| Dirge | COME away, come away, death,
And in sad cypres let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share... | William Shakespeare |
| A Madrigal | Crabbed Age and Youth
Cannot live together:
Youth is full of pleasance,
Age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn,
Age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave,
Age like winter bare:
Youth is full of sports,
Age's breath is short,
Youth is... | William Shakespeare |
| Silvia | WHO is Silvia? What is she?
That all our swains commend her?
Holy, fair, and wise is she;
The heaven such grace did lend her,
That she might admired... | William Shakespeare |
| Under the Greenwood Tree | Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to... | William Shakespeare |
| A Fairy Song | Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall... | William Shakespeare |
| Dirge | Knows he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn?
In the long sunny afternoon,
The plain was full of ghosts,
I wandered up, I wandered down,
Beset by pensive... | Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Summum Bonum | All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee:
All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem:
In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea:
Breath and bloom, shade and shine, wonder, wealth,... | Robert Browning |
| You'll Love Me Yet | You'll love me yet!—and I can tarry
Your love's protracted growing:
June reared that bunch of flowers you carry
From seeds of April's... | Robert Browning |
| Sonnets from the Portuguese v | WHEN our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curving point,--what bitter wrong
Can the earth do us, that we should not long
Be here... | Elizabeth Barrett B… |
| The City In The Sea | Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and... | Edgar Allan Poe |
| The Bells | I... | Edgar Allan Poe |
| Evening Star | 'Twas noontide of summer,
And mid-time of night;
And stars, in their orbits,
Shone pale, thro' the light
Of the brighter, cold moon,
'Mid planets her slaves,
... | Edgar Allan Poe |
| Alone | From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
... | Edgar Allan Poe |
| Inventory | Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient... | Dorothy Parker |
| Happy the man | Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven... | John Dryden |
| Impromptu Lines Addressed To His Cousin, Mrs. Creed, In A Conversation After Dinner On The Origin Of Names | So much religion in your name doth dwell,
Your soul must needs with piety excel.
Thus names, like well-wrought pictures drawn of old,
Their owners' nature and their story told.
Your name but half expresses, for in you
Belief and practice do together... | John Dryden |
| Epitaph on the Lady Whitmore | Fair, kind, and true, a treasure each alone,
A wife, a mistress, and a friend, in one;
Rest in this tomb, raised at thy husband's cost,
Here sadly summing, what he had, and lost.
Come, virgins, ere in equal bands ye join,
Come first and offer... | John Dryden |
| A Prayer For Strength. | Carico d'anni.
Burdened with years and full of sinfulness,
With evil custom grown inveterate,
Both deaths I dread that close before me wait,
Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less.
No strength I find in mine own feebleness
To... | Michelangelo di Lod… |
| Epitaphe Sur La Mort De Damoiselle Elisabeth Ranquet | Ne verse point de pleurs sur cette sépulture,
Passant ; ce lit funèbre est un lit précieux,
Où gît d'un corps tout pur la cendre toute pure ;
Mais le zèle du coeur vit encore en ces... | Pierre Corneille |
| Farewell Ungrateful Traitor | Farewell ungrateful traitor,
Farewell my perjured swain,
Let never injured creature
Believe a man again.
The pleasure of possessing
Surpasses all expressing,
But 'tis too short a blessing,
And love too long a... | John Dryden |
| The Burden | Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard... | Rudyard Kipling |
| Through a Quiet Past | The past was meant to be forgotten; people are keen to believe so
But not for those whose children sleep in graves, below
For them, the past is a retreat where they can always go
Because warm memories convey relief
Finding the part of life, in... | Lidia Cangeopol |
| The Spring | Cydonian Spring with her attendant train,
Maelids and water-girls,
Stepping beneath a boisterous wind from Thrace,
Throughout this sylvan place
Spreads the bright tips,
And every vine-stock is
Clad in new brilliancies.
And wild desire
Falls like... | Ezra Pound |
| Song in the Manner of Housman | O woe, woe,
People are born and die,
We also shall be dead pretty soon
Therefore let us act as if we were
dead... | Ezra Pound |
| Salutation | O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier... | Ezra Pound |
| Meditatio | When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs
I am compelled to conclude
That man is the superior animal.
When I consider the curious habits of man
I confess, my friend, I am... | Ezra Pound |
| The Sun Has Long Been Set | The sun has long been set,
The stars are out by twos and threes,
The little birds are piping yet
Among the bushes and the trees;
There's a cuckoo, and one or two thrushes,
And a far-off wind that rushes,
And a sound of water that gushes,
And the... | William Wordsworth |
| Air And Angels | Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my... | John Donne |
| I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud | I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine... | William Wordsworth |
| Elegy VII | Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love,
And in that sophistry, Oh, thou dost prove
Too subtle: Foole, thou didst not understand
The mystic language of the eye nor hand:
Nor couldst thou judge the difference of the air
Of sighs, and say, This... | John Donne |
| Annunciation | Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo, faithful virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though He... | John Donne |
| The Bait | Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver... | John Donne |
