History poems
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Full moon at Tierz: before the storming of Huesca.
© Rupert John Cornford
The past, a glacier, gripped the mountain wall,
And time was inches, dark was all.
But here it scales the end of the range,
The dialectic's point of change,
Crashes in light and minutes to its fall.
Mute Discourse.
© James Brunton Stephens
GOD speaks by silence. Voice-dividing man,
Who cannot triumph but he saith, Aha
Told By "The Noted Traveler"
© James Whitcomb Riley
Even so had they wrought all ways
To earn the pennies, and hoard them, too,--
And with what ultimate end in view?--
They were saving up money enough to be
Able, in time, to buy their own
Five children back.
The Preacher
© John Greenleaf Whittier
The impulse spread like the outward course
Of waters moved by a central force;
The tide of spiritual life rolled down
From inland mountains to seaboard town.
Youth In Memory
© George Meredith
Days, when the ball of our vision
Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun;
Lady Probationer
© William Ernest Henley
Some three, or five, or seven, and thirty years;
A Roman nose; a dimpling double-chin;
Angkor
© Robert Laurence Binyon
I
Out of the Forest into a terrible splendour
Of noon, the pinnacles of the temple--portals,
Stone Faces, immense in carven ruin
Above the trembling of giant trees emerge.
Pharsalia - Book IX: Cato
© Marcus Annaeus Lucanus
Such were the words he spake; and soon the fleet
Had dared the angry deep: but Cato's voice
While praising, calmed the youthful chieftain's rage.
Expostulation
© William Cowper
Why weeps the muse for England? What appears
In England's case to move the muse to tears?
Modern Greece
© Richard Monckton Milnes
As, in the legend which our childhood loved,
The destined prince was guided to the bed,
Where, many a silent year, the charmèd Maid
Lay still, as though she were not; nor could wake,
Virgils Gnat
© Edmund Spenser
And whatsoeuer other flowre of worth,
And whatso other hearb of louely hew
The iouyous Spring out of the ground brings forth,
To cloath her selfe in colours fresh and new;
He planted there, and reard a mount of earth,
In whose high front was writ as doth ensue.
The Pleasures of Ordinary Life
© Judith Viorst
I've had my share of necessary losses,
Of dreams I know no longer can come true.
I'm done now with the whys and the becauses.
It's time to make things good, not just make do.
It's time to stop complaining and pursue
The pleasures of an ordinary life.
An Indian-Summer Reverie
© James Russell Lowell
What visionary tints the year puts on,
When failing leaves falter through motionless air
To Mrs. Professor In Defense Of My Cat's Honor And Not Only
© Czeslaw Milosz
My valiant helper, a small-sized tiger
Sleeps sweetly on my desk, by the computer,
Unaware that you insult his tribe.
Saturday Night
© Mary Colborne-Veel
Saturday night in the crowded town;
Pleasure and pain going up and down,
The Times Are Tidy
© Sylvia Plath
Unlucky the hero born
In this province of the stuck record
Where the most watchful cooks go jobless
And the mayor's rôtisserie turns
Round of its own accord.
One Day And Another: A Lyrical Eclogue Part III
© Madison Julius Cawein
I seem to see her still; to see
That dim blue room. Her perfume comes
From lavender folds draped dreamily--
One blossom of brocaded blooms--
Some stuff of orient looms.
Kings Chapel
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Is it a weanling's weakness for the past
That in the stormy, rebel-breeding town,
Swept clean of relics by the levelling blast,
The Old Days
© Edgar Albert Guest
WHEN I was but a little tad I used to hear my dear old dad
Tell friends about the good old days forever gone from him;
To Any Member Of My Generation
© George Barker
Whenever we kissed we cocked the future's rifles
And from our wild-oat words, like dragon's teeth,
Death underfoot now arises; when we were gay
Dancing together in what we hoped was life,
Who was it in our arms but the whores of death
Whom we have found in our beds today, today?
