PREVENT POEMS

Seasons Of Life

Gazing at the breezy night
Empty or lack of immense sunlight
And the onset of Winters shined
Though reflecting warmth of mankind
.....

Kritika Prasad

Forgotten Boyhood

He wears a long and solemn face
And drives the children from his place;
He doesn't like to hear them shout
Or race and run and romp about,
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Venus And Adonis

Even as the sun with purple-coloured face
Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheeked Adonis hied him to the chase;
Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn.
.....

William Shakespeare

In All Ways A Woman

In my young years I took pride in the fact that luck was called a lady. In fact, there were so few public acknowledgments of the female presence that I felt personally honored whenever nature and large ships were referred to as feminine. But as I matured, I began to resent being considered a sister to a changeling as fickle as luck, as aloof as an ocean, and as frivolous as nature. The phrase 'A woman always has the right to change her mind' played so aptly into the negative image of the female that I made myself a victim to an unwavering decision. Even if I made an inane and stupid choice, I stuck by it rather than 'be like a woman and change my mind.'

Being a woman is hard work. Not without joy and even ecstasy, but still relentless, unending work. Becoming an old female may require only being born with certain genitalia, inheriting long-living genes and the fortune not to be run over by an out-of-control truck, but to become and remain a woman command the existence and employment of genius.

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Maya Angelou

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

The Crimes Of Peace

Musing upon the tragedies of earth,
Of each new horror which each hour gives birth,
Of sins that scar and cruelties that blight
Life's little season, meant for man's delight,
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Armful

For every parcel I stoop down to seize
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns-
Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,
.....

Robert Frost

Contemplations

Sometime now past in the Autumnal Tide,
When Phœbus wanted but one hour to bed,
The trees all richly clad, yet void of pride,
Were gilded o're by his rich golden head.
.....

Anne Bradstreet

Why Does She Put Me To Many Indignities

Why does she put me to many indignities,
Shifts to prevent myself thinking upon her,
My golden Katie, who loveth not kisses?
I wear my new dresses and put on silk stockings,
.....

Lesbia Harford

The Old Cumberland Beggar

I saw an aged Beggar in my walk;
And he was seated, by the highway side,
On a low structure of rude masonry
Built at the foot of a huge hill, that they
.....

William Wordsworth

To The Pious Memory Of The Accomplished Young Lady Mrs. Anne Killigrew

Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the Blest;
Whose palms, new pluck'd from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
.....

John Dryden

The Cotter's Saturday Night

INSCRIBED TO ROBERT AIKEN, ESQ.

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
.....

Robert Burns

The Old Gumbie Cat

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;
Her coat is of the tabby kind, with tiger stripes and leopard spots.
All day she sits upon the stair or on the steps or on the mat;
She sits and sits and sits and sits-and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat!
.....

T. S. Eliot

Ode To Evening

If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song
May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own solemn springs,
Thy springs, and dying gales,
.....

William Collins

Comus

A Masque Presented At Ludlow Castle, 1634, Before

The Earl Of Bridgewater, Then President Of Wales.

.....

John Milton

Love's Stratagems

All these maneuverings to avoid
The touching of hands,
These shifts to keep the eyes employed
On objects more or less neutral
.....

Donald Justice

The Fool's Epilogue

MANY good works I've done and ended,
Ye take the praise--I'm not offended;
For in the world, I've always thought
Each thing its true position hath sought.
.....

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The Eel Pie

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Jean De La Fontaine

The Odyssey: Book 10

Thence we went on to the Aeoli island where lives Aeolus son of
Hippotas, dear to the immortal gods. It is an island that floats (as
it were) upon the sea, iron bound with a wall that girds it. Now,
Aeolus has six daughters and six lusty sons, so he made the sons marry
.....

Homer

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
.....

W. H. Auden

Sonnet 118: Like As To Make Our Appetite More Keen

Like as to make our appetite more keen
With eager compounds we our palate urge,
As to prevent our maladies unseen,
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge.
.....

William Shakespeare

Hidden Flame

I feed a flame within, which so torments me
That it both pains my heart, and yet contains me:
'Tis such a pleasing smart, and I so love it,
That I had rather die than once remove it.
.....

John Dryden

From Us She Wandered Now A Year

890

From Us She wandered now a Year,
Her tarrying, unknown,
.....

Emily Dickinson

The Iliad: Book 10

Now the other princes of the Achaeans slept soundly the whole
night through, but Agamemnon son of Atreus was troubled, so that he
could get no rest. As when fair Juno's lord flashes his lightning in
token of great rain or hail or snow when the snow-flakes whiten the
.....

Homer

Heroic Stanzas On The Death Of Oliver Cromwell, Written After His Funeral.

And now 'tis time; for their officious haste,
Who would before have borne him to the sky,
Like eager Romans, ere all rites were past,
Did let too soon the sacred eagle[1] fly.
.....

John Dryden

The Iliad: Book 11

And now as Dawn rose from her couch beside Tithonus, harbinger of
light alike to mortals and immortals, Jove sent fierce Discord with
the ensign of war in her hands to the ships of the Achaeans. She
took her stand by the huge black hull of Ulysses' ship which was
.....

Homer

The Iliad: Book 14

Nestor was sitting over his wine, but the cry of battle did not
escape him, and he said to the son of Aesculapius, “What, noble
Machaon, is the meaning of all this? The shouts of men fighting by our
ships grow stronger and stronger; stay here, therefore, and sit over
.....

Homer

The Odyssey: Book 06

So here Ulysses slept, overcome by sleep and toil; but Minerva
went off to the country and city of the Phaecians-a people who used
to live in the fair town of Hypereia, near the lawless Cyclopes. Now
the Cyclopes were stronger than they and plundered them, so their king
.....

Homer

Mirage

How is it that, being gone, you fill my days,
And all the long nights are made glad by thee?
No loneliness is this, nor misery,
But great content that these should be the ways
.....

Amy Lowell

At A Vacation Exercise In The Colledge, Part Latin, Part English. The Latin Speeches Ended, The Eng

Hail native Language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish tripps,
Half unpronounc't, slide through my infant-lipps,
.....

John Milton

On The Morning Of Christs Nativity

I

This is the Month, and this the happy morn
Wherin the Son of Heav'ns eternal King,
.....

John Milton

Sonnet C

Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?
.....

William Shakespeare

A Change Of Air

Now, a man in Oodnadatta
He grew fat, and he grew fatter,
Though he hardly had a thing to eat for dinner;
While a man in Booboorowie
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Fleas

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Gamaliel Bradford

Sonnet 100: Where Art Thou, Muse, That Thou Forget'st So Long

Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?
.....

William Shakespeare

The Aeolian Harp

At The Surf Inn


List the harp in window wailing
.....

Herman Melville

The Padlock

I triumphed, love's victorious power
Prevailed, and near approached the hour
Which should have crowned our mutual flame,
Just then your tyrant husband came.
.....

Voltaire

Holy Sonnet ?

Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste,
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday;
.....

John Donne

Chaucer's Tale Of Meliboeus

'No more of this, for Godde's dignity!'
Quoth oure Hoste; 'for thou makest me
So weary of thy very lewedness,* *stupidity, ignorance
That, all so wisly* God my soule bless, *surely
.....

Geoffrey Chaucer

H. Baptism

As he that sees a dark and shady grove,
Stays not, but looks beyond it on the sky;
So when I view my sins, mine eyes remove
More backward still, and to that water fly,
.....

George Herbert

The Iliad: Book 2

Now the other gods and the armed warriors on the plain slept
soundly, but Jove was wakeful, for he was thinking how to do honour to
Achilles, and destroyed much people at the ships of the Achaeans. In
the end he deemed it would be best to send a lying dream to King
.....

Homer

An Invitation To Dafnis

When such a day, blesst the Arcadian plaine,
Warm without Sun, and shady without rain,
Fann'd by an air, that scarsly bent the flowers,
Or wav'd the woodbines, on the summer bowers,
.....

Anne Kingsmill Finch

Spring

Stern Winter now, by Spring repress'd
Forbears the long-continued strife;
And Nature, on her naked breast,
Delights to catch the gales of life.
.....

Samuel Johnson

At Furness Abbey

Here, where, of havoc tired and rash undoing,
Man left this Structure to become Time's prey
A soothing spirit follows in the way
That Nature takes, her counter-work pursuing.
.....

William Wordsworth

The Terrific Cyclone Of 1893

'Twas in the year of 1893, and on the 17th and 18th of November,
Which the people of Dundee and elsewhere will long remember,
The terrific cyclone that blew down trees,
And wrecked many vessels on the high seas.
.....

William Topaz Mcgonagall

Song In The "maiden Queen."

I feed a flame within, which so torments me,
That it both pains my heart, and yet contents me:
'Tis such a pleasing smart, and I so love it,
That I had rather die than once remove it.
.....

John Dryden

The Progress Of Error.

Si quid loquar audiendam.--Hor. Lib. iv. Od. 2.



.....

William Cowper

The Hog, The Sheep, And Goat, Carrying To A Fair

Who does not wish, ever to judge aright,
And, in the Course of Life's Affairs,
To have a quick, and far extended Sight,
Tho' it too often multiplies his Cares?
.....

Anne Kingsmill Finch

A Fable

ONE day a sage knocked at a chemist's door,
Bringing a curious compound to explore.--
'Behold ! said he, as from his vest he drew it,
'This little treasure in a golden cruet :
.....

Jane Taylor

A Poet's Voice Xv

reap and gather the wheat in bundles and give them to the hungry.

My soul gives life to the grapevine and I press its bunches and give the juice to the thirsty.

.....

Khalil Gibran