Patience poems
/ page 46 of 54 /
On The Death of a Father
© Ivan Donn Carswell
This dismal place I hide my grief is crowded shame,
my father would have taught me tame my trembling lips
without contempt, face far constraints tight-lipped,
remain serene; I dream how well I played his silent game.
The Nativity
© William Cowper
Upon my meanness, poverty, and guilt,
The trophy of thy glory shall be built;
My selfdisdain shall be the unshaken base,
And my deformity its fairest grace;
For destitute of good, and rich in ill,
Must be my state and my description still.
Touched my family
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Even from afar came shouts of recognition
joyful voices rang across the years disdained and
faces of our childhood unforgot fit instantly familiar names;
voices still the same despite the extra grey, the extra lines,
The Métier of Blossoming
© Denise Levertov
Fully occupied with growing--that's
the amaryllis. Growing especially
at night: it would take
only a bit more patience than I've got
Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell
© Denise Levertov
Down through the tomb's inward arch
He has shouldered out into Limbo
to gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber:
the merciful dead, the prophets,
Sonnet Of Motherhood XXIX
© Zora Bernice May Cross
O Love, I fear the loneness of my limbs
Leaning to nothing to their solitude.
Draw up the blinds and let the stars rush in,
The mournful moon and all the air she swims.
I would not languish in my mother-mood
While just without earth makes her old, mad din.
The Warning
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
PATIENCE! I yet may pierce the rind
Wherewith are shrewdly girded round
The subtle secrets of his mind:
A dark, unwholesome core is bound
Perchance within it! Sir, you see,
Men are not what they seem to be!
A Word for the Hour
© John Greenleaf Whittier
The firmament breaks up. In black eclipse
Light after light goes out. One evil star,
Luridly glaring through the smoke of war,
As in the dream of the Apocalypse,
from Jubilate Agno, Fragment B, lines 695-768
© Christopher Smart
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
Jubilate Agno: Fragment B, Part 4
© Christopher Smart
Tho' toad I am the object of man's hate.
Yet better am I than a reprobate. who has the worst of prospects.
For there are stones, whose constituent particles are little toads.
Jubilate Agno: Fragment B, Part 3
© Christopher Smart
For a Man is to be looked upon in that which he excells as on a prospect.
For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry (excerpt, Jubilate Agno)
© Christopher Smart
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
Epistle to Mrs. Tyler
© Christopher Smart
I shall not make a long oration
in order for my vindication,
For what the plague can I say more
Than lazy dogs have done before;
Such stuff is naught but mere tautology,
And so take that for my apology.
The Wanderer: A Vision: Canto I
© Richard Savage
The solar fires now faint and wat'ry burn,
Just where with ice Aquarius frets his urn!
If thaw'd, forth issue, from its mouth severe,
Raw clouds, that sadden all th' inverted year.
The Waggoner - Canto Fourth
© William Wordsworth
THUS they, with freaks of proud delight,
Beguile the remnant of the night;
And many a snatch of jovial song
Regales them as they wind along;
Europe, MDCCCCI To Napoleon
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Soars still thy spirit, Child of Fire?
Dost hear the camps of Europe hum?
On eagle wings dost hover nigher
At the far rolling of the drum?
To see the harvest thou hast sown
Smilest thou now, Napoleon?
Paradise Lost : Book XII.
© John Milton
As one who in his journey bates at noon,
Though bent on speed; so here the Arch-Angel paused
Hermann And Dorothea - IV. Euterpe
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Mother," he said in confusion:--"You greatly surprise me!" and quickly
Wiped he away his tears, the noble and sensitive youngster.
"What! You are weeping, my son?" the startled mother continued
"That is indeed unlike you! I never before saw you crying!
Say, what has sadden'd your heart? What drives you to sit here all lonely
Under the shade of the pear-tree? What is it that makes you unhappy?"
