Tag: Poetry
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Is It Nothing to You?
Is It Nothing to You?May Probyn WE were playing on the green together, My sweetheart and I— Oh! so heedless in the gay June weather, When the word went forth that we must die. Oh! so merrily the balls of amber And of ivory tossed we to the sky, While the word went forth in…
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The Burning Babe
The Burning BabeRobert Southwell As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow, Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear; Who, scorched with excessive heat,…
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Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
Epitaph on an Army of MercenariesA.E. Housman These, in the day when heaven was falling,The hour when earth’s foundations fled,Followed their mercenary calling,And took their wages, and are dead. Their shoulders held the sky suspended;They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;What God abandoned, these defended,And saved the sum of things for pay.
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On the Death of a particular Friend
On the Death of a particular FriendJames Thomson AS those we love decay, we die in part, String after string is sever’d from the heart; Till loosen’d life, at last but breathing clay, Without one pang is glad to fall away. Unhappy he who latest feels the blow! Whose eyes have wept o’er every friend…
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In Earliest Spring
In Earliest Spring William Dean Howells Tossing his mane of snows in wildest eddies and tangles, Lion-like March cometh in, hoarse, with tempestuous breath, Through all the moaning chimneys, and ‘thwart all the hollows and angles Round the shuddering house, threatening of winter and death. But in my heart I feel the life of the…
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Chorus from ‘Atalanta’
Chorus from ‘Atalanta’ Algernon Charles Swinburne When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; And the brown bright nightingale amorous Is half assuaged for Itylus, For the Thracian ships and the foreign…
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Song
Song Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy I made another garden, yea, For my new Love: I left the dead rose where it lay And set the new above. Why did my Summer not begin? Why did my heart not haste? My old Love came and walk’d therein, And laid the garden waste. She enter’d with her…
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Jerusalem (from Milton)
Jerusalem William Blake And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God, On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold!…
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The Great Breath
The Great Breath George William Russell Its edges foam’d with amethyst and rose, Withers once more the old blue flower of day: There where the ether like a diamond glows, Its petals fade away. A shadowy tumult stirs the dusky air; Sparkle the delicate dews, the distant snows; The great deep thrills—for through it everywhere…
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Forefathers
Forefathers Edmund Blunden Here they went with smock and crook, Toiled in the sun, lolled in the shade, Here they mudded out the brook And here their hatchet cleared the glade: Harvest-supper woke their wit, Huntsmen’s moon their wooings lit. From this church they led their brides, From this church themselves were led Shoulder-high; on…
Dan Yingst 