Betrayal

Love

Life

Nature

Death

Friendship

Inspirational

Heartbreak

Sadness

Family

Hope

Happiness

Loss

War

Dreams

Spirituality

Courage

Freedom

Identity

Betrayal

Loneliness

Page 600 of 1217

Epitaph On Mrs. M. Higgins, Of Weston.

Laurels may flourish round the conquerors tomb,
But happiest they who win the world to come:
Believers have a silent field to fight,
And their exploits are veild from human sight.
They in some nook, where little known they dwell,
Kneel, pray in faith, and rout the hosts of hell;
Eternal triumphs crown their toils divine,
And all those triumphs, Mary, now are thine.

William Cowper

To The Marchioness Dowager Of Donegall.

FROM BERMUDA, JANUARY, 1804.


Lady! where'er you roam, whatever land
Woos the bright touches of that artist hand;
Whether you sketch the valley's golden meads,
Where mazy Linth his lingering current leads;^[1]
Enamored catch the mellow hues that sleep,
At eve, on Meillerie's immortal steep;
Or musing o'er the Lake, at day's decline,
Mark the last shadow on that holy shrine,^[2]
Where, many a night, the shade of Tell complains
Of Gallia's triumph and Helvetia's chains;
Oh! lay the pencil for a moment by,
Turn from the canvas that creative eye,
And let its splendor, like the morning ray
Upon a shepherd's harp, illume my lay.

Yet, Lady, no--for song so rude as mine,
Chase not the wonders of your art divine;
Still, radiant...

Thomas Moore

To The Leaven'd Soil They Trod

To the leaven'd soil they trod, calling, I sing, for the last;
(Not cities, nor man alone, nor war, nor the dead,
But forth from my tent emerging for good, loosing, untying the tent-ropes;)
In the freshness, the forenoon air, in the far-stretching circuits and vistas, again to peace restored,
To the fiery fields emanative, and the endless vistas beyond, to the south and the north;
To the leaven'd soil of the general western world, to attest my songs,
(To the average earth, the wordless earth, witness of war and peace,)
To the Alleghanian hills, and the tireless Mississippi,
To the rocks I, calling, sing, and all the trees in the woods,
To the plain of the poems of heroes, to the prairie spreading wide,
To the far-off sea, and the unseen winds, and the same impalpable air;
And respondi...

Walt Whitman

The Book Of Martyrs.

Read, sweet, how others strove,
Till we are stouter;
What they renounced,
Till we are less afraid;
How many times they bore
The faithful witness,
Till we are helped,
As if a kingdom cared!

Read then of faith
That shone above the fagot;
Clear strains of hymn
The river could not drown;
Brave names of men
And celestial women,
Passed out of record
Into renown!

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Alexander Crummell--Dead

Back to the breast of thy mother,
Child of the earth!
E'en her caress can not smother
What thou hast done.
Follow the trail of the westering sun
Over the earth.
Thy light and his were as one--
Sun, in thy worth.
Unto a nation whose sky was as night,
Camest thou, holily, bearing thy light:
And the dawn came,
In it thy fame
Flashed up in a flame.

Back to the breast of thy mother--
To rest.
Long hast thou striven;
Dared where the hills by the lightning of heaven were riven;
Go now, pure shriven.
Who shall come after thee, out of the clay--
Learned one and leader to show us the way?
Who shall rise up when the world gives the test?
Think thou no more of this--
Rest!

Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Lake

In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less,
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon the spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody,
Then,ah, then, I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight,
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define,
Nor Love,although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining,
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of t...

Edgar Allan Poe

Battle Bunny

(Malvern Hill, 1864)


After the men were ordered to lie down, a white rabbit, which had been hopping hither and thither over the field swept by grape and musketry, took refuge among the skirmishers, in the breast of a corporal.
- Report of the Battle of Malvern Hill.

Bunny, lying in the grass,
Saw the shining column pass;
Saw the starry banner fly,
Saw the chargers fret and fume,
Saw the flapping hat and plume,
Saw them with his moist and shy
Most unspeculative eye,
Thinking only, in the dew,
That it was a fine review.

Till a flash, not all of steel,
Where the rolling caissons wheel,
Brought a rumble and a roar
Rolling down that velvet floor,
And like blows of autumn flail
Sharply threshed the iron hail.

Bunny, thril...

Bret Harte

Symphony In Yellow
An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.

Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.

The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Autumn Days.
Yellow, mellow, ripened days,
Sheltered in a golden coating;
O'er the dreamy, listless haze,
White and dainty cloudlets floating;
Winking at the blushing trees,
And the sombre, furrowed fallow;
Smiling at the airy ease
Of the southward-flying swallow.
Sweet and smiling are thy ways,
Beauteous, golden, Autumn days!

Shivering, quivering, tearful days,
Fretfully and sadly weeping;
Dreading still, with anxious gaze,
Icy fetters round thee creeping;
O'er the cheerless, withered plain,
Woefully and hoarsely calling;
Pelting hail and drenching rain
On thy scanty vestments falling.
Sad and mournful are thy ways,
Grieving, wailing, Autumn days!
Will Carleton

The Woods And The Woodman.
A certain wood-chopper lost or broke
From his axe's eye a bit of oak.
The forest must needs be somewhat spared
While such a loss was being repair'd.
Came the man at last, and humbly pray'd
That the woods would kindly lend to him -
A moderate loan - a single limb,
Whereof might another helve be made,
And his axe should elsewhere drive its trade.
O, the oaks and firs that then might stand,
A pride and a joy throughout the land,
For their ancientness and glorious charms!
The innocent Forest lent him arms;
But bitter indeed was her regret;
For the wretch, his axe new-helved and whet,
Did nought but his benefactress spoil
Of the finest trees that graced her soil;
And ceaselessly was she made to groan,
Doing penance for that fatal loan.

Behold t...
Jean de La Fontaine

Sonnet LIV. A Persian King To His Son.
FROM A PROSE TRANSLATION IN SIR WILLIAM JONES' ESSAY ON THE POETRY OF THE EASTERN NATIONS.

Guard thou, my Son, the Helpless and the Poor,
Nor in the chains of thine own indolence
Slumber enervate, while the joys of sense
Engross thee; and thou say'st, "I ask no more." -
Wise Men the Shepherd's slumber will deplore
When the rapacious Wolf has leapt the fence,
And ranges thro' the fold. - My Son, dispense
Those laws, that justice to the Wrong'd restore. -
The Common-Weal shou'd be the first pursuit
Of the crown'd Warrior, for the royal brows
The People first enwreath'd. - They are the Root,
The King the Tree. Aloft he spreads his boughs
Glorious; but learn, impetuous Youth, at length,
Trees from the Root alone der...
Anna Seward

To William Shelley.
Thy little footsteps on the sands
Of a remote and lonely shore;
The twinkling of thine infant hands,
Where now the worm will feed no more;
Thy mingled look of love and glee
When we returned to gaze on thee -
Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Gipsy Trail
The white moth to the closing bine,
The bee to the opened clover,
And the gipsy blood to the gipsy blood
Ever the wide world over.

Ever the wide world over, lass,
Ever the trail held true,
Over the world and under the world,
And back at the last to you.

Out of the dark of the gorgio camp,
Out of the grime and the grey
(Morning waits at the end of the world),
Gipsy, come away!

The wild boar to the sun-dried swamp,
The red crane to her reed,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad,
By the tie of a roving breed.

The pied snake to the rifted rock,
The buck to the stony plain,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad,
And both to the road again.

Both to the road again, again!
Out on a clean sea-track,
Follow th...
Rudyard

Don Juan - Dedication
Bob Southey! You're a poet, poet laureate,
And representative of all the race.
Although 'tis true that you turned out a Tory at
Last, yours has lately been a common case.
And now my epic renegade, what are ye at
With all the lakers, in and out of place?
A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye
Like four and twenty blackbirds in a pye,

Which pye being opened they began to sing'
(This old song and new simile holds good),
'A dainty dish to set before the King'
Or Regent, who admires such kind of food.
And Coleridge too has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumbered with his hood,
Explaining metaphysics to the nation.
I wish he would explain his explanation.

You, Bob, are rather insolent, you know,
At being disappointed in your wish
To superse...
George Gordon Byron

The Hushed House
I, who went at nightfall, came again at dawn;
On Love's door again I knocked. Love was gone.

He who oft had bade me in, now would bid no more;
Silence sat within his house; barred its door.

When the slow door opened wide through it I could see
How the emptiness within stared at me.

Through the dreary chambers, long I sought and sighed,
But no answering footstep came; naught replied.

Then at last I entered, dim, a darkened room:
There a taper glimmered gray in the gloom.

And I saw one lying crowned with helichrys;
Never saw I face as fair as was his.

Like a wintry lily was his brow in hue;
And his cheeks were each a rose, wintry too.

Then my soul remembered all that made us part,
And what I had laughed at once broke my heart...
Madison Julius Cawein

The Robin Redbreast. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)
Poor Robin sits and sings alone
When showers of driving sleet,
By the cold winds of winter blown,
The cottage casement beat.

Come, let him share our chimney nook,
And dry his dripping wing;
See, little Mary shuts her book,
And cries, "Poor Robin, sing!"

Methinks I hear his faint reply:
When cowslips deck the plain,
The lark shall carol in the sky,
And I shall sing again.

But in the cold and wintry day,
To you I owe a debt,
That in the sunshine of the May
I never can forget!
William Lisle Bowles

Sunbeam
I pray to the sunbeam from the window -
It is pale, thin, straight.
Since morning I have been silent,
And my heart - is split.
The copper on my washstand
Has turned green,
But the sunbeam plays on it
So charmingly.
How innocent it is, and simple,
In the evening calm,
But to me in this deserted temple
It's like a golden celebration,
And a consolation.
Anna Akhmatova

A Summer Day
White clouds, like thistledown at fault,
That drift through heaven's azure vault.
The sun beams down; the weedy ground
Vibrates with many an insect sound.
Blackberry-lilies in the noon
Lean to the creek with eyes a-swoon,
Where, in a shallow, silver gleams
Of minnows and a heron dreams
An old road, clouding pale the heat
Behind a slow hoof's muffled beat:
And there, hill-gazing at the skies,
A pond, within whose languor lies
A twinkle, like an eye that smiles
In thought; that with a dream beguiles
The day: a. dream of clouds that drift,
And arms the willow trees uplift,
Protectingly, as if to hide
The wildbird on its nest that cried.
Now mists that mass thesunset-dyes
Build an Arabia in the skies,
Through which the sun in pomp retires,
Madison Julius Cawein

Page 600 of 1217

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