Category: Poetry
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O Solitude!
O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,— Nature’s observatory—whence the dell, Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell, May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep ’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap Startles the wild…
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“Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ in Water” John Keats
Tall and handsome I didn’t love him for his poetry. I didn’t love him at all in a romantic way though he had a habit of sending love letters to everyone he thought beautiful. He’d sent one to me just after a bike ride along the glittering reservoir. We were friends because we’d known each…
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Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What…
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The Portrait by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
This is her picture as she was: It seems a thing to wonder on, As though mine image in the glass Should tarry when myself am gone. I gaze until she seems to stir,— Until mine eyes almost aver That now, even now, the sweet lips part To breathe the words of the sweet heart:—…
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The Unknown Soldier
One sharp pain. One utterance of surprise. Oh. He leaves no great philosophies. There are no medals, no headstone. Only a few strings left attached to this world. Letters in government files The sacrifice a mother makes to prove her relation to the boy whose life is opened up on paper for a pension she…
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Vastness by Alfred Lord Tennyson
MANY a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanish’d face, Many a planet by many a sun may roll with the dust of a vanish’d race. II. Raving politics, never at rest—as this poor earth’s pale history runs,— What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a…
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Writing as a Search for Wisdom
THE POET by ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON The poet in a golden clime was born, With golden stars above; Dower’d with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love. He saw thro’ life and death, thro’ good and ill, He saw thro’ his own soul. The marvel of the everlasting will, An…
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Sunday at Middlemay Farm
A few weeks ago I visited with a lady who rescued a cream-colored dairy goat from a farmer who had bred the goat multiple times. No problem there, but when the goat waddled out of her cozy, straw-filled stall into the main section of the sweet-smelling barn I saw right away why this woman had…
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Ring Out Wild Bells by Alfred Tennyson
Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow; The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and…
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I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day (the story behind the song)
I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, and wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men! And thought how, as the day had come, The belfries of all Christendom Had rolled along The unbroken song Of peace on earth, good-will to men! Then from each…
Author Adrienne Morris 