Hope poems
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My life closed twice before its close --
© Emily Dickinson
My life closed twice before its close --
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me
Awake ye muses nine
© Emily Dickinson
Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine,
Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine!Oh the Earth was made for lovers, for damsel, and hopeless swain,
For sighing, and gentle whispering, and unity made of twain.
All things do go a courting, in earth, or sea, or air,
The house where I was born (06)
© Yves Bonnefoy
I woke up, but I was travelling,
The train had rolled throughout the night,
It was now going toward huge clouds
That were standing, packed together, down there,
The house where I was born (07)
© Yves Bonnefoy
I have crossed out
These words a hundred times, in verse, in prose,
But I cannot
Stop them from coming back.)
The Aged Pilot Man
© Mark Twain
On the Erie Canal, it was,
All on a summer's day,
I sailed forth with my parents
Far away to Albany.
Irish Love Song
© Margaret Widdemer
Well, if the thing is over, better it is for me,
The lad was ever a rover, loving and laughing free,
Far too clever a lover not to be having still
A lass in the town and a lass by the road and a lass by the farther hill --
Love on the field and love on the path and love in the woody glen --
(Lad, will I never see you, never your face again?)
The Falconer of God
© William Rose Benet
I flung my soul to the air like a falcon flying.
I said, "Wait on, wait on, while I ride below!
I shall start a heron soon
In the marsh beneath the moon --
The Good Man in Hell
© Edwin Muir
If a good man were ever housed in Hell
By needful error of the qualities,
Perhaps to prove the rule or shame the devil,
Or speak the truth only a stranger sees,
Trojans
© Constantine Cavafy
Our efforts are those of the unfortunate;
our efforts are like those of the Trojans.
Somewhat we succeed; somewhat
we regain confidence; and we start
to have courage and high hopes.
In Harbor
© Constantine Cavafy
A young man, twenty eight years old, on a vessel from Tenos,
Emes arrived at this Syrian harbor
with the intention of learning the perfume trade.
But during the voyage he was taken ill. And as soon
The City
© Constantine Cavafy
You said: "I'll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.
The God Abandons Antony
© Constantine Cavafy
When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don't mourn your luck that's failing now,
Ithaka
© Constantine Cavafy
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
Hope
© Siddharth Anand
Do you believe, in what you see
do you believe in reality
do you believe in the sun thats bright
do you believe in the stars in the night
Rahel to Varnhagen
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
NOTE.Rahel Robert and Varnhagen von Ense were married, after many protestations on her part, in 1814. The marriageso far as he was concerned at any rateappears to have been satisfactory.
Now you have read them all; or if not all,
As many as in all conscience I should fancy
To be enough. There are no more of them
Horace to Leuconoë
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Shatters the Tuscan seas to-day, the last
Be wise withal, and rack your wine, nor fill
Your bosom with large hopes; for while I sing,
The envious close of time is narrowing;
So seize the day, or ever it be past,
And let the morrow come for what it will.
The Three Taverns
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum, and The Three Taverns.(Acts xxviii, 15)
Herodion, Apelles, Amplias,
And Andronicus? Is it you I see
At last? And is it you now that are gazing
The Book of Annandale
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
IPartly to think, more to be left alone,
George Annandale said something to his friends
A word or two, brusque, but yet smoothed enough
To suit their funeral gazeand went upstairs;
Llewellyn and the Tree
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Could he have made Priscilla share
The paradise that he had planned,
Llewellyn would have loved his wife
As well as any in the land.
Avon's Harvest
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Mightnt it be as well, my friend, I said,
For you to contemplate the uncompleted
With not such an infernal certainty?
