThe mystic language of the eye nor hand;Nor couldst thou judge the difference of the airOf sighs, and say, "This lies, this sounds despair";Nor by th' eye's water cast a maladyDesperately hot, or changing feverously
To the Countess of Bedford [To have written then, when you writ, seem'd to me ...]
© John Donne
To have written then, when you writ, seem'd to meWorst of spiritual vices, simony ;And not to have written then seems little lessThan worst of civil vices, thanklessness
To the Countess of Bedford [Madam, Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right...]
© John Donne
Madam,Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right, By these we reach divinity, that's you;Their loves, who have the blessing of your sight, Grew from their reason, mine from fair faith grew.
