INTEGRITY POEMS

Miscalculation

Miscalculation
They are voicing out their freedom
They say
Shamelessly shading crocodile tears in public.
.....

Emmanuel Mtema

Summer Images

Now swarthy Summer, by rude health embrowned,
Precedence takes of rosy fingered Spring;
And laughing Joy, with wild flowers prank'd, and crown'd,
A wild and giddy thing,
.....

John Clare

Hate Me Or Love Me

I honour your name, your love for me in stars was written,
I will respect this vow eternally,
No matter how our future'll be,
I'll keep for you forever untainted my integrity.
.....

Cristina Teodor

Song Of The Old Guard

'And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold: of beaten work shall the candlestick be made: his shaft, and his branches, his bowls, his knops, and his flowers, shall be of the same . . . .

'And there shall be a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, according to the six ranches that proceed out of the candlestick . . . . Their knops and their branches shall be of the same.' - Exodus.

.....

Rudyard Kipling

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

After All Birds Have Been Investigated And Laid Aside'

1395

After all Birds have been investigated and laid aside-
Nature imparts the little Blue-Bird-assured
.....

Emily Dickinson

Rembrandt To Rembrandt

(AMSTERDAM, 1645)


And there you are again, now as you are.
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

An Epistle

From Joshua Ibn Vives of Allorqui to his Former Master, Solomon
Levi-Paul, de Santa-Maria, Bishop of Cartegna Chancellor of
Castile, and Privy Councillor to King Henry III. of Spain.

.....

Emma Lazarus

The Proud Farmer

[In memory of E. S. Frazee, Rush County, Indiana]


Into the acres of the newborn state
.....

Vachel Lindsay

The Terrors Of Guilt

Yon coward, with the streaming hair,
And visage, madden'd to despair,
With step convuls'd, unsettled eye,
And bosom lab'ring with a sigh,
.....

Matilda Betham

The Student Gone

So soon he fell, the world will never know
What possibilities within him lay,
What hopes irradiated his young life,
With high ambition and with ardor rife;
.....

Hattie Howard

Lullaby

My mother's an expert in one thing:
sending people she loves into the other world.
The little ones, the babies--these
she rocks, whispering or singing quietly. I can't say
.....

Louise Gluck

Courage

down and lose hold.

It is the conviction to explore new horizons
When it's easier to believe what we've been told.
.....

Anonymous

Ars Poetica?

I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.
.....

Czeslaw Milosz

An Ode To A Strong Woman:

Her beauty lies in her inner core
Her values, her beliefs
She is sensitive
She is considerate
.....

The Robin Is A Gabriel

1483

The Robin is a Gabriel
In humble circumstances-
.....

Emily Dickinson

Smile, Smile, Smile

Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned
Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)
And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned;
.....

Wilfred Owen

The Sweets Of Pillage, Can Be Known

1470

The Sweets of Pillage, can be known
To no one but the Thief-
.....

Emily Dickinson

The Comedian As The Letter C: 03 - Approaching Carolina

The book of moonlight is not written yet
Nor half begun, but, when it is, leave room
For Crispin, fagot in the lunar fire,
Who, in the hubbub of his pilgrimage
.....

Wallace Stevens

Paradise Lost: Book 05

Now Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl,
When Adam waked, so customed; for his sleep
Was aery-light, from pure digestion bred,
.....

John Milton

Lancelot 02

The flash of oak leaves over Guinevere
That afternoon, with the sun going down,
Made memories there for Lancelot, although
The woman who in silence looked at him
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Merlin Iii

King Arthur, as he paced a lonely floor
That rolled a muffled echo, as he fancied,
All through the palace and out through the world,
Might now have wondered hard, could he have heard
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Song

“‘Betimes my heritage was sold
To buy this heart of solid gold.
Ye all, perchance, have jewels fine,
But what are such compar'd to mine?
.....

Matilda Betham

Sonnet : From The Italian Of Cavalcanti

Returning from its daily quest, my Spirit
Changed thoughts and vile in thee doth weep to find:
It grieves me that thy mild and gentle mind
Those ample virtues which it did inherit
.....

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Promise Of Peace

The heads of strong old age are beautiful
Beyond all grace of youth. They have strange quiet,
Integrity, health, soundness, to the full
They've dealt with life and been tempered by it.
.....

Robinson Jeffers

Australian Federation

FROM all division let our land be free,
For God has made her one: complete she lies
Within the unbroken circle of the skies,
And round her indivisible the sea
.....

William Gay

Gyroscope

This admirable gadget, when it is
Wound on a string and spun with steady force,
Maintains its balance on most any smooth
Surface, pleasantly humming as it goes.
.....

Howard Nemerov

The Song Of The Old Guard

Know this, my brethren, Heaven is clear
And all the clouds are gone--
The Proper Sort shall flourish now,
Good times are coming on"--
.....

Rudyard Kipling

On The Death Of Sir Thomas Lea

You that affright with lamentable notes
The servants from their beef, whose hungry throats
Vex the grume porter's surly conscience:
That blesse the mint for coyning lesse than pence:
.....

William Strode

The Pleasures Of Imagination - The First Book

With what attractive charms this goodly frame
Of nature touches the consenting hearts
Of mortal men; and what the pleasing stores
Which beauteous imitation thence derives
.....

Mark Akenside

The Prelude - Book Ninth

RESIDENCE IN FRANCE

Even as a river, partly (it might seem)
Yielding to old remembrances, and swayed
.....

William Wordsworth

Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part Iii. - Vi - Clerical Integrity

Nor shall the eternal roll of praise reject
Those Unconforming; whom one rigorous day
Drives from their Cures, a voluntary prey
To poverty, and grief, and disrespect.
.....

William Wordsworth

Queen Mab: Part V.

'Thus do the generations of the earth
Go to the grave and issue from the womb,
Surviving still the imperishable change
That renovates the world; even as the leaves
.....

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Integrity

Immortal life is something to be earned,
By slow, self-conquest, comradeship with pain,
And patient seeking after higher truths.
We cannot follow our own wayward wills
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Funeral Of The Late Ex-provost Rough, Dundee

'Twas in the year of 1888, and on the 19th of November,
Which the friends of the late Ex-Provost Rough will long remember,
Because 'twas on the 19th of November his soul took its flight
To the happy land above, the land of pure delight.
.....

William Topaz Mcgonagall

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

Philip Of Pokanoket - An Indian Memoir - Prose

As monumental bronze unchanged his look:
A soul that pity touch'd, but never shook;
Train'd from his tree-rock'd cradle to his bier,
The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook
.....

Washington Irving

To My Honoured Kinsman, John Dryden,[1] Of Chesterton, In The County Of Huntingdon, Esq.

How bless'd is he who leads a country life,
Unvex'd with anxious cares, and void of strife!
Who studying peace, and shunning civil rage,
Enjoy'd his youth, and now enjoys his age:
.....

John Dryden

Apostrophe

TO AN OLD TREE.

WHERE thy broad branches brave the bitter North,
Like rugged, indigent, unheeded, worth,
.....

Charlotte Smith

The Finer Thought

How fine it is at night to say:
'I have not wronged a soul to-day.
I have not by a word or deed,
In any breast sowed anger's seed,
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Beachy Head

ON thy stupendous summit, rock sublime !
That o'er the channel rear'd, half way at sea
The mariner at early morning hails,
I would recline; while Fancy should go forth,
.....

Charlotte Smith

The Four Seasons : Winter

See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train;
Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,
These! that exalt the soul to solemn thought,
.....

James Thomson

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

A Litany

I.

THE FATHER.

.....

John Donne

To Sir Henry Wotton Ii

HERE'S no more news than virtue ; I may as well
Tell you Calais, or Saint Michael's tales, as tell
That vice doth here habitually dwell.

.....

John Donne

To Sir Henry Wotton

SIR, more than kisses, letters mingle souls,
For thus, friends absent speak. This ease controls
The tediousness of my life ; but for these
I could ideate nothing which could please ;
.....

John Donne

The Ghost: Book Iii (excerpt)

...
Horrid, unwieldly, without form,
Savage, as ocean in a storm,
Of size prodigious, in the rear,
.....

Charles Churchill

Loving And Beloved

There never yet was honest man
That ever drove the trade of love;
It is impossible, nor can
Integrity our ends promove:
.....

Sir John Suckling

Pity For Poor Africans

I own I am shocked at the purchase of slaves,
And fear those who buy them and sell them are knaves;
What I hear of their hardships, their tortures, and groans
Is almost enough to draw pity from stones.
.....

William Cowper