PRISONER POEMS

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

Amang The Trees.

Tune - "The King of France, he rade a race."



.....

Robert Burns

Sonnet 005: Those Hours, That With Gentle Work Did Frame

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
.....

William Shakespeare

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

Listen...

There is a knocking in the skull,
An endless silent shout
Of something beating on a wall,
And crying, â??Let me out!â?
.....

Ogden Nash

Unchained

The bird ain't as free as she thinks
Freedom is not just in the air
The prisoner is not enslaved as he thinks
Slavery is not just in a cell
.....

Apollos Alpha

Donatella

You gaze through my eyes
And capture my thoughts
You took control of my mind
Now am a prisoner of your love
.....

Akinsola Akinbiyi

Letter To My Wife

11-11-1933
Bursa Prison
My one and only!
Your last letter says:
.....

Nazim Hikmet

The Book Of Memory

Turn me loose and let me be
Young once more and fancy free;
Let me wander where I will,
Down the lane and up the hill,
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

On A Political Prisoner

She that but little patience knew,
From childhood on, had now so much
A grey gull lost its fear and flew
Down to her cell and there alit,
.....

William Butler Yeats

Mar. Lib. Iv. Ep. 33.

MAR. LIB. IV. EP. 33.

Et latet et lucet, Phaetontide condita gutta
Ut videatur apis nectare clausa suo.
.....

Richard Lovelace

The Odyssey: Book 17

When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared,
Telemachus bound on his sandals and took a strong spear that suited
his hands, for he wanted to go into the city. “Old friend,” said he to
the swineherd, “I will now go to the town and show myself to my
.....

Homer

Sometimes Even Now

Sometimes even now I may
Steal a prisoner's holiday,
Slip, when all is worst, the bands,
Hurry back, and duck beneath
.....

Rupert Brooke

There Is

There is this ship which has taken my beloved back again
There are six Zeppelin sausages in the sky and with night
coming on it makes a man think of the maggots from which the
stars might some day be reborn
.....

Guillaume Apollinaire

Reason Says Love Says

Reason says, â?? I will beguile him with the tongue.â?; Love says,
â??Be silent. I will beguile him with the soul.â?
The soul says to the heart, â??Go, do not laugh at me and yourself.
What is there that is not his, that I may beguile him
.....

Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

To May

THOUGH many suns have risen and set
Since thou, blithe May, wert born,
And Bards, who hailed thee, may forget
Thy gift, thy beauty scorn;
.....

William Wordsworth

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 21

Now when they came to the ford of the full-flowing river Xanthus,
begotten of immortal Jove, Achilles cut their forces in two: one
half he chased over the plain towards the city by the same way that
the Achaeans had taken when flying panic-stricken on the preceding day
.....

Homer

Merlin Vi

“No kings are coming on their hands and knees,
Nor yet on horses or in chariots,
To carry me away from you again,”
Said Merlin, winding around Vivian's ear
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Sonnet Lii

SO oft as homeward I from her depart,
I goe lyke one that hauing lost the field:
is prisoner led away with heauy hart,
despoyld of warlike armes and knowen shield.
.....

Edmund Spenser

Abu Midjan

When Father Time swings round his scythe,
Intomb me 'neath the bounteous vine,
So that its juices, red and blithe,
May cheer these thirsty bones of mine.
.....

Eugene Field

Easter Eve.

As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant I have sent
forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water.
Zechariah ix. 11.

.....

John Keble

The Prisoner

THERE, where the swift Rhone's waters flow
Its verdant banks between;
Where fragrant myrtles bending grow,
And Rhone reflects their green;
.....

Konstantin Nikolaevich Batiushkov

My Prisoner

We was in a crump-'ole, 'im and me;
Fightin' wiv our bayonets was we;
Fightin' 'ard as 'ell we was,
Fightin' fierce as fire because
.....

Robert William Service

The Iliad: Book 24

The assembly now broke up and the people went their ways each to his
own ship. There they made ready their supper, and then bethought
them of the blessed boon of sleep; but Achilles still wept for
thinking of his dear comrade, and sleep, before whom all things bow,
.....

Homer

The Odyssey: Book 04

They reached the low lying city of Lacedaemon them where they
drove straight to the of abode Menelaus [and found him in his own
house, feasting with his many clansmen in honour of the wedding of his
son, and also of his daughter, whom he was marrying to the son of that
.....

Homer

Hero And Leander: The First Sestiad

On Hellespont, guilty of true love's blood,
In view and opposite two cities stood,
Sea-borderers, disjoin'd by Neptune's might;
The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight.
.....

Christopher Marlowe

The Three Taverns

When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us
as far as Appii Forum, and The Three Taverns.
(Acts 28:15)

.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

King Stephen

A FRAGMENT OF A TRAGEDY
ACT I.
SCENE I. Field of Battle.
Alarum. Enter King STEPHEN, Knights, and Soldiers.
.....

John Keats

A Manchester Poem

'Tis a poor drizzly morning, dark and sad.
The cloud has fallen, and filled with fold on fold
The chimneyed city; and the smoke is caught,
And spreads diluted in the cloud, and sinks,
.....

George Macdonald

Sleep

Come Sleep; O Sleep! the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low;
.....

Sir Philip Sidney

Sonnet 5: Those Hours, That With Gentle Work Did Frame

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
.....

William Shakespeare

A Christmas Carol

So now is come our joyful'st feast,
Let every man be jolly.
Each room with ivy leaves is drest,
And every post with holly.
.....

George Wither

Sonnet V: Those Hours, That With Gentle Work Did Frame

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
.....

William Shakespeare

Astrophel And Stella: Xxxix

Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low.
.....

Sir Philip Sidney

Editha

Breathing the violet-scented gale,
Near to a river's limpid source,
Which, through a wide-extended vale,
Wound slowly on its sleeping course,
.....

Matilda Betham

Porlock

Porlock! thy verdant vale so fair to sight,
Thy lofty hills which fern and furze imbrown,
The waters that roll musically down
Thy woody glens, the traveller with delight
.....

Robert Southey

A Prisoner

Where I can see him all day long
And hear his wild, spontaneous song,
Before my window in his cage,
A blithe canary sits and swings,
.....

Hattie Howard

A Fiddler In The North

Amang the trees, where humming bees,
At buds and flowers were hinging, O,
Auld Caledon drew out her drone,
And to her pipe was singing, O:
.....

Robert Burns

Mary Ambree

(Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 230.)


When captaines couragious, whom death cold not daunte,
.....

Andrew Lang

Lochiel's Warning

Wizard. - Lochiel.

Wizard.
- Lochiel! Lochiel, beware of the day
.....

Thomas Campbell

Fingal - Book V

ARGUMENT.

Cuthullin and Connal still remain on the hill. Fingal and Swaran meet: the combat is described. Swaran is overcome, bound, and delivered over as a prisoner to the care of Ossian, and Gaul, the son of Morni; Fingal, his younger sons and Oscar still pursue the enemy. The episode of Orla, a chief of Lochlin, who was mortally wounded in the battle, is introduced. Fingal, touched with the death of Orla, orders the pursuit to be discontinued; and calling his sons together, he is informed that Ryno, the youngest of them, was slain. He laments his death, hears the story of Lamderg and Gelchossa, and returns towards the place where he had left Swaran. Carril, who had been sent by Cuthullin to congratulate Fingal on his victory, comes in the mean time to Ossian. The conversation of the two poets closes the action of the fourth day.

.....

James Macpherson

Among The Hills

PRELUDE
ALONG the roadside, like the flowers of gold
That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,
Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod,
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Prisoner Of Chillon

My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men's have grown from sudden fears:
.....

George Gordon Byron

Resignation

To die be given us, or attain!
Fierce work it were, to do again.
So pilgrims, bound for Mecca, pray'd
At burning noon: so warriors said,
.....

Matthew Arnold

Love And Solitude

I hate the very noise of troublous man
Who did and does me all the harm he can.
Free from the world I would a prisoner be
And my own shadow all my company;
.....

John Clare

Stray Birds 91 - 99

91

THE great earth makes herself hospitable
with the help of the grass.
.....

Rabindranath Tagore

The Captive Pirate

THE captive pirate sate alone,
Musing over triumphs gone,
Gazing on the clear blue sky
From his dungeon window high.
.....

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton

The Lady Of La Garaye - Prologue

RUINS! A charm is in the word:
It makes us smile, it makes us sigh,
'Tis like the note of some spring bird
Recalling other Springs gone by,
.....

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton

Sea Dreams

A city clerk, but gently born and bred;
His wife, an unknown artist's orphan child-
One babe was theirs, a Margaret, three years old:
They, thinking that her clear germander eye
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson