VERDURE POEMS

The Cuckoo-clock

Wouldst thou be taught, when sleep has taken flight,
By a sure voice that can most sweetly tell,
How far off yet a glimpse of morning light,
And if to lure the truant back be well,
.....

William Wordsworth

Little By Little

“Little by little,” an acorn said,
As it slowly sank in its mossy bed,
“I am improving every day,
Hidden deep in the earth away.”
.....

Anonymous

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

Appreciation

They prize not most the opulence of June
Who from the year's beginning to its close
Dwell, where unfading verdure tireless grows,
And where sweet summer's harp is kept in tune.
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Views Of Life

When sinks my heart in hopeless gloom,
And life can shew no joy for me;
And I behold a yawning tomb,
Where bowers and palaces should be;
.....

Anne Brontë

Saul

I.

Said Abner, ``At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak,
``Kiss my cheek, wish me well!'' Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek.
.....

Robert Browning

The Coranna

Fast by his wild resounding River
The listless Coran lingers ever;
Still drives his heifers forth to feed,
Soothed by the gorrah's humming reed;
.....

Thomas Pringle

Endymion: Book Iii

There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
.....

John Keats

Love Among The Ruins

I

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles
Miles and miles
.....

Robert Browning

An Octopus

of ice. Deceptively reserved and flat,
it lies “in grandeur and in mass”
beneath a sea of shifting snow-dunes;
dots of cyclamen-red and maroon on its clearly defined
.....

Marianne Moore

Admetus

To my friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson.


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

Emma Lazarus

Oh! Breathe Not His Name

Oh! breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade,
Where cold and unhonour'd his relics are laid:
Sad, silent, and dark, be the tears that we shed,
As the night-dew that falls on the grass o'er his head.
.....

Thomas Moore

Spring In Town

The country ever has a lagging Spring,
Waiting for May to call its violets forth,
And June its roses-showers and sunshine bring,
Slowly, the deepening verdure o'er the earth;
.....

William Cullen Bryant

Tithonus

So when the verdure of his life was shed,
With all the grace of ripened manlihead,
And on his locks, but now so lovable,
Old age like desolating winter fell,
.....

Alan Seeger

The Hermit

Far in a wild, unknown to public view,
From youth to age a rev'rend hermit grew;
The moss his bed, the cave his humble cell,
His food the fruits, his drink the crystal well:
.....

Thomas Parnell

Blind Old Milton

Place me once more, my daughter, where the sun
May shine upon my old and time-worn head,
For the last time, perchance. My race is run;
And soon amidst the ever-silent dead
.....

William Edmondstoune Aytoun

The Penintent

'NEVER,' he said, 'nevermore,
In the murmuring stillness of night
Shall I wait for her hand on my door,
Confident, light;
.....

Alice Duer Miller

Happy Is England! I Could Be Content

Happy is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than its own;
To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through its tall woods with high romances blent;
.....

John Keats

The Four Seasons : Spring

Come, gentle Spring! ethereal Mildness! come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.
.....

James Thomson

Guy Of The Temple

Down the dim West slow fails the stricken sun,
And from his hot face fades the crimson flush
Veiled in death's herald-shadows sick and gray.
Silent and dark the sombre valley lies
.....

John Hay

The Outlaw

Before the fair Aurora spread
Her azure mantle o'er the skies,
While sleep its pleasing influence shed,
On grateful mortals weary eyes,
.....

Matilda Betham

The Feast Of The Virgins

The sun sails high in his azure realms;
Beneath the arch of the breezy elms
The feast is spread by the murmuring river.
With his battle-spear and his bow and quiver,
.....

Hanford Lennox Gordon

The Nightingale

A Conversation Poem, April, 1798

No cloud, no relique of the sunken day
Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip
.....

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Ant

Forbear, thou great good husband, little ant;
A little respite from thy flood of sweat!
Thou, thine own horse and cart under this plant,
Thy spacious tent, fan thy prodigious heat;
.....

Richard Lovelace

An Answer To The Rebus, By The Author Of These Poems

The poet asks, and Phillis can't refuse
To show th' obedience of the Infant muse.
She knows the Quail of most inviting taste
Fed Israel's army in the dreary waste;
.....

Phillis Wheatley

The Last Days

The russet leaves of the sycamore
Lie at last on the valley floor-
By the autumn wind swept to and fro
Like ghosts in a tale of long ago.
.....

George Sterling

A Sanitary Message

Last night, above the whistling wind,
I heard the welcome rain,-
A fusillade upon the roof,
A tattoo on the pane:
.....

Bret Harte

Bright Be The Place Of Thy Soul!

Bright be the place of thy soul!
No lovelier spirit than thine
E'er burst from its mortal control
In the orbs of the blessed to shine.
.....

George Gordon Byron

Lamia. Part I

Upon a time, before the faery broods
Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,
Before King Oberon's bright diadem,
Sceptre, and mantle, clasp'd with dewy gem,
.....

John Keats

Sing Me A Song, O, Wind

Sing me a song, O, Wind,
Of musical cadence sweet,
Which in the wood around
Shall often and oft repeat;
.....

Freeman E. Miller

Lamia

Part 1

Upon a time, before the faery broods
Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,
.....

John Keats

Vignettes 04

“Come, Edmund, now the sun goes down,
Thy many wanderings tell!
Say, after all thine eyes have seen,
If home appears so well!”
.....

Matilda Betham

Mount Vernon

Subdued and sad, I trod the place
Where he, the hero, lived and died;
Where, long-entombed beneath the shade
By willow bough and cypress made,
.....

Hattie Howard

Some Beasts

It was the twilight of the iguana:

From a rainbowing battlement,
a tongue like a javelin
.....

Pablo Neruda

Ode To Apollo

"Tandem venias precamur
   Nube candentes humeros amictus
   Augur Apollo."

.....

James Lister Cuthbertson

I Feel That I Am Free

To me the sky looks bluer,
And the green grass greener still,
And earth's flowers seem more lovely
As they bloom on heath and hill.
.....

Owen Suffolk

A La Sante

Allons, muse rustique, enfant de la nature,
Détache ces cheveux, ceins ton front de verdure,
Va de mon cher de Pange égayer les loisirs.
Rassemble autour de toi tes champêtres plaisirs;
.....

Andre Marie De Chenier

Within The Circuit Of This Plodding Life

Within the circuit of this plodding life
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
.....

Henry David Thoreau

Ch 05 On Love And Youth Story 10

In the exuberance of youth, as it usually happens and as thou knowest, I was on the closest terms of intimacy with a sweetheart who had a melodious voice and a form beautiful like the moon just rising.

He, the down of whose cheek drinks the water of immortality,
Whoever looks at his sugar lips eats sweetmeats.
.....

Saadi Shirazi

April

GREEN o'er the copses spring's soft hues are spreading,
High wave the reeds in the transparent floods,
The oak its sear and sallow foliage shedding,
From their moss'd cradles start its infant buds.
.....

Charlotte Smith

The Olive Of Peace

Now sheath'd is the Sword that was wild as the blast:
The Tempest of Slaughter and Terror is past;
Old ALBION her Neighbour all smilingly hailsâ??
For the OLIVE of PEACE blooms again in our Vales!
.....

James Henry Leigh Hunt

Deborah

Time Sire of years unwind thy leaf anew,
& still the past recall to present view,
Spread forth its circles, swiftly gaze ym ore,
But where an action's nobly sung before
.....

Thomas Parnell

Lachin Y Gair

Away, ye gay landscapes, ye garden of roses!
In you let the minions of luxury rove;
Restore me to the rocks, where the snowflake reposes,
Though still they are sacred to freedom and love:
.....

George Gordon Byron

The Ride

Lately an equipage I overtook,
And helped to lift it o'er a narrow brook.
No horse it had except one boy, who drew
His sister out in it the fields to view.
.....

Charles Lamb

Admetus: To My Friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson

He who could beard the lion in his lair,
To bind him for a girl, and tame the boar,
And drive these beasts before his chariot,
Might wed Alcestis. For her low brows' sake,
.....

Emma Lazarus

Acon And Rhodope

The Year's twelve daughters had in turn gone by,
Of measured pace tho' varying mien all twelve,
Some froward, some sedater, some adorn'd
For festival, some reckless of attire.
.....

Walter Savage Landor

Inebriety

The mighty spirit, and its power, which stains
The bloodless cheek, and vivifies the brains,
I sing. Say, ye, its fiery vot'ries true,
The jovial curate, and the shrill-tongued shrew;
.....

George Crabbe

The Song Of Hiawatha Xiii: Blessing The Cornfields

Sing, O Song of Hiawatha,
Of the happy days that followed,
In the land of the Ojibways,
In the pleasant land and peaceful!
.....

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Desert Dweller

There is no room in any town (he said)
To house the towering hugeness of my dream.
It straitens me to sleep in any bed

.....

Clark Ashton Smith

The Centenarian's Story

Give me your hand, old Revolutionary;
The hill-top is nigh but a few steps, (make room, gentlemen;)
Up the path you have follow'd me well, spite of your hundred and extra years;
You can walk, old man, though your eyes are almost done;
.....

Walt Whitman