121 Classic Poems

Are they shadows that we see? And can shadows pleasure give? Pleasures only shadows be Cast by bodies we conceive And are made the things we deem In those figures which they seem. But these pleasures vanish fast Which by shadows are expressed; Pleasures are not, if they last; In their passing is their best. […]

Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air, Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair. Shine, sun; burn, fire; breathe, air, and ease me; Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me and please me. Shadow, my sweet nurse, keep me from burning; Make not my glad cause of mourning. Let not my beauty’s fire Inflame

Weep you no more, sad fountains; What need you flow so fast? Look how the snowy mountains Heaven’s sun doth gently waste. But my sun’s heavenly eyes View not your weeping, That now lie sleeping Softly, now softly lies Sleeping. Sleep is a reconciling, A rest that peace begets. Doth not the sunrise smiling When

The cardboard shows me how it was, When the two girl cousins went paddling, Each one holding one of my mother’s hands, And she the big girl-some twelve years or so. All three stood still to smile through their hair At the uncle with the camera. A sweet face, My mother’s, that was before I

And who art thou? said I to the soft falling shower, Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated I am the poem of earth, said the voice of the rain. Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea, Upwards to heaven, whence, vague form’d altogether changed, and

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw, within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, An Angel writing in a book of gold: Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, And to the Presence in the room

Now we will count to twelve And we will all keep still. For once on the face of the Earth Let’s not speak in any language, Let’s stop for one second, And not move our arms so much. Fishermen in the cold sea Would not harm whales And the man gathering salt Would look at

I come from haunts of coot and hem; I make a sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles. With many a curve my banks I fret By many a

Vital spark of heav’nly flame! Quit, 0 quit this mortal frame: Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying, O the pain, the bliss of dying! Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife, And let me languish into life. Hark! they whisper; angels say, Sister Spirit, come away! What is this absorbs me quite? Steals my senses, shuts my sight,

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan The proper study of Mankind is Man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A Being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;

All folks who pretend to religion and grace, Allow there’s a HELL, but dispute of the place: But, if HELL may by logical rules be defined The place of the damned -I’ll tell you my mind. Wherever the damned do chiefly abound, Most certainly there is HELL to be found: Damned poets, damned critics, damned

Deprived of root, and branch and rind, Yet flowers I bear of every kind: And such is my prolific power, They bloom in less than half an hour; Yet standers-by may plainly see They get no nourishment from me. My head with giddiness goes round, And yet I firmly stand my ground: All over naked

Charming oysters I cry: My masters, come buy, So plump and so fresh, So sweet is their flesh, No Colchester oyster Is sweeter and moister: Your stomach they settle, And rouse up your mettle: They’ll make you a dad Of a lass or a lad; And madam your wife They’ll please to the life; Be

Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach Appearing, show’d the ruddy morn’s approach. Now Betty from her master’s bed had flown, And softly stole to discompose her own. The slip-shod ‘prentice from his master’s door Had par’d the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor. Now Moll had whirl’d her mop with dext’rous airs, Prepar’d to

Flee from the press, and dwell with soothfastness; Suffice thee thy good, though it be small; For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness, Press hath envy, and weal is blent o’er all, Savour no more than thee behove shall; Read well thyself, that other folk canst read; And truth thee shall deliver, it is no