MOURN POEMS

Little Lies

Life like lies
impeaches man of little lies
why isn't she perfect that man should lie.
go tell life I have a light to lite
.....

Matthew Francis

When I'm Killed

When I'm killed, don't think of me
Buried there in Cambrin Wood,
Nor as in Zion think of me
With the Intolerable Good.
.....

Robert Graves

My Butterfly

Thine emulous fond flowers are dead, too,
And the daft sun-assaulter, he
That frightened thee so oft, is fled or dead:
Save only me
.....

Robert Frost

The Sonnets Cxxvii - In The Old Age Black Was Not Counted Fair

In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slander'd with a bastard shame:
.....

William Shakespeare

Winsomity

Woman! when you told me we are birds of same feathers
You stole the chocolate from my heart
We almost bleed under your boobian chest
We almost render singspiration
.....

Saviour A Willie

Oina-morul

After an address to Malvina, the daughter of Toscar, Ossian proceeds to relate his own expedition to Fuärfed, an island of Scandinavia. Mal-orchol, king of Fuärfed, being hard pressed in war by Ton-thormod, chief of Sar-dronto (who had demanded in vain the daughter of Mal-orchol in marriage,) Fingal sent Ossian to his aid. Ossian, on the day after his arrival, came to battle with Ton-thormod, and took him prisoner. Mal-orchol offers his daughter, Oina-morul, to Ossian; but he, discovering her passion for Ton-thormod, generously surrenders her to her lover, and brings about a reconciliation between the two kings.



.....

James Macpherson

The Greek National Anthem

We knew thee of old,
Oh divinely restored,
By the light of thine eyes
And the light of thy Sword.
.....

Rudyard Kipling

The Dove

In Virgil's Sacred Verse we find,
That Passion can depress or raise
The Heav'nly, as the Human Mind:
Who dare deny what Virgil says?
.....

Matthew Prior

Absalom And Achitophel

In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin;
When man, on many, multipli'd his kind,
Ere one to one was cursedly confin'd:
.....

John Dryden

Old Men

People expect old men to die,
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder whenâ?¦
.....

Ogden Nash

To A Mountain Daisy

ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH, IN APRIL, 1786

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
.....

Robert Burns

The Sonnets Cxxxii - Thine Eyes I Love, And They, As Pitying Me

Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,
Have put on black and loving mourners be,
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.
.....

William Shakespeare

On A Shadow In A Glass

By something form'd, I nothing am,
Yet everything that you can name;
In no place have I ever been,
Yet everywhere I may be seen;
.....

Jonathan Swift

Adonais

I weep for Adonais-he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
.....

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Good Man

I

A good man never dies--
In worthy deed and prayer
.....

James Whitcomb Riley

O Were My Love Yon Lilac Fair

O were my Love yon lilac fair,
Wi' purple blossoms to the spring,
And I a bird to shelter there,
When wearied on my little wing;
.....

Robert Burns

The Songs Of Selma

ARGUMENTAddress to the evening star:

An apostrophe to Fingal and his times. Minonasings before the king the song of the unfortunate Colma; and the bards exhibit other specimens of their poetical talents; according to an annual custom established by the monarchs of the ancient Caledonians.

.....

James Macpherson

Sonnet Cxxxii

Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart torments me with disdain,
Have put on black and loving mourners be,
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.
.....

William Shakespeare

Fragment: Sufficient Unto The Day

Is not to-day enough? Why do I peer
Into the darkness of the day to come?
Is not to-morrow even as yesterday?
And will the day that follows change thy doom?
.....

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Iliad: Book 23

Thus did they make their moan throughout the city, while the
Achaeans when they reached the Hellespont went back every man to his
own ship. But Achilles would not let the Myrmidons go, and spoke to
his brave comrades saying, “Myrmidons, famed horsemen and my own
.....

Homer

Endymion: Book Iv

Muse of my native land! loftiest Muse!
O first-born on the mountains! by the hues
Of heaven on the spiritual air begot:
Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot,
.....

John Keats

Sighs

All night I muse, all day I cry,
Ay me!
Yet still I wish, though still deny,
Ay me!
.....

Anonymous

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

Sonnets To The Sundry Notes Of Music

I.
IT was a lording's daughter, the fairest one of three,
That liked of her master as well as well might be,
Till looking on an Englishman, the fair'st that eye could see,
.....

William Shakespeare

The Fickle Breeze

Sighing softly to the river
Comes the loving breeze,
Setting nature all a-quiver,
Rustling through the trees!
.....

William Schwenck Gilbert

Gone With A Handsomer Man.

JOHN:

I've worked in the field all day, a-plowin' the "stony streak;"
I've scolded my team till I'm hoarse; I've tramped till my legs are weak;
.....

Will Carleton

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

The Rebel

Call me traitor to my country and a rebel to my God.
And the foe of â??law and orderâ?, well deserving of the rod,
But I scorn the biassed sentence from the temples of the creed
That was fouled and mutilated by the ministers of greed,
.....

Henry Lawson

Victory

I.
Before those golden altar-lights we stood,
Each one of us remembering his own dead.
A more than earthly beauty seemed to brood
.....

Alfred Noyes

Miriam

One Sabbath day my friend and I
After the meeting, quietly
Passed from the crowded village lanes,
White with dry dust for lack of rains,
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

All Alone

I.

Ah! wherefore by the Church-yard side,
Poor little LORN ONE, dost thou stray?
.....

Mary Darby Robinson

The Change

POOR River, now thou'rt almost dry,
What Nymph, or Swain, will near thee lie?
Since brought, alas! to sad Decay,
What Flocks, or Herds, will near thee stay?
.....

Anne Kingsmill Finch

The Angel-thief

TIME is a thief who leaves his tools behind him;
He comes by night, he vanishes at dawn;
We track his footsteps, but we never find him
Strong locks are broken, massive bolts are drawn,
.....

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Vision

THE SUN had clos'd the winter day,
The curless quat their roarin play,
And hunger'd maukin taen her way,
To kail-yards green,
.....

Robert Burns

In The Greenest Of The Valleys

I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once fair and stately palace,
.....

Edgar Allan Poe

Hyperion: Book Ii

Just at the self-same beat of Time's wide wings
Hyperion slid into the rustled air,
And Saturn gain'd with Thea that sad place
Where Cybele and the bruised Titans mourn'd.
.....

John Keats

Admetus

To my friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson.


He who could beard the lion in his lair,
.....

Emma Lazarus

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 Wanderings Of Oisin: Book I

S. Patrick. You who are bent, and bald, and blind,
With a heavy heart and a wandering mind,
Have known three centuries, poets sing,
Of dalliance with a demon thing.
.....

William Butler Yeats

The Things That Never Can Come Back, Are Several'

1515

The Things that never can come back, are several-
Childhood-some forms of Hope-the Dead-
.....

Emily Dickinson

As A World Would Have It

ALCESTIS

Shall I never make him look at me again?
I look at him, I look my life at him,
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Gods Of Greece

Ye in the age gone by,
Who ruled the world--a world how lovely then!--
And guided still the steps of happy men
In the light leading-strings of careless joy!
.....

Friedrich Schiller

Be Still, My Soul, Be Still; The Arms You Bear Are Brittle

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think rather,-call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.
.....

A. E. Housman

A Farewel To America

I.
Adieu, New-England's smiling meads,
Adieu, the flow'ry plain:
I leave thine op'ning charms, O spring,
.....

Phillis Wheatley

Lines In A Flyleaf Of 'christabel'

Inhospitably hast thou entertained,
O Poet, us the bidden to thy board,
Whom in mid-feast, and while our thousand mouths
Are one laudation of the festal cheer,
.....

William Watson

To -- (i)

I heed not that my earthly lot
Hath--little of Earth in it,
That years of love have been forgot
In the hatred of a minute:
.....

Edgar Allan Poe

To Them That Mourn

(W.E.G., May 1898)

Lift up your heads: in life, in death,
God knoweth his head was high.
.....

G. K. Chesterton

The Red, Red Rose.

Air - "Hughie Graham."



.....

Robert Burns

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

Fallen

My country! by our fathers reared
As champion of the world's opprest;
Whose moral force the tyrant feared;
Whose flag all struggling freemen cheered;
.....

John L. Stoddard