ESSENTIAL POEMS
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A Hidden Life
Proudly the youth, sudden with manhood crowned,
Went walking by his horses, the first time,
That morning, to the plough. No soldier gay
Feels at his side the throb of the gold hilt
.....
George Macdonald
Only Words... My Son
Yield to love; both a proper self-love
and a sincere love for others.
One that will do no harm to you or your neighbor,
both here and for eternity.
.....
David Carolissen
An Essay On Man: Epistle I.
THE DESIGN.
Having proposed to write some pieces on human life and manners, such as (to use my Lord Bacon's expression) come home to men's business and bosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering man in the abstract, his nature and his state; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its being.
.....
Alexander Pope
Love Is Blind
And can you tell me Love is blind
Because your faults he will not find,
Because the image that he sees
Is one of splendid mysteries?
.....
John Le Gay Brereton
Bus East
Society has good intentions Bureaucracy is like a friend
5 years ago - other furies other losses -
America's
.....
Jack Kerouac
Quatrains Of Life
What has my youth been that I love it thus,
Sad youth, to all but one grown tedious,
Stale as the news which last week wearied us,
Or a tired actor's tale told to an empty house?
.....
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Fish, The
In a cool curving world he lies
And ripples with dark ecstasies.
The kind luxurious lapse and steal
Shapes all his universe to feel
.....
Rupert Brooke
The Poem Cat
Sometimes the poem
doesn't want to come;
it hides from the poet
like a playful cat
.....
Erica Jong
The Answer
Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
.....
Robinson Jeffers
Nero
This Rome, that was the toil of many men,
The consummation of laborious years-
Fulfilment's crown to visions of the dead
And image of the wide desire of kings-
.....
Clark Ashton Smith
The Fish
In a cool curving world he lies
And ripples with dark ecstasies.
The kind luxurious lapse and steal
Shapes all his universe to feel
.....
Rupert Brooke
An Open Fire
These logs with drama and with dream are rife,
For all their golden Summers and green Springs
Through leaf and root they sucked the forest's life,
Drank in its secret, deep, essential things,
.....
Don Marquis
A Death In The Bush
The hut was built of bark and shrunken slabs,
That wore the marks of many rains, and showed
Dry flaws wherein had crept and nestled rot.
Moreover, round the bases of the bark
.....
Henry Kendall
The Homestead
AGAINST the wooded hills it stands,
Ghost of a dead home, staring through
Its broken lights on wasted lands
Where old-time harvests grew.
.....
John Greenleaf Whittier
Apology For Bad Dreams
I
In the purple light, heavy with redwood, the slopes drop seaward,
Headlong convexities of forest, drawn in together to the steep
ravine. Below, on the sea-cliff,
.....
Robinson Jeffers
Boats In A Fog
Sports and gallantries, the stage, the arts, the antics of dancers,
The exuberant voices of music,
Have charm for children but lack nobility; it is bitter earnestness
That makes beauty; the mind
.....
Robinson Jeffers
John
Before he wrote a poem, he learned the measure
That living in the future gives a farm--
Propinquity of mules and cows, the charmed
Insouciance of hens, the fellowship,
.....
Edgar Bowers
A Hymn Of Heavenly Beauty
Rapt with the rage of mine own ravish'd thought,
Through contemplation of those goodly sights,
And glorious images in heaven wrought,
Whose wondrous beauty, breathing sweet delights
.....
Edmund Spenser
An Hymn Of Heavenly Beauty
Rapt with the rage of mine own ravish'd thought,
Through contemplation of those goodly sights,
And glorious images in heaven wrought,
Whose wondrous beauty, breathing sweet delights
.....
Edmund Spenser
The Kettle
Thereâ??s many a house of grandeur,
With turret, tower and dome,
That knows not peace or comfort,
And does not prove a home.
.....
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
A Prayer To The Father Of Heaven
O radiant luminary of light interminable,
Celestial Father, potential God of might,
Of heaven and earth O Lord incomparable,
Of all perfections the essential most perfite !
.....
John Skelton
Movement Of Bodies
Those of you that have got through the rest, I am going to rapidly
Devote a little time to showing you, those that can master it,
A few ideas about tactics, which must not be confused
With what we call strategy. Tactics is merely
.....
Henry Reed
The Candidate.
Enough of Actors--let them play the player,
And, free from censure, fret, sweat, strut, and stare;
Garrick[1] abroad, what motives can engage
To waste one couplet on a barren stage?
.....
Charles Churchill
Paradise Lost - Book Ii
High on a Throne of Royal State, which far
Outshon the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showrs on her Kings Barbaric Pearl and Gold,
.....
John Milton
Sphinx And Medusa
The old constraint of an essential bond
Hath linkt them in my mind: opposed they stare,
Twin silences, that through Time's Otherwhere,
The ruinous past, thus each to each respond,
.....
Clark Ashton Smith
Sordello: Book The Fifth
Is it the same Sordello in the dusk
As at the dawn? merely a perished husk
Now, that arose a power fit to build
Up Rome again? The proud conception chilled
.....
Robert Browning
English Writers On America - Prose
Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation, rousting herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle, mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her endazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam.
- MILTON ON THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.
.....
Washington Irving
Lethe (i)
I flow beneath the columns that upbear
The world, and all of heaven and limbo and hell;
Foamless I glide, where sounds nor glimmers tell
My motion nadirward: no moment's flare
.....
Clark Ashton Smith