History poems
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Lip-Stick Liz
© Robert William Service
Oh Lip-Stick Liz was in the biz, That's the oldest known in history;
She had a lot of fancy rags, Of her form she made no myst'ry.
She had a man, a fancy man, His name was Alexander,
And he used to beat her up because he couldn't understand her.
The Spell Of The Yukon
© Robert William Service
I wanted the gold, and I sought it,
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy -- I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
The Law Of Laws
© Robert William Service
Grim is the grip of the Machine
And everything we do
Designed implacably has been
Since earth was virgin new:
We strut our parts as they were writ,--
That's all there is to it.
Baby's World
© Rabindranath Tagore
I wish I could take a quiet corner in the heart of my baby's very
own world.
I know it has stars that talk to him, and a sky that stoops
down to his face to amuse him with its silly clouds and rainbows.
Quarantine
© Eavan Boland
In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking-they were both walking-north.
Outside History
© Eavan Boland
These are outsiders, always. These stars
these iron inklings of an Irish January,
whose light happened
thousands of years before
The Growth of Love
© Robert Seymour Bridges
So in despite of sorrow lately learn'd
I still hold true to truth since thou art true,
Nor wail the woe which thou to joy hast turn'd
Nor come the heavenly sun and bathing blue
To my life's need more splendid and unearn'd
Than hath thy gift outmatch'd desire and due.
Santa Fe In Winter
© Deborah Ager
The city is closing for the night.
Stores draw their blinds one by one,
and it's dark again, save for the dim
Some Like Poetry
© Wislawa Szymborska
Write it. Write. In ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they were given no food,
they all died of hunger. "All. How many?
It's a big meadow. How much grass
Parent's Pantoum
© Carolyn Kizer
Where did these enormous children come from,
More ladylike than we have ever been?
Some of ours look older than we feel.
How did they appear in their long dresses
The Flight Of The Duchess
© Robert Browning
You're my friend:
I was the man the Duke spoke to;
I helped the Duchess to cast off his yoke, too;
So here's the tale from beginning to end,
My friend!
Old Pictures In Florence
© Robert Browning
I.The morn when first it thunders in March,
The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say:
As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch
Of the villa-gate this warm March day,
Ars Poetica
© Archibald MacLeish
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown-- A poem should be wordless
Evening Hawk
© Robert Penn Warren
Look!Look!he is climbing the last light
Who knows neither Time nor error, and under
Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings
Into shadow.
A Way to Love God
© Robert Penn Warren
Here is the shadow of truth, for only the shadow is true.
And the line where the incoming swell from the sunset Pacific
First leans and staggers to break will tell all you need to know
About submarine geography, and your father's death rattle
Provides all biographical data required for the Who's Who of the dead.
Stanza
© Emily Jane Brontë
Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:
Love Is Believable
© Lisa Zaran
love is believable
in every moment of exhaustion
in every heartbroken home
in every dark spirit,
the meaning unfolds...
Carthage
© Johann Christoph Friedrich Von Schiller
Oh thou degenerate child of the great and glorious mother,
Who with the Romans' strong might couplest the Tyrians' deceit!
But those ever governed with vigor the earth they had conquered,--
These instructed the world that they with cunning had won.
Say! what renown does history grant thee? Thou, Roman-like, gained'st
That with the steel, which with gold, Tyrian-like, then thou didst rule!
Endymion: Book II
© John Keats
He heard but the last words, nor could contend
One moment in reflection: for he fled
Into the fearful deep, to hide his head
From the clear moon, the trees, and coming madness.
