Wish poems
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Don Juan: Canto The Seventh
© George Gordon Byron
O Love! O Glory! what are ye who fly
Around us ever, rarely to alight?
Crystal Gazer
© Sylvia Plath
Gerd sits spindle-shaped in her dark tent,
Lean face gone tawn with seasons ,
Skin worn down to the knucklebones
At her tough trade; without time's taint
The burnished ball hangs fire in her hands, a lens
Fusing time's three horizons.
Metamorphoses: Book The Tenth
© Ovid
The End of the Tenth Book.
Translated into English verse under the direction of
Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison,
William Congreve and other eminent hands
Woodnotes
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
II
As sunbeams stream through liberal space
And nothing jostle or displace,
So waved the pine-tree through my thought
And fanned the dreams it never brought.
I dont remember the word I wished to say
© Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
I dont remember the word I wished to say.
The blind swallow returns to the hall of shadow,
on shorn wings, with the translucent ones to play.
The song of night is sung without memory, though.
Sonnet LXXXI.
© Charlotte Turner Smith
HE may be envied, who with tranquil breast
Can wander in the wild and woodland scene,
When summer's glowing hands have newly dress'd
The shadowy forests, and the copses green;
Theron And Zoe
© Walter Savage Landor
Theron: That, since we sate together lay by day,
And walkt together, sang together, none
Of earliest, gentlest, fondest, maiden friends
Loved you as formerly. If one remain'd
Dearer to you than any of the rest,
You could not wish her greater happiness . .
The Ladle. A Tale
© Matthew Prior
Our gods the outward gates unbarr'd;
Our farmer met 'em in the yard;
Thought they were folks that lost their way,
And ask'd them civilly to stay;
Told 'em for supper or for bed
They might go on and be worse sped. -
Song of Unending Sorrow.
© Bai Juyi
China's Emperor, craving beauty that might shake an empire,
Was on the throne for many years, searching, never finding,
The Witch of Hebron
© Charles Harpur
Of golden lamps, showed many a treasure rare
Of Indian and Armenian workmanship
Which might have seemed a wonder of the world:
And trains of servitors of every clime,
Greeks, Persians, Indians, Ethiopians,
In richest raiment thronged the spacious halls.
The Ring And The Book - Chapter V - Count Guido Franceschini
© Robert Browning
That is a way, thou whisperest in my ear!
I doubt, I will decide, then act, said I
Then beckoned my companions: Time is come!
Waiting and Wishing
© Henry Kendall
I loiter by this surging sea,
Here, by this surging, sooming sea,
Coming Home
© Augusta Davies Webster
Anyhow
I've poetry and music too to-day
in the very clatter: it goes "Home, home, home."
Ode to Walt Whitman
© Federico Garcia Lorca
By the East River and the Bronx
boys were singing, exposing their waists
with the wheel, with oil, leather, and the hammer.
Ninety thousand miners taking silver from the rocks
and children drawing stairs and perspectives.
Elegy XVI. He Suggests the Advantage of Birth To a Person of Merit
© William Shenstone
When genius, graced with lineal splendour, glows,
When title shines, with ambient virtues crown'd,
Like some fair almond's flowery pomp it shows,
The pride, the perfume, of the regions round.
Possum Trot
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
I 've journeyed 'roun' consid'able, a-seein' men an' things,
An' I 've learned a little of the sense that meetin' people brings;
But in spite of all my travelling an' of all I think I know,
I 've got one notion in my head, that I can't git to go;
An' it is that the folks I meet in any other spot
Ain't half so good as them I knowed back home in Possum Trot.
An Epistle To George William Curtis
© James Russell Lowell
Curtis, whose Wit, with Fancy arm in arm,
Masks half its muscle in its skill to charm,
See Where The Thames, The Purest Stream
© William Cowper
See where the Thames, the purest stream
That wavers to the noon-day beam,
Divides the vale below;
While like a vein of liquid ore
His waves enrich the happy shore,
Still shining as they flow.
Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 1.
© William Cowper
Adam, arise, since I do thee impart
A spirit warm from my benignant breath:
Arise, arise, first man,
And joyous let the world
Embrace its living miniature in thee!
Upon my Lap my Sovereign Sits
© Martin Peerson
I grieve that duty doth not work
All that my wishing would,
Because I would not be to thee
But in the best I should.
Sing lullaby, my little boy,
Sing lullaby, mine only joy!
