EUROPE POEMS

African Sun

When I was four years old
My village mates and I
Used to gossip
About the African sun
.....

Ibrahim Bangura[cleffy]

In Memory Of W.b. Yeats

I

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
.....

W. H. Auden

Locksley Hall Sixty Years After

Late, my grandson! half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts,
Watch'd again the hollow ridges roaring into cataracts,

Wander'd back to living boyhood while I heard the curlews call,
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Lepanto

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
.....

G. K. Chesterton

My Last Afternoon With Uncle Devereux Winslow

1922: the stone porch of my Grandfatherâ??s summer house

I
â??I wonâ??t go with you. I want to stay with Grandpa!â?
.....

Robert Lowell

The Fourth Of August

Now in thy splendour go before us.
Spirit of England, ardent-eyed,
Enkindle this dear earth that bore us
In the hour of peril purified.
.....

Robert Laurence Binyon

A Counting-out Song

What is the song the children sing,
When doorway lilacs bloom in Spring,
And the Schools are loosed, and the games are played
That were deadly earnest when Earth was made?
.....

Rudyard Kipling

For Whom The Bell Tolls

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
.....

John Donne

To Think Of Time

To think of time, of all that retrospection!
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward!

Have you guess'd you yourself would not continue?
.....

Walt Whitman

The Age Of The Antonines

While faith forecasts millennial years
Spite Europe's embattled lines,
Back to the Past one glance be cast-
The Age of the Antonines!
.....

Herman Melville

Nostalgia

Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
.....

Billy Collins

America In 1904

(Europe Conquers America.)

Strong for the strong and in his own conceit;
Half-boy, half-madman, playing with the fire;
.....

Edgar Lee Masters

A Tippling Ballad-when Princes And Prelates, Etc.

WHEN Princes and Prelates,
And hot-headed zealots,
A' Europe had set in a low, a low,
The poor man lies down,
.....

Robert Burns

Marching Feet

THESE August nights, hushed but for drowsy peep
Of fledglings, tremble with a strange vibration,
A sound too far for hearing, sullen, dire,
Shaking the earth.
.....

Katharine Lee Bates

The Key (a Moorish Romance)

'On the east coast, towards Tunis, the Moors still preserve the key of their ancestors' houses in Spain; to which country they still express the hopes of one day returning and again planting the crescent on the ancient walls of the Alhambra.'
â??Scott's
Travels in Morocco and Algiers.

.....

Thomas Hood

The Fudge Family In Paris Letter Xi. From Phelim Connor To ----.

Yes, 'twas a cause, as noble and as great
As ever hero died to vindicate--
A Nation's right to speak a Nation's voice,
And own no power but of the Nation's choice!
.....

Thomas Moore

The Republican Genius Of Europe

Emporers and kings! in vain you strive
Your torments to conceal-
The age is come that shakes your thrones,
Tramples in dust despotic crowns,
.....

Philip Freneau

The Farewell

_P_. Farewell to Europe, and at once farewell
To all the follies which in Europe dwell;
To Eastern India now, a richer clime,
Richer, alas! in everything but rhyme,
.....

Charles Churchill

Salut Au Monde

O TAKE my hand, Walt Whitman!
Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!
Such join'd unended links, each hook'd to the next!
Each answering all--each sharing the earth with all.
.....

Walt Whitman

Europe, The 72d And 73d Years Of These States

1

Suddenly, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it le'pt forth, half startled at itself,
.....

Walt Whitman

à? Travers L'europe





.....

Guillaume Apollinaire

The Greatest Thing In North America

This is the greatest thing in North America:
Europe is the greatest thing in North America!
High in the sky, dark in the heart, and always there
Among the natural powers of sunlight and of air,
.....

Delmore Schwartz

Shikwaa

Kyun Ziyaankar Banu, Sood Faramosh Rahoon?
Fikr-e-Farda Na Karoon, Mehw-e-Gham-e-Dosh Rahoon?
Naal-e-Bulbul Ke Sunoon Aur Hamatan Gosh Rahoon?
Hamnawa Main Bhi Koi Gul Hoon Ke Khamosh Rahoon?
.....

Allama Muhammad Iqbal

Truth

Man, on the dubious waves of error toss'd,
His ship half founder'd, and his compass lost,
Sees, far as human optics may command,
A sleeping fog, and fancies it dry land;
.....

William Cowper

A Manager's Perplexities

Were I a king in very truth,
And had a son - a guileless youth -
In probable succession;
To teach him patience, teach him tact,
.....

William Schwenck Gilbert

An After-dinner Poem

(TERPSICHORE)

Read at the Annual Dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at
Cambridge, August 24, 1843.
.....

Oliver Wendell Holmes

A Brave And Startling Truth

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
.....

Maya Angelou

An Ode - Presented To The King, On His Majesty's Arrival In Holland, After The Queen's Death

At Mary's tomb (sad sacred place!)
The Virtues shall their vigils keep,
And every Muse and every Grace
In solemn state shall ever weep.
.....

Matthew Prior

The Incorrigible

The bad boy of Europe,
He stands in dire disgrace,
Crying too loud his innocence
While guilt grins from his face.
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Men

Man is a creature of a thousand whims;
The slave of hope and fear and circumstance.
Through toil and martyrdom a million years
Struggling and groping upward from the brute,
.....

Hanford Lennox Gordon

To Buddha

Awake again in Asia, Lord of Peace,
Awake and preach, for her far swordsmen rise.
And would they sheathe the sword before you, friend,
Or scorn your way, while looking in your eyes?
.....

Vachel Lindsay

Peruvian Tales: Alzira, Tale I

Description of Peru, and of its Productions--Virtues of the People;
and of their Monarch, ATALIBA --His love for ALZIRA --Their Nup-
tials celebrated--Character of ZORAI , her Father--Descent of the
Genius of Peru--Prediction of the Fall of that Empire.
.....

Helen Maria Williams

Don Juan: Canto The Ninth

Oh, Wellington! (or 'Villainton'--for Fame
Sounds the heroic syllables both ways;
France could not even conquer your great name,
But punn'd it down to this facetious phrase-
.....

George Gordon Byron

The Parable Of The Old Men And The Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
.....

Wilfred Owen

To My Lord Fairfax

Fairfax, whose Name in Arms through Europe rings,
And fills all Mouths with Envy or with Praise,
And all her Jealous Monarchs with Amaze.
And Rumours loud which daunt remotest Kings,
.....

John Milton

Erasmus

When he protested, not too solemnly,
That for a world's achieving maintenance
The crust of overdone divinity
Lacked aliment, they called it recreance;
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

After Waterloo

On the field of Waterloo we made Napoleon rue
That ever out of Elba he decided for to come,
For we finished him that day, and he had to run away,
And yield himself to Maitland on the Billy-ruffium.
.....

Robert Fuller Murray

Who Knows?

They say one king is mad. Perhaps. Who knows?
They say one king is doddering and grey.
They say one king is slack and sick of mind,
A puppet for hid strings that twitch and play.
.....

Vachel Lindsay

The Shattered Dream

I WAS somewhere off in Europe spending money like a king,
Owned a yacht like J. P. Morgan's, when the 'phone began to ring;
I was entertaining princes, dukes and earls, when wifie said:
'It's the telephone that's ringing, you must hustle out of bed.'
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

To The Same

Cyriack, this three yearsâ?? day these eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
.....

John Milton

Voltaire At Ferney

Almost happy now, he looked at his estate.
An exile making watches glanced up as he passed,
And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast
A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell
.....

W. H. Auden

At The Cenotaph

I saw the Prince of Darkness, with his Staff,
Standing bare-headed by the Cenotaph:
Unostentatious and respectful, there
He stood, and offered up the following prayer.
.....

Siegfried Sassoon

Editorial Impressions

He seemed so certain “all was going well,”
As he discussed the glorious time he'd had
While visiting the trenches.
“One can tell
.....

Siegfried Sassoon

France

Unhappy State! with horrors still to strive:
Thy Hugo dead, thy Boulanger alive;
A Prince who'd govern where he dares not dwell,
And who for power would his birthright sell
.....

Ambrose Bierce

Twin Idols

There are two phrases, you must know,
So potent (yet so small)
That wheresoe'er a man may go
He needs none else at all;
.....

Eugene Field

Sunrise

September 26, 1881.


Weep for the martyr! Strew his bier
.....

Emma Lazarus

T.d Mkee

While referring to past glories of Ireland, perhaps we might refer to that great Irish Historian,
the late Honourable T. D. McKee, of whom we have written a poem in the earlier portion of this work,
and we will give you an anecdote of him while here, showing his ready wit while he was rising from
the supper table around which was a number of guests assembled, all eyes being naturally turned on
.....

James Mcintyre

Vision Of Columbus - Book 2

High o'er the changing scene, as thus he gazed,
The indulgent Power his arm sublimely raised;
When round the realms superior lustre flew,
And call'd new wonders to the hero's view.
.....

Joel Barlow

To H. W. Longfellow

BEFORE HIS DEPARTURE FOR EUROPE, MAY 27, 1868

OUR Poet, who has taught the Western breeze
To waft his songs before him o'er the seas,
.....

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Robin And Harry

Robin to beggars with a curse,
Throws the last shilling in his purse;
And when the coachman comes for pay,
The rogue must call another day.
.....

Jonathan Swift