Pet poems

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How To Not Settle It

© Oliver Wendell Holmes

I LIKE, at times, to hear the steeples' chimes
With sober thoughts impressively that mingle;
But sometimes, too, I rather like--don't you?--
To hear the music of the sleigh bells' jingle.

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Ogrin The Hermit

© Edith Wharton

Ogrin the Hermit in old age set forth
This tale to them that sought him in the extreme
Ancient grey wood where he and silence housed:

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L'orgue

© Charles Cros

Sous un roi d'Allemagne, ancien,
Est mort Gottlieb le musicien.
Un l'a cloué sous les planches.
Hou! hou! hou!
Le vent souffle dans les branches.

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La Araucana - Canto II

© Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga

Pónese la discordia que entre los caciques de Arauco hubo sobre la eleción de capitán general, y el medio que se tomó por el consejo del cacique colocolo, con la entrada que por engaño los bárbaros hicieron en la casa fuerte de Tucapel y la batalla que con los españoles tuvieron

Muchos hay en el mundo que han llegado

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Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Antwerp)

© Dante Gabriel Rossetti

“Messieurs, le Dieu des peintres”: We felt odd:

'Twas Rubens, sculptured. A mean florid church

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The Pageant

© John Greenleaf Whittier

A sound as if from bells of silver,
Or elfin cymbals smitten clear,
Through the frost-pictured panes I hear.

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Orlando Furioso Canto 11

© Ludovico Ariosto

ARGUMENT

Assisted by the magic ring she wears,

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The One Certain Thing by Peter Cooley : American Life in Poetry #268 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate

© Ted Kooser

If writers are both skilled and lucky, they may write something that will carry their words into the future, past the hour of their own deaths. I’d guess all writers hope for this, and the following poem by Peter Cooley, who lives in New Orleans and teaches creative writing at Tulane, beautifully expresses his hope, and theirs.

The One Certain Thing

A day will come I’ll watch you reading this.

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Dedication

© John Le Gay Brereton

Grant me a moment of peace,

  Let me but open mine eyes,

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Don Juan: Canto The Thirteenth

© George Gordon Byron

I now mean to be serious;--it is time,

  Since laughter now-a-days is deem'd too serious.

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Vanitas Vanitatum

© William Makepeace Thackeray

How spake of old the Royal Seer?
 (His text is one I love to treat on.)
This life of ours he said is sheer
 Mataiotes Mataioteton.

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A Hyde Park Larrikin

© Henry Kendall

Most likely you have stuck to tracts
 Flushed through with flaming curses -
I judge you, neighbour, by your acts -
 So don't you damn my verses.

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At The Burns Centennial

© James Russell Lowell

I

A hundred years! they're quickly fled,

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Written In Petrarch’s House At Arqua, Among The Euganean Hills

© Richard Monckton Milnes

Petrarch! I would that there might be
In this thy household sanctuary
No visible monument of thee:

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A Ho! A Ho! (Song )

© Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Act II Scene ii, lines 26-55


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By Mons. Fontenelle

© Matthew Prior

Ma petite ame, ma mignonne,
Tu t'en vas donc, má fille, et Dieu scache ou tu vas:
Tu pars seulette, nuë, et tremblotante, helas!
Que deviendra ton humeur folichonne?
Que deviendront tant de jolis ébats?

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Kwannon

© Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall

  Camphor and wave-worn sandalwood for burning
  They bring to me alone,
  Shells that are veined like irises, and those
  Curved like the clear bright petals of a rose.
  Wherefore an hundredfold again returning
  I render them their own -

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The Heretic's Tragedy

© Robert Browning

 (It would seem to be a glimpse from the
burning of Jacques du Bourg-Mulay, at Paris,
A. D. 1314; as distorted by the refraction from
Flemish brain to brain, during the course of
a couple of centuries.)

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Misconstruction

© Paul Hamilton Hayne

HOW man misjudges man! the outward seeming,
Gesture, or glance, or utterance that may jar
Against some petty, pampered, poor conceit,
Unworthy, undefined, is straightway made

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Pretence. Part I - Table-Talk

© John Kenyon

  The youth, who long hath trod with trusting feet,
  Starts from the flash which shows him life's deceit;
  Then, with slow footstep, ponders, undeceived,
  On all his heart, for many a year, believed;
  But hence he eyes the world with sharpened view,
  And learns, too soon, to separate false from true.