Home | Poems of All Time | Contemporary Poetry | Español | ABOUT | LINKS | Art Gallery
Stories and Poetry
poems by Robert Browning, born in London, 1812, died at Venice,Italy, 1889

   HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops - at the bent spray's edge-
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
-Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!


poems by Walt Whitman, born in Long Island, N.Y., U.S.A., 1819,died at Camden, N.J., 1892

		O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
 
1

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;	
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;	 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,	 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:	 
    But O heart! heart! heart!	        
      O the bleeding drops of red,
 
        Where on the deck my Captain lies,	 
          Fallen cold and dead.	 
  	
2

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;	 
Rise up-for you the flag is flung-for you the bugle trills;	  
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths-for you the shores a-crowding;	 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;	 
    Here Captain! dear father!	 
      This arm beneath your head;
 
        It is some dream that on the deck,	  
          You've fallen cold and dead.	 
  	
3

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;	 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;	 
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;	 
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;	  
    Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!	 
      But I, with mournful tread,
 
        Walk the deck my Captain lies,	 
          Fallen cold and dead.	 
poems by Emily Dickinson, born in Amherst, Mass., U.S.A., 1830, died there, 1886


Wonder is not Precisely Knowing

Wonder is not precisely knowing,
And not precisely knowing not;
A beautiful but bleak condition
He has not lived who has not felt.

Suspense is his maturer sister;
Whether adult delight is pain
Or of itself a new misgiving-
This is the gnat that mangles men.


poems by Austin Dobson, born in Plymouth, 1840, died at Ealing, England, 1921
  				IN AFTER DAYS


			In after days when grasses high
			O'er-top the stone where I shall lie,
				Though ill or well the world adjust
				My slender claim to honoured dust,
			I shall not question nor reply.

			I shall not see the morning sky;
			I shall not hear the night-wind sigh;
				I shall be mute, as all men must,
					In after days.

			But yet, now living, fain were I
			That some one then should testify,
				Saying-"He held his pen in trust
				To Art, not serving shame or lust."
			Will none?-Then let my memory die
					In after days!


poems by Thomas Hardy, born in Dorsetshire, 1840, died 1928
			IN TIME OF "THE BREAKING OF NATIONS"
				Jer. LI, 20


					I

			Only a man harrowing clods
				In a slow silent walk	
			With an old horse that stumbles and nods
				Half asleep as they walk.

					II

			Only thin smoke without flame
				From the heaps of couch-grass;
			Yet this will go onward the same
				Though Dynasties pass.

					III

			Yonder a maid and her wight
				Come whispering by:
			War`s annals will cloud into night
				Ere their story die.

poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins, born in Stratford, Essex, 1844, died in Dublin, Ireland, 1889

			  THE WINDHOVER

		   	To Christ Our Lord


I caught this morning morning´s minion, king-
	dom of daylight´s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his 
		riding        
	Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
high there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
in his ecstasy! Then off, off forth on swing,
	as a skate´s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and
		gliding
	Rebuffed the big wind.  My heart is hiding
Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing! 	

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume here
	Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

	No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
	Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

poems by Archibald Lampman, born in Morpeth, Ontario, 1861, died at Ottawa, Canada, 1899

LATE NOVEMBER

The hills and leafless forests slowly yield
To the thick-driving snow. A little while
And night shall darken down. In shouting file
The woodmen`s carts go by me homeward-wheeled,
Past the thin fading stubbles, half concealed,
Now golden-gray, sowed softly through with snow,
Where the last ploughman follows still his row,
Turning black furrows through the whitening field.
Far off the village lamps begin to gleam,
Fast drives the snow, and no man comes this way;
The hills grow wintry white, and bleak winds moan
About the naked uplands. I alone
Am neither sad, nor shelterless, nor gray,
Wrapped round with thought, content to watch and dream.

top
TOP