Courage

Love

Life

Nature

Death

Friendship

Inspirational

Heartbreak

Sadness

Family

Hope

Happiness

Loss

War

Dreams

Spirituality

Courage

Freedom

Identity

Betrayal

Loneliness

Page 136 of 1791

Sonnets - VI. - To......

"Miss not the occasion: by the forelock take
That subtile Power, the never-halting Time,
Lest a mere moment's putting-off should make
Mischance almost as heavy as a crime."



"Wait, prithee, wait!" this answer Lesbia threw
Forth to her Dove, and took no further heed;
Her eye was busy, while her fingers flew
Across the harp, with soul-engrossing speed;
But from that bondage when her thoughts were freed
She rose, and toward the close-shut casement drew,
Whence the poor unregarded Favourite, true
To old affections, had been heard to plead
With flapping wing for entrance. What a shriek!
Forced from that voice so lately tuned to a strain
Of harmony! a shriek of terror, pain,
And self-reproach! for, from aloft, a Kite
Pounced, and the Dove, which fro...

William Wordsworth

The Peace Autumn

Thank God for rest, where none molest,
And none can make afraid;
For Peace that sits as Plenty's guest
Beneath the homestead shade!
Bring pike and gun, the sword's red scourge,
The negro's broken chains,
And beat them at the blacksmith's forge
To ploughshares for our plains.
Alike henceforth our hills of snow,
And vales where cotton flowers;
All streams that flow, all winds that blow,
Are Freedom's motive-powers.
Henceforth to Labor's chivalry
Be knightly honors paid;
For nobler than the sword's shall be
The sickle's accolade.
Build up an altar to the Lord,
O grateful hearts of ours!
And shape it of the greenest sward
That ever drank the showers.
Lay all the bloom of gardens there,
And there the orchard fruits;
Bring golden grain ...

John Greenleaf Whittier

A Canticle: Significant of the national exaltation of enthusiasm at the close of the War.

O the precipice Titanic
Of the congregated Fall,
And the angle oceanic
Where the deepening thunders call -
And the Gorge so grim,
And the firmamental rim!
Multitudinously thronging
The waters all converge,
Then they sweep adown in sloping
Solidity of surge.

The Nation, in her impulse
Mysterious as the Tide,
In emotion like an ocean
Moves in power, not in pride;
And is deep in her devotion
As Humanity is wide.

Thou Lord of hosts victorious,
The confluence Thou hast twined;
By a wondrous way and glorious
A passage Thou dost find -
A passage Thou dost find:
Hosanna to the Lord of hosts,
The hosts of human kind.

Stable in its baselessness
When calm is in the air,
The Iris half in tracelessness
Hov...

Herman Melville

Champions of Liberty.

The pride of all our chivalry,
    The name of Worth will stand,
While throbs the pulse of liberty
    Within his native land:
The wreath his brow was formed to wear,
A nation's tears will freshen there.

The young companion of his fame,
    In war and peace allied,
With garlands woven round his name,
    Reposes at his side:
Duncan, whose deeds for evermore
Will live amid his cannon's roar.

Gates, in his country's quarrel bold,
    When she to arms appealed,
Sought like the Christian knights of old,
    His laurels on the field:
Where victory rent the welkin-dome,
He earned--a sepulchre at home.

The drum-beat of the bannered brave,
    The requiem and the knell,
The volley o'er the soldier's grave,
    His comrades' l...

George Pope Morris

To A Poet That Died Young

        Minstrel, what have you to do
        With this man that, after you,
        Sharing not your happy fate,
        Sat as England's Laureate?
        Vainly, in these iron days,
        Strives the poet in your praise,
        Minstrel, by whose singing side
        Beauty walked, until you died.

        Still, though none should hark again,
        Drones the blue-fly in the pane,
        Thickly crusts the blackest moss,
        Blows the rose its musk across,
        Floats the boat that is forgot
        None the less to Camelot.

        Many a bard's untimely death
        Lends unto his verses breath;
        Here's a song was never sung:
        Growing old is dying young.
        Minstrel, what is this to you:
        ...

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I Had A Guinea Golden.

I had a guinea golden;
I lost it in the sand,
And though the sum was simple,
And pounds were in the land,
Still had it such a value
Unto my frugal eye,
That when I could not find it
I sat me down to sigh.

I had a crimson robin
Who sang full many a day,
But when the woods were painted
He, too, did fly away.
Time brought me other robins, --
Their ballads were the same, --
Still for my missing troubadour
I kept the 'house at hame.'

I had a star in heaven;
One Pleiad was its name,
And when I was not heeding
It wandered from the same.
And though the skies are crowded,
And all the night ashine,
I do not care about it,
Since none of them are mine.

My story has a moral:
I have a missing friend, --
Ple...

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

After Witnessing A Death-Scene.

    Press close your lips,
And bow your heads to earth, for Death is here!
Mark ye not how across that eye so clear,
    Steals his eclipse?

    A moment more,
And the quick throbbings of her heart shall cease,
Her pain-wrung spirit will obtain release,
    And all be o'er!

    Hush! Seal ye up
Your gushing tears, for Mercy's hand hath shaken
Her earth-bonds off, and from her lip hath taken
    Grief's bitter cup.

    Ye know the dead
Are they who rest secure from care and strife, -
That they who walk the thorny way of life,
    Have tears to shed.

    Ye know her pray'r,
Was for the quiet of the tomb's deep rest, -
Love's sepulchre lay cold within her breast,
    Could peace dwell there?

    A tale soon told,<...

George W. Sands

Sketch Of A Schoolfellow.

He sat by me in school. His face is now
Vividly in my mind, as if he went
From me but yesterday - its pleasant smile
And the rich, joyous laughter of his eye,
And the free play of his unhaughty lip,
So redolent of his heart! He was not fair,
Nor singular, nor over-fond of books,
And never melancholy when alone.
He was the heartiest in the ring, the last
Home from the summer's wanderings, and the first
Over the threshold when the school was done.
All of us loved him. We shall speak his name
In the far years to come, and think of him
When we have lost life's simplest passages,
And pray for him - forgetting he is dead -
Life was in him so passing beautiful!

His childhood had been wasted in the close
And airless city. He had never thought
That the ...

Nathaniel Parker Willis

Grin

If you're up against a bruiser and you're getting knocked about -
                    Grin.
If you're feeling pretty groggy, and you're licked beyond a doubt -
                    Grin.
Don't let him see you're funking, let him know with every clout,
Though your face is battered to a pulp, your blooming heart is stout;
Just stand upon your pins until the beggar knocks you out -
                    And grin.

This life's a bally battle, and the same advice holds true,
                    Of grin.
If you're up against it badly, then it's only one on you,
                    So grin.
If the future's black as thunder, don't let people see you're blue;
Just cultivate a cast-iron smile of joy the whole day through;
If they call you "Little Sunshine," wish that they'd<...

Robert William Service

When The Storm Was Proudest
When the storm was proudest,
And the wind was loudest,
I heard the hollow caverns drinking down below;
When the stars were bright,
And the ground was white,
I heard the grasses springing underneath the snow.

Many voices spake--
The river to the lake,
And the iron-ribbed sky was talking to the sea;
And every starry spark
Made music with the dark,
And said how bright and beautiful everything must be.

When the sun was setting,
All the clouds were getting
Beautiful and silvery in the rising moon;
Beneath the leafless trees
Wrangling in the breeze,
I could hardly see them for the leaves of June.

When the day had ended,
And the night descended,
I heard the sound of streams ...
George MacDonald

The Ballad Of The Battle Of Gibeon
Five kings rule o'er the Amorite,
Mighty as fear and old as night;
Swathed with unguent and gold and jewel,
Waxed they merry and fat and cruel.
Zedek of Salem, a terror and glory,
Whose face was hid while his robes were gory;
And Hoham of Hebron, whose loathly face is
Heavy and dark o'er the ruin of races;
And Piram of Jarmuth, drunk with strange wine,
Who dreamed he had fashioned all stars that shine;
And Debir of Eglon wild, without pity,
Who raged like a plague in the midst of his city;
And Japhia of Lachish, a fire that flameth,
Who did in the daylight what no man nameth.

These five kings said one to another,
'King unto king o'er the world is brother,
Seeing that now, for a sign and a wonder,
A red eclipse and a tongue of thunder,
A shape a...
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Elemental Drifts
Elemental drifts!
How I wish I could impress others as you have just been impressing me!

As I ebb'd with an ebb of the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you, Paumanok,
Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant,
Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,
I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,
Alone, held by this eternal Self of me, out of the pride of which I utter my poems,
Was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
In the rim, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.

Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those slender winrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,
Scum...
Walt Whitman

Not Every Day Fit For Verse
'Tis not ev'ry day that I
Fitted am to prophesy:
No, but when the spirit fills
The fantastic pannicles,
Full of fire, then I write
As the Godhead doth indite.
Thus enraged, my lines are hurl'd,
Like the Sibyl's, through the world:
Look how next the holy fire
Either slakes, or doth retire;
So the fancy cools: till when
That brave spirit comes again.
Robert Herrick

Marsyas
CALLICLES (from below)

As the sky-brightening south-wind clears the day,
And makes the massd clouds roll,
The music of the lyre blows away
The clouds that wrap the soul.

Oh, that Fate had let me see
That triumph of the sweet persuasive lyre!
That famous, final victory
When jealous Pan with Marsyas did conspire!

When, from far Parnassus side,
Young Apollo, all the pride
Of the Phrygian flutes to tame,
To the Phrygian highlands came!
Where the long green reed-beds sway
In the rippled waters grey
Of that solitary lake
Where Maeanders springs are born;
Where the ridgd pine-wooded roots
Of Messogis westward break,
Mounting westward, high and higher.
There was held the famous strife;
There the Phrygian brought his...
Matthew Arnold

Sunset On The River
I.

A Sea of onyx are the skies,
Cloud-islanded with fire;
Such nacre-colored flame as dyes
A sea-shell's rosy spire;
And at its edge one star sinks slow,
Burning, into the overglow.

II.

Save for the cricket in the grass,
Or passing bird that twitters,
The world is hushed. Like liquid glass
The soundless river glitters
Between the hills that hug and hold
Its beauty like a hoop of gold.

III.

The glory deepens; and, meseems,
A vasty canvas, painted
With revelations of God's dreams
And visions symbol-sainted,
The west is, that each night-cowled hill
Kneels down before in worship still.

IV.

There is no thing to wake unrest;
No sight or sound to jangle
The peace that evening in the bre...
Madison Julius Cawein

Words
I had this thought a while ago,
"My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would do
In this blind bitter land."
And I grew weary of the sun
Until my thoughts cleared up again,
Remembering that the best I have done
Was done to make it plain;
That every year I have cried, "At length
My darling understands it all,
Because I have come into my strength,
And words obey my call";
That had she done so who can say
What would have shaken from the sieve?
I might have thrown poor words away
And been content to live.
William Butler Yeats

The Opossum-Hunters
Hear ye not the waters beating where the rapid rivers, meeting
With the winds above them fleeting, hurry to the distant seas,
And a smothered sound of singing from old Ocean upwards springing,
Sending hollow echoes ringing like a wailing on the breeze?
For the tempest round us brewing, cometh with the clouds pursuing,
And the bright Day, like a ruin, crumbles from the mournful trees.

When the thunder ceases pealing, and the stars up heaven are stealing,
And the Moon above us wheeling throws her pleasant glances round,
From our homes we boldly sally neath the trysting tree to rally,
For a night-hunt up the valley, with our brothers and the hound!
Through a wild-eyed Forest, staring at the light above it glaring,
We will travel, little caring for the dangers where we bound.
...
Henry Kendall

Homesick In Heaven
THE DIVINE VOICE
Go seek thine earth-born sisters, - thus the Voice
That all obey, - the sad and silent three;
These only, while the hosts of Heaven rejoice,
Smile never; ask them what their sorrows be;

And when the secret of their griefs they tell,
Look on them with thy mild, half-human eyes;
Say what thou wast on earth; thou knowest well;
So shall they cease from unavailing sighs.

THE ANGEL
Why thus, apart, - the swift-winged herald spake, -
Sit ye with silent lips and unstrung lyres
While the trisagion's blending chords awake
In shouts of joy from all the heavenly choirs?

FIRST SPIRIT
Chide not thy sisters, - thus the answer came; -
Children of earth, our half-weaned nature clings
To earth's fond memories, and her whispered name...
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Page 136 of 1791

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Page 136 of 1791