Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum: verum-tamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prospera- tur? &c.

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build - but not I build; no, but strain,
Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among the leading Victorian poets. His experimental explorations in prosody and his use of imagery established him as a daring innovator in a period of largely traditional verse. Hopkins' work had cutting-edge sensibilities that prefigured the modernist style, though his poems were first published only in 1918, long after his death.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Fragment

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simple Poetry

Fragment

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simple Poetry

The Bugler's First Communion

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simple Poetry

What shall I do

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Simple Poetry

English

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On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People A Brother and Sister

O I admire and sorrow! The heart's eye grieves
Discovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years.
A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves,
And beauty's dearest veriest vein is tears.



Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast:
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Gerard Manley Hopkins

To Laura In Death. Canzone VII.

Quell' antiquo mio dolce empio signore.

LOVE, SUMMONED BY THE POET TO THE TRIBUNAL OF REASON, PASSES A SPLENDID EULOGIUM ON LAURA.


    Long had I suffer'd, till--to combat more
In strength, in hope too sunk--at last before
Impartial Reason's seat,
Whence she presides our nobler nature o'er,
I summon'd my old tyrant, stern and sweet;
There, groaning 'neath a weary weight of grief,
With fear and horror stung,
Like one who dreads to die and prays relief,
My plea I open'd thus: "When life was young,
I, weakly, placed my peace within his power,
And nothing from that hour
Save wrong I've met; so many and so great
The torments I have borne,
That my once infinite patience is outworn,
And my life worthless grown is held in very hate!

Francesco Petrarca

The Satires Of Dr John Donne, Dean Of St Paul's,[171] Versified.

'Quid vetat et nosmet Lucili scripta legentes Quaerere, num illius, num rerum dura negarit Versiculos natura magis factos, et euntes Mollius?'

HOR.

Satire II.

Yes; thank my stars! as early as I knew
This town, I had the sense to hate it too:
Yet here, as ev'n in Hell, there must be still
One giant-vice, so excellently ill,
That all beside, one pities, not abhors;
As who knows Sappho, smiles at other whores.

I grant that poetry's a crying sin;
It brought (no doubt) the Excise and Army in:
Catch'd like the plague, or love, the Lord knows how,
But that the cure is starving, all allow
Yet like the papist's is the poet's state,
Poor and disarm'd, and hardly worth your hate!

Here a lean bard, whose wit could never give
Himself a dinner,...

Alexander Pope

To My Friend Mr Motteux,[1] On His Tragedy Called "Beauty In Distress."

    'Tis hard, my friend, to write in such an age,
    As damns, not only poets, but the stage.
    That sacred art, by Heaven itself infused,
    Which Moses, David, Solomon have used,
    Is now to be no more: the Muses' foes
    Would sink their Maker's praises into prose.
    Were they content to prune the lavish vine
    Of straggling branches, and improve the wine,
    Who but a madman would his thoughts defend?
    All would submit; for all but fools will mend.
    But when to common sense they give the lie,
    And turn distorted words to blasphemy,
    They give the scandal; and the wise discern,
    Their glosses teach an age, too apt to learn.
    What I have loosely, or profanely, writ,
    Let them to fires, their due desert, commit:
    Nor, when...

John Dryden

The Arbiter, The Almoner, And The Hermit.

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Pursued, with hearts alike most zealous,
By routes diverse, their common aim.
All highways lead to Rome: the same
Of heaven our rivals deeming true,
Each chose alone his pathway to pursue.
Moved by the cares, delays, and crosses
Attach'd to suits by legal process,
One gave himself as judge, without reward,
For earthly fortune having small regard.
Since there are laws, to legal strife
Man damns himself for half his life.
For half? - Three-fourths! - perhaps the whole!
The hope possess'd our umpire's soul,
That on his plan he should be able
To cure this vice detestable. -
The second chose the hospitals.
I give him praise: to solace pain
Is charity not spent in vain,
While men in part are animals.
The...

Jean de La Fontaine