Strength poems
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Leipzig
© Thomas Hardy
"OLD Norbert with the flat blue cap--
A German said to be--
Why let your pipe die on your lap,
Your eyes blink absently?"--
Lines
© Thomas Hardy
BEFORE we part to alien thoughts and aims,
Permit the one brief word the occasion claims;
--When mumming and grave projects are allied,
Perhaps an Epilogue is justified.
The Two Men
© Thomas Hardy
THERE were two youths of equal age,
Wit, station, strength, and parentage;
They studied at the self-same schools,
And shaped their thoughts by common rules.
De Profundis
© Thomas Hardy
Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.
The Ivy-Wife
© Thomas Hardy
I LONGED to love a full-boughed beech
And be as high as he:
I stretched an arm within his reach,
And signalled unity.
But with his drip he forced a breach,
And tried to poison me.
The Year's Awakening
© Thomas Hardy
How do you know that the pilgrim track
Along the belting zodiac
Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds
Is traced by now to the Fishes' bounds
My Cicely
© Thomas Hardy
"ALIVE?"--And I leapt in my wonder,
Was faint of my joyance,
And grasses and grove shone in garments
Of glory to me.
No Buyers
© Thomas Hardy
A Load of brushes and baskets and cradles and chairs
Labours along the street in the rain:
With it a man, a woman, a pony with whiteybrown hairs. --
The man foots in front of the horse with a shambling sway
In Tenebris
© Thomas Hardy
Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.
Neutral Tones
© Thomas Hardy
WE stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
--They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
Solidarity Song
© Bertolt Brecht
Peoples of the world, together
Join to serve the common cause!
So it feeds us all for ever
See to it that it's now yours.
Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV, To Richard Boyle,
© Alexander Pope
Still follow sense, of ev'ry art the soul,
Parts answ'ring parts shall slide into a whole,
Spontaneous beauties all around advance,
Start ev'n from difficulty, strike from chance;
Nature shall join you; time shall make it grow
A work to wonder at--perhaps a Stowe.
The Rape of the Lock: Canto 5
© Alexander Pope
Triumphant Umbriel on a sconce's height
Clapp'd his glad wings, and sate to view the fight:
Propp'd on their bodkin spears, the sprites survey
The growing combat, or assist the fray.
The Rape of the Lock
© Alexander Pope
He said; when Shock, who thought she slept too long,
Leapt up, and wak'd his Mistress with his Tongue.
'Twas then Belinda, if Report say true,
Thy Eyes first open'd on a Billet-doux.
Wounds, Charms, and Ardors, were no sooner read,
But all the Vision vanish'd from thy Head.
Essay on Man
© Alexander Pope
The First EpistleAwake, my ST. JOHN!(1) leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of Kings.
Let us (since Life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
An Essay on Man in Four Epistles: Epistle 1
© Alexander Pope
To Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
An Essay On Criticism
© Alexander Pope
But you who seek to give and merit Fame,
And justly bear a Critick's noble Name,
Be sure your self and your own Reach to know.
How far your Genius, Taste, and Learning go;
Launch not beyond your Depth, but be discreet,
And mark that Point where Sense and Dulness meet.
The Torture of Cuauhtemoc
© Alan Seeger
Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms
Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew,
Curling across the jungle's ferny floor,
Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides,
Fragments
© Alan Seeger
There was a time when I thought much of Fame,
And laid the golden edifice to be
That in the clear light of eternity
Should fitly house the glory of my name.
A Message to America
© Alan Seeger
You have the grit and the guts, I know;
You are ready to answer blow for blow
You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard,
But your honor ends with your own back-yard;
