Poem of the day
Categories
Poetry Hubs
Explore
You can also search by theme, metrics, form
and more.
Poems
Poets
Page 72 of 190
Previous
Next
Poem
Books and a coloured skein of thoughts were mine;And magic words lay ripening in my soulTill their much-whispered music turned a wineWhose subtlest power was all in my control.These things were mine, and they were real for meAs lips and darling eyes and a warm breast:For I could love a phrase, a melody,Like a fair woman, worshipped and possessed.I scorned all fire that outward of the eyesCould kindle passion; scorned, yet was afraid;Feared, and yet envied those more deeply wiseWho saw the bright earth beckon and obeyed.But a time came when, turning full of hateAnd weariness from my remembered themes,I wished my poet's pipe could modulateBeauty more palpable than words and dreams.All loveliness with which an act informs
Aldous Leonard Huxley
What the Bullet Sang
O Joy of creationTo be!O rapture to flyAnd be free!Be the battle lost or won,Though its smoke shall hide the sun,I shall find my love, the oneBorn for me!I shall know him where he stands,All alone,With the power in his handsNot oerthrown;I shall know him by his face,By his godlike front and grace;I shall hold him for a space,All my own!It is he O my love!So bold!It is I all thy loveForetold!It is I. O love! what bliss!Dost thou answer to my kiss?O sweetheart! what is thisLieth there so cold?
Bret Harte
The Sentimentalist
There lies a photograph of youDeep in a box of broken things.This was the face I loved and knewFive years ago, when life had wings;Five years ago, when through a townOf bright and soft and shadowy bowersWe walked and talked and trailed our gownRegardless of the cinctured hours.The precepts that we held I kept;Proudly my ways with you I went:We lived our dreams while others slept,And did not shrink from sentiment.Now I go East and you stay WestAnd when between us Europe liesI shall forget what I loved bestAway from lips and hands and eyes.But we were Gods then: we were theyWho laughed at fools, believed in friends,And drank to all that golden dayBefore us, which this poem ends.
James Elroy Flecker
A Lover's Journey
When a lover hies abroadLooking for his love,Azrael smiling sheathes his sword,Heaven smiles above.Earth and seaHis servants be,And to lesser compass round,That his love be sooner found!
Rudyard
A Valentine
Here's a valentine nosegay for Mary,Some of Spring's earliest flowers;The ivy is green by the dairy,And so are these laurels of ours.Though the snow fell so deep and the winter was dreary,The laurels are green and the sparrows are cheery.The snowdrops in bunches grow under the rose,And aconites under the lilac, like fairies;The best in the bunches for Mary I chose,Their looks are as sweet and as simple as Mary's.The one will make Spring in my verses so bare,The other set off as a braid thy dark hair.Pale primroses, too, at the old parlour end,Have bloomed all the winter 'midst snows cold and dreary,Where the lavender-cotton kept off the cold wind,Now to shine in my valentine nosegay for Mary;And appear in my verses all Summer, and b...
John Clare
To Helen ( II )
Helen, thy beauty is to meLike those Nicean barks of yore,That gently, oer a perfumed sea,The weary, wayworn wanderer boreTo his own native shore.On desperate seas long wont to roam,Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,Thy Naiad airs have brought me homeTo the glory that was Greece,To the grandeur that was Rome.Lo! in yon brilliant window niche,How statue-like I see thee stand,The agate lamp within thy hand!Ah, Psyche, from the regions whichAre Holy Land!
Edgar Allan Poe
A Boy
Out of the noise of tired people working,Harried with thoughts of war and lists of dead,His beauty met me like a fresh wind blowing,Clean boyish beauty and high-held head.Eyes that told secrets, lips that would not tell them,Fearless and shy the young unwearied eyes,Men die by millions now, because God blunders,Yet to have made this boy he must be wise.
Sara Teasdale
Life.
Oh Life! I breathe thee in the breeze,I feel thee bounding in my veins,I see thee in these stretching trees,These flowers, this still rock's mossy stains.This stream of odours flowing byFrom clover-field and clumps of pine,This music, thrilling all the sky,From all the morning birds, are thine.Thou fill'st with joy this little one,That leaps and shouts beside me here,Where Isar's clay-white rivulets runThrough the dark woods like frighted deer.Ah! must thy mighty breath, that wakesInsect and bird, and flower and tree,From the low trodden dust, and makesTheir daily gladness, pass from me,Pass, pulse by pulse, till o'er the groundThese limbs, now strong, shall creep with pain,And this fair world of sight and so...
William Cullen Bryant
Olive
IWho may praise her?Eyes where midnight shames the sun,Hair of night and sunshine spun,Woven of dawn's or twilight's loom,Radiant darkness, lustrous gloom,Godlike childhood's flowerlike bloom,None may praise aright, nor singHalf the grace wherewith like springLove arrays her.IILove untoldSings in silence, speaks in lightShed from each fair feature, brightStill from heaven, whence toward us, nowNine years since, she deigned to bowDown the brightness of her brow,Deigned to pass through mortal birth:Reverence calls her, here on earth,Nine years old.IIILove's deep duty,Even when love transfigured growsWorship, all too surely knowsHow, though love may cast out fear,Yet the debt divine...
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Farewell
Farewell, Aziz, it was not mine to fold you Against my heart for any length of days.I had no loveliness, alas, to hold you, No siren voice, no charm that lovers praise.Yet, in the midst of grief and desolation, Solace I my despairing soul with this:Once, for my life's eternal consolation, You lent my lips your loveliness to kiss.Ah, that one night! I think Love's very essence Distilled itself from out my joy and pain,Like tropical trees, whose fervid inflorescence Glows, gleams, and dies, never to bloom again.Often I marvel how I met the morning With living eyes after that night with you,Ah, how I cursed the wan, white light for dawning, And mourned the paling stars, as each withdrew!Yet I, eve...
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
In Those Old Days
In those old days you were called beautiful,But I have worn the beauty from your face;The flowerlike bloom has withered on your cheekWith the harsh years, and the fire in your eyesBurns darker now and deeper, feeding onBeauty and the remembrance of things gone.Even your voice is altered when you speak,Or is grown mute with old anxietyFor me.Even as a fire leaps into flame and burnsLeaping and laughing in its lovely flight,And then under the flame a glowing domeDeepens slowly into blood-like light:--So did you flame and in flame take delight,So are you hollow'd now with aching fire.But I still warm me and make there my home,Still beauty and youth burn there invisiblyFor me.Now my lips falling on your silver'd skull,...
John Frederick Freeman
Written In A Friend's Album.
Trust not Hope's illusive ray,Trust not Joy's deceitful smiles;Oft they reckless youth betrayWith their bland, seductive wiles.I have proved them all, alas!Transient as the hues of eve;Meteor-like, they quickly passThrough the bosoms they deceive.Let not Love thy prospects gild;Soon they will be clouded o'er,And the budding heart once chilled,It can brightly bloom no more.Slumber not in Pleasure's beam;It may sparkle for a while,But 'tis transient as a dream,Faithless as a foeman's smile.There's a light that's brighter far,Soothes the soul by anguish riven,'Tis Religion's guiding starGlittering on the verge of Heaven.Oh! this beam divine is worthAll the charm that life can give;'...
Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
One And Two.
I.If you to me be cold,Or I be false to you,The world will go on, I think,Just as it used to do;The clouds will flirt with the moon,The sun will kiss the sea,The wind to the trees will whisper,And laugh at you and me;But the sun will not shine so bright,The clouds will not seem so white,To one, as they will to two;So I think you had better be kind,And I had best be true,And let the old love go on,Just as it used to do.II.If the whole of a page be read,If a book be finished through,Still the world may read on, I think,Just as it used to do;For other lovers will conThe pages that we have passed,And the treacherous gold of the bindingWill glitter unto the last.But lids have a lonely look,...
William McKendree Carleton
My Light With Yours
IWhen the sea has devoured the ships,And the spires and the towersHave gone back to the hills.And all the citiesAre one with the plains again.And the beauty of bronze,And the strength of steelAre blown over silent continents,As the desert sand is blown -My dust with yours forever.IIWhen folly and wisdom are no more,And fire is no more,Because man is no more;When the dead world slowly spinningDrifts and falls through the void -My light with yoursIn the Light of Lights forever!
Edgar Lee Masters
From A Greek Epigram.
While on the cliff with calm delight she kneels,And the blue vales a thousand joys recall,See, to the last, last verge her infant steals!O fly--yet stir not, speak not, lest it fall. Far better taught, she lays her bosom bare,And the fond boy springs back to nestle there.
Samuel Rogers
The Passionate Reader To His Poet
Doth it not thrill thee, Poet,Dead and dust though thou art,To feel how I press thy singingClose to my heart? -Take it at night to my pillow,Kiss it before I sleep,And again when the delicate morningBeginneth to peep?See how I bathe thy pagesHere in the light of the sun,Through thy leaves, as a wind among roses,The breezes shall run.Feel how I take thy poemAnd bury within it my face,As I pressed it last night in the heart ofa flower,Or deep in a dearer place.Think, as I love thee, Poet,A thousand love beside,Dear women love to press thee tooAgainst a sweeter side.Art thou not happy, Poet?I sometimes dream that IFor such a fragrant fame as thineWould gladly sing and di...
Richard Le Gallienne
Apple-Blossoms.
Underneath an apple-treeSat a maiden and her lover;And the thoughts within her heYearned, in silence, to discover.Round them danced the sunbeams bright,Green the grass-lawn stretched before them;While the apple-blossoms whiteHung in rich profusion o'er them.Naught within her eyes he readThat would tell her mind unto him;Though their light, he after said,Quivered swiftly through and through him;Till at last his heart burst freeFrom the prayer with which 'twas laden,And he said, "When wilt thou beMine for evermore, fair maiden?""When," said she, "the breeze of MayWith white flakes our heads shall cover,I will be thy brideling gay -Thou shall be my husband-lover.""How," said he, in sorrow bowed,"Can I hope...
An Idyl Of The May.
In the beautiful May weather, Lapsing soon into June; On a golden, golden day Of the green and golden May, When our hearts were beating tune To the coming feet of June,Walked we in the woods together. Silver fine Gleamed the ash buds through the darkness of the pine,And the waters of the streamGlance and gleam,Like a silver-footed dream-- Beckoning, calling, Flashing, falling,Into shadows dun and brown Slipping down,Calling still--Oh hear! Oh follow! Follow--follow!Down through glen and ferny hollow,Lit with patches of the sky,Shining through the trees so high,Hand in hand we went together,In the golden, golden weather Of the...
Kate Seymour Maclean