CLAIM POEMS

What Wor It?

What wor it made me love thee, lass?
Aw connot tell;
Aw know it worn't for thi brass; -
Tho' poor misel
.....

John Hartley

Raped Future

I see a dysfunctional future
Wailing in hunger. Many tongues scrabbling for a single bone
Living corpses pile the street.
I hear soothsayers boast in their ignorance and claim a stolen future
.....

Gerald Onyebuchi

Peace

A man must earn his hour of peace,
Must pay for it with hours of strife and care,
Must win by toil the evening's sweet release,
The rest that may be portioned for his share;
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Michael: A Pastoral Poem

If from the public way you turn your steps
Up the tumultuous brook of Green-head Ghyll,
You will suppose that with an upright path
Your feet must struggle; in such bold ascent
.....

William Wordsworth

In Mars, What Avatar?

“In Vishnu-land, what avatar?”
-BROWNING.

Perchance the dying gods of Earth
.....

Don Marquis

No Claim

Speak loud speak speak speak
Don’t speak at all
Breathe out breathe breathe breathe
Don’t breathe at all
.....

Kikelomo Babalola

A Cabbage Patch

Folk ask if I'm alive,
Most think I'm not;
Yet gaily I contrive
To till my plot.
.....

Robert Service

My Namesake

Addressed to Francis Greenleaf Allison of Burlington, New Jersey.

You scarcely need my tardy thanks,
Who, self-rewarded, nurse and tend--
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

Welcome Son

I welcome you my son on earth
More especially in this continent of Africa
In a village of which her people are only warm to foreigners
Feel free my son, I am here for you
.....

Blessed-grant Rodi

By-and-bye

“By-and-bye,” the maiden sighed-”by-and-bye
He will claim me for his bride,
Hope is strong and time is fleet;
Youth is fair, and love is sweet,
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Religio Laici

Dim, as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers,
Is reason to the soul; and as on high,
Those rolling fires discover but the sky
.....

John Dryden

Locksley Hall Sixty Years After

Late, my grandson! half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts,
Watch'd again the hollow ridges roaring into cataracts,

Wander'd back to living boyhood while I heard the curlews call,
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Absalom And Achitophel

In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin;
When man, on many, multipli'd his kind,
Ere one to one was cursedly confin'd:
.....

John Dryden

The Eagle And The Dove

SHADE of Caractacus, if spirits love
The cause they fought for in their earthly home
To see the Eagle ruffled by the Dove
May soothe thy memory of the chains of Rome.
.....

William Wordsworth

Like A Vocation

Not as that dream Napoleon, rumour's dread and centre,
Before who's riding all the crowds divide,
Who dedicates a column and withdraws,
Nor as that general favourite and breezy visitor
.....

W. H. Auden

Young Democracy

HARK! Young Democracy from sleep
Our careless sentries raps:
A backwash from the Futureâ??s deep
Our Evilâ??s foreland laps.
.....

Bernard O'dowd

Caged Bird

The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
.....

Maya Angelou

The Temple Of Friendship

Sacred to peace, within a wood's recess,
A blest retreat, where courtiers never press,
A temple stands, where art did never try
With pompous wonders to enchant the eye;
.....

Voltaire

A Dialogue Of Self And Soul

My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
.....

William Butler Yeats

On Going Home For Christmas

He little knew the sorrow that was in his vacant chair;
He never guessed they'd miss him, or he'd surely have been there;
He couldn't see his mother or the lump that filled her throat,
Or the tears that started falling as she read his hasty note;
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

The Solitary-hearted

She was a queen of noble Nature's crowning,
A smile of hers was like an act of grace;
She had no winsome looks, no pretty frowning,
Like daily beauties of the vulgar race:
.....

Hartley Coleridge

To Death

Come not in terrors clad, to claim
An unresisting prey:
Come like an evening shadow, Death!
So stealthily, so silently!
.....

Caroline Southey

A Modest Request

Complied With After The Dinner At President Everett's Inauguration

Scene, - a back parlor in a certain square,
Or court, or lane, - in short, no matter where;
.....

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Brothers

See! There he stands; not brave, but with an air
Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is he
Not more like brute than man? Look in his eye!
No light is there; none, save the glint that shines
.....

James Weldon Johnson

The Lay Of The Laborer

A spade! a rake! a hoe!
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye willâ??
.....

Thomas Hood

Hymn Xxi: Ye Simple Souls That Stray

Ye simple souls that stray
Far from the path of peace,
That lonely, unfrequented way
To life and happiness,
.....

John Wesley

Death Of A Young Son By Drowning

He, who navigated with success
the dangerous river of his own birth
once more set forth

.....

Margaret Atwood

Deep Inside

What will be there deep inside the ocean?
Some says there will be precious gems & deposit,
Others imagine that there will be abundant life,
These are all the thoughts created by the mind,
.....

Norbu Dorji

Going Down In Flames

The fire is warm
Lighting the night sky
It fights against this darkness
The darkness always trying to suppress this light by throwing stones
.....

Nicole Fryer

The Two Kings

King Eochaid came at sundown to a wood
Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen
He had outridden his war-wasted men
That with empounded cattle trod the mire,
.....

William Butler Yeats

The Iliad: Book 23

Thus did they make their moan throughout the city, while the
Achaeans when they reached the Hellespont went back every man to his
own ship. But Achilles would not let the Myrmidons go, and spoke to
his brave comrades saying, “Myrmidons, famed horsemen and my own
.....

Homer

Possession

THE child was yours and none of mine,
And yet you gave it me to keep,
And bade me sew it raiment fine,
And wrap my kisses round its sleep.
.....

Edith Nesbit

Gow's Watch : Act V. Scene 3

After the Battle. The PRINCESS by the Standard on the Ravelin.

Enter Gow, with the Crown of the Kingdom.

.....

Rudyard Kipling

To A Highland Girl

(At Inversneyde, upon Loch Lomond)

Sweet Highland Girl, a very shower
Of beauty is thy earthly dower!
.....

William Wordsworth

A Sourdough Story

Hark to the Sourdough story, told at sixty below,
When the pipes are lit and we smoke and spit
Into the campfire glow.
Rugged are we and hoary, and statin' a general rule,
.....

Robert Service

True Love

Farewell, Earl Richard,
Tender and brave;
Kneeling I kiss
The dust from thy grave.
.....

Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal

The Secret

I loved thee, though I told thee not,
Right earlily and long,
Thou wert my joy in every spot,
My theme in every song.
.....

John Clare

The Voice

One feather is a bird,
I claim; one tree, a wood;
In her low voice I heard
More than a mortal should;
.....

Theodore Roethke

Best Mate

First day when we met,
Did not know that fate
Was giving threat
In the face of my best mate!
.....

Minu Chaudhary

Tamerlane - Early Version

I.

I have sent for thee, holy friar;1
But 'twas not with the drunken hope,
.....

Edgar Allan Poe

Michael

"There's something in your face, Michael, I've seen it all the day;
There's something quare that wasn't there when first ye wint away. . . ."

"It's just the Army life, mother, the drill, the left and right,
.....

Robert William Service

The Princess (part 7)

So was their sanctuary violated,
So their fair college turned to hospital;
At first with all confusion: by and by
Sweet order lived again with other laws:
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

A Saint

THE stir of children with fresh dresses on,
And men who meet and say unguarded words,
And women from the coops
Of drudgeries released;
.....

Padraic Colum

Victory

I.
Before those golden altar-lights we stood,
Each one of us remembering his own dead.
A more than earthly beauty seemed to brood
.....

Alfred Noyes

Miriam

One Sabbath day my friend and I
After the meeting, quietly
Passed from the crowded village lanes,
White with dry dust for lack of rains,
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Vision

THE SUN had clos'd the winter day,
The curless quat their roarin play,
And hunger'd maukin taen her way,
To kail-yards green,
.....

Robert Burns

Prejudice

IN yonder red-brick mansion, tight and square,
Just at the town's commencement, lives the mayor.
Some yards of shining gravel, fenced with box,
Lead to the painted portal--where one knocks :
.....

Jane Taylor

Senorita

An agate-black, your roguish eyes
Claim no proud lineage of the skies,
No starry blue; but of good earth
The reckless witchery and mirth.
.....

Madison Julius Cawein

The Shepherd's Calendar - June

Now summer is in flower and natures hum
Is never silent round her sultry bloom
Insects as small as dust are never done
Wi' glittering dance and reeling in the sun
.....

John Clare

In A Gondola

The moth's kiss, first!
Kiss me as if you made believe
You were not sure, this eve,
How my face, your flower, had pursed
.....

Robert Browning