CLASSIC POEMS

Black Beauty

Ebony is what I call her name
She and beauty are equal and same
Whenever she's out of sight causes an ache
Because she taste sweet like cake
.....

Ogunjobi Olaitan

Gone Not Forever

You gone?
Tell him to love you harder,
Never strike your head deeper,
Not walk away when you shout,
.....

Brian Dredan

Timeless Frame

Whirling winds, rumbling seas
thy feet frets not.
Charging Stallion, raging roars
yet courage isn't faint.
.....

Iyen Guobadia

To Helen (ii)

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
.....

Edgar Allan Poe

Il Bacio [english]

Kiss! Hollyhock in Love's luxuriant close!
Brisk music played on pearly little keys,
In tempo with the witching melodies
Love in the ardent heart repeating goes.
.....

Paul Verlaine

Four Charades

1

My first is no proof of my second,
Though my second's a proof of my first:
.....

Christina Rossetti

August Moon

Look! the round-cheeked moon floats high,
In the glowing August sky,
Quenching all her neighbor stars,
Save the steady flame of Mars.
.....

Emma Lazarus

The Last Walk In Autumn

I.
O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched hands
Plead with the leaden heavens in vain,
I see, beyond the valley lands,
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

An Ode On The Popular Superstitions Of The Highlands Of Scotland, Considered As The Subject Of Poetr

Home, thou return'st from Thames, whose naiads long
Have seen thee ling'ring with a fond delay
'Mid those soft friends, whose hearts, some future day,
Shall melt, perhaps, to hear thy tragic song.
.....

William Collins

Leo

I made a journey o'er the sea,
I bade my faithful dog good-bye,
I knew that he would grieve for me,
But did not dream that he would die!
.....

John L. Stoddard

To J.b.

Within an Old World, classic vase
She blossomed like a flower,
And made Italian summer days
Seem fleeting as an hour;
.....

John L. Stoddard

To An Ungentle Critic

The great sun sinks behind the town
Through a red mist of Volnay wine….
But what's the use of setting down
That glorious blaze behind the town?
.....

Robert Graves

Sketches In The Exhibition

What various objects strike with various force,
Achilles, Hebe, and Sir Watkin's horse!
Here summer scenes, there Pentland's stormy ridge,
Lords, ladies, Noah's ark, and Cranford bridge!
.....

William Lisle Bowles

The Adieu. Written Under The Impression That The Author Would Soon Die.

1.

Adieu, thou Hill! [1] where early joy
Spread roses o'er my brow;
.....

George Gordon Byron

The Song Sparrow

Fair little scout, that when the iron year
Changes, and the first fleecy clouds deploy,
Comest with such a sudden burst of joy,
Lifting on winter's doomed and broken rear
.....

Archibald Lampman

Sword Blades And Poppy Seed

A drifting, April, twilight sky,
A wind which blew the puddles dry,
And slapped the river into waves
That ran and hid among the staves
.....

Amy Lowell

For Some Poems By Matthew Arnold

Sweeping the chords of Hellas with firm hand,
He wakes lost echoes from song's classic shore,
And brings their crystal cadence back once more
To touch the clouds and sorrows of a land
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Ode On A Distant Prospect Of Clapham Academy

I

Ah me! those old familiar bounds!
That classic house, those classic grounds
.....

Thomas Hood

On The New Forcers Of Conscience Under The Long Parliament

Because you have thrown of your Prelate Lord,
And with stiff Vowes renounc'd his Liturgie
To seise the widdow'd whore Pluralitie
From them whose sin ye envi'd, not abhor'd,
.....

John Milton

Aquileia

On the election of the Roman Emperor Maximus, by the
Senate, A.D. 238, a powerful army, headed by the Thracian
giant Maximus, laid siege to Aquileia. Though poorly
prepared for war, the constancy of her citizens rendered her
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Dolly Varden

Dear Dolly! who does not recall
The thrilling page that pictured all
Those charms that held our sense in thrall
Just as the artist caught her,-
.....

Bret Harte

Tiresias

I wish I were as in the years of old
While yet the blessed daylight made itself
Ruddy thro' both the roofs of sight, and woke
These eyes, now dull, but then so keen to seek
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Pauline Part I

To the memory of my devoted wife dead and gone yet always with me I dedicate

PAULINE

.....

Hanford Lennox Gordon

The Mississippi

I.

Far in the West, where snow-capt mountains rise,
Like marble shafts beneath Heaven's stooping dome,
.....

Sam G. Goodrich

Poetry And Reality

THE worldly minded, cast in common mould,
With all his might pursuing fame or gold,
And towards that goal too vehemently hurled
To waste a thought about another world,
.....

Jane Taylor

The Brother's Reply

Sister, fie, for shame, no more,
Give this ignorant babble o'er,
Nor with little female pride
Things above your sense deride.
.....

Charles Lamb

An American Addresses Philomela

Procne, Philomela, and Itylus,
Your names are liquid, your improbable tale
Is recited in the classic numbers of the nightingale.
Ah, but our numbers are not felicitous,
.....

John Crowe Ransom

Night

Night is the time for rest;
How sweet, when labors close,
To gather round an aching breast
The curtain of repose,
.....

James Montgomery

The Undying One - Canto Ii

'YEARS pass'd away in grief--and I,
For her dear sake whose heart could feel no more,
The sweetness and the witchery of love,
Which round my spirit such deep charm had wove:
.....

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton

Lydia Dick

When I was a boy at college,
Filling up with classic knowledge,
Frequently I wondered why
Old Professor Demas Bently
.....

Eugene Field

To James Bromley With 'wordsworth's Grave'

Ere vandal lords with lust of gold accurst
Deface each hallowed hillside we revere--
Ere cities in their million-throated thirst
Menace each sacred mere--
.....

William Watson

Imitations Of Horace: The First Epistle Of The Second Book

Ne Rubeam, Pingui donatus Munere
(Horace, Epistles II.i.267)
While you, great patron of mankind, sustain
The balanc'd world, and open all the main;
.....

Alexander Pope

The Dinkum Aussie Block

What have we missed? Now he returns no more
We are left with but our blindness to deplore,
But, concentrating on his spats instead,
Missed all the lure of that impressive head.
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Dion

. See Plutarch.
Serene, and fitted to embrace,
Where'er he turned, a swan-like grace
Of haughtiness without pretence,
.....

William Wordsworth

The Adieu

Written Under The Impression That The Author Would Soon Die.


Adieu, thou Hill! where early joy
.....

George Gordon Byron

Gnothi Seauton

When Scaliger, whole years of labour past,
Beheld his lexicon complete at last
And weary of his task, with wond'ring eyes,
Saw, from words pil'd on words, a fabric rise,
.....

Samuel Johnson

Rover

No classic warrior tempts my pen
To fill with verse these pages
No lordly-hearted man of men
My Muse's thought engages.
.....

Henry Kendall

The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode On The Birth Of Lincoln

I

O, fairest Dame of sylvan glades,
We come to pay thee homage due,
.....

Edward Smyth Jones

At Lenno

By Lake Como's sylvan shore,
Where the wavelets evermore
Seem to rhythmically murmur of the classic days of yore,
Cease, O boatman, now to row!
.....

John L. Stoddard

A Classical Revival

At the outset I may mention it's my sovereign intention
To revive the classic memories of Athens at its best,
For my company possesses all the necessary dresses,
And a course of quiet cramming will supply us with the rest.
.....

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Restoration Of The Works Of Art In Italy

LAND of departed fame! whose classic plains
Have proudly echo'd to immortal strains;
Whose hallow'd soil hath given the great and brave
Daystars of life, a birth-place and a grave;
.....

Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Childish Recollections

“I cannot but remember such things were,
And were most dear to me.”
‘Macbeth'

.....

George Gordon Lord Byron

Cadet Grey: Canto I

I

Act first, scene first. A study. Of a kind
Half cell, half salon, opulent yet grave;
.....

Bret Harte

Taking Orders

A TALE, FOUNDED ON FACT.


A parson once-and poorer he
.....

Thomas Gent

The Princess (part Ii)

At break of day the College Portress came:
She brought us Academic silks, in hue
The lilac, with a silken hood to each,
And zoned with gold; and now when these were on,
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Snow-bound - A Winter Idyl

"As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same."
- Cor. AGRIPPA, Occult Philosophy, Book I. ch. v

"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Seer

Somewhere or other, 'tis doubtful where,
In the archives of Gosh is a volume rare,
A precious old classic that nobody reads,
And nobody asks for, and nobody heeds;
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Roscoe - Prose

In the service of mankind to be
A guardian god below; still to employ
The mind's brave ardor in heroic aims,
Such as may raise us o'er the grovelling herd,
.....

Washington Irving

The Art Of Book Making - Prose

If that severe doom of Synesius be true, "It is a greater offence to steal dead men's labor, than their clothes," what shall become of most writers?
- BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY.


.....

Washington Irving

Marmion: Introduction To Canto Iii.

Like April morning clouds, that pass,
With varying shadow, o'er the grass,
And imitate, on field and furrow,
Life's chequered scene of joy and sorrow;
.....

Walter Scott (sir)