FORTUNE POEMS

The Secret

She sought to breathe one word, but vainly;
Too many listeners were nigh;
And yet my timid glance read plainly
The language of her speaking eye.
.....

Friedrich Schiller

Fits And Befits

Ten rolling fingers
Few bold and straight
Rest not assured
With faith and fate.
.....

Debjani Chatterjee

The Two Cousins

Valour and Innocence
Have latterly gone hence
To certain death by certain shame attended.
Envy, ah! even to tears!,
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Maesia's Song

SWEET are the thoughts that savor of content;
The quiet mind is richer than a crown;
Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent;
The poor estate scorns Fortune's angry frown.
.....

Robert Greene

As If I Controlled The Time

It was a rainy day, I’s returning home,
The road was not lonely, yet I’s alone.
I was wetting, as no umbrella I’d then.
I was shivering almost wetting in rain.
.....

Balaram Sarkar

Ae Fond Kiss, And Then We Sever

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, and then for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
.....

Robert Burns

Father

He never made a fortune, or a noise
In the world where men are seeking after fame;
But he had a healthy brood of girls and boys
Who loved the very ground on which he trod.
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Dust In The Winds

God had said okay
but the devil stood in the way
the fortune teller smiled
pointing a finger at the moon
.....

Malagala Umar

Venus And Adonis

Even as the sun with purple-coloured face
Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheeked Adonis hied him to the chase;
Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn.
.....

William Shakespeare

The Trail Of Ninety-eight

Gold! We leapt from our benches. Gold! We sprang from our stools.
Gold! We wheeled in the furrow, fired with the faith of fools.
Fearless, unfound, unfitted, far from the night and the cold,
Heard we the clarion summons, followed the master-lure-Gold!
.....

Robert Service

A Wish

I ask not that my bed of death
From bands of greedy heirs be free;
For these besiege the latest breath
Of fortune's favoured sons, not me.
.....

Matthew Arnold

Elegy Xix. - Written In Spring, 1743

Again the labouring hind inverts the soil;
Again the merchant ploughs the tumid wave;
Another spring renews the soldier's toil,
And finds me vacant in the rural cave.
.....

William Shenstone

The Female Exile

Written at Brighthelmstone in Nov. 1792.
NOVEMBER'S chill blast on the rough beach is howling,
The surge breaks afar, and then foams to the shore,
Dark clouds o'er the sea gather heavy and scowling,
.....

Charlotte Smith

A Poem Of Faith

I think that though the clouds be dark,
That though the waves dash o'er the bark,
Yet after while the light will come,
And in calm waters safe at home
.....

Paul Laurence Dunbar

In All Ways A Woman

In my young years I took pride in the fact that luck was called a lady. In fact, there were so few public acknowledgments of the female presence that I felt personally honored whenever nature and large ships were referred to as feminine. But as I matured, I began to resent being considered a sister to a changeling as fickle as luck, as aloof as an ocean, and as frivolous as nature. The phrase 'A woman always has the right to change her mind' played so aptly into the negative image of the female that I made myself a victim to an unwavering decision. Even if I made an inane and stupid choice, I stuck by it rather than 'be like a woman and change my mind.'

Being a woman is hard work. Not without joy and even ecstasy, but still relentless, unending work. Becoming an old female may require only being born with certain genitalia, inheriting long-living genes and the fortune not to be run over by an out-of-control truck, but to become and remain a woman command the existence and employment of genius.

.....

Maya Angelou

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

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 Flower And The Leaf: Or, The Lady In The Arbour.[1]

A VISION.


Now turning from the wintry signs, the sun,
.....

John Dryden

Sonnet 025: Let Those Who Are In Favour With Their Stars

Let those who are in favour with their stars
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,
Unlooked for joy in that I honour most.
.....

William Shakespeare

Girls Spinning

FIRST GIRL
MALLO lero iss im bo nero!
Go where they're threshing and find me my lover,
Mallo lero iss im bo bairn!
.....

Padraic Colum

The World Is Against Me

'The world is against me,' he said with a sigh.
'Somebody stops every scheme that I try.
The world has me down and it's keeping me there;
I don't get a chance. Oh, the world is unfair!
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Prelude

(From _The Shepherd's Hunting_)

Seest thou not, in clearest days,
Oft thick fogs cloud Heaven's rays?
.....

George Wither

Song I

Lordly gallants! tell me this
(Though my safe content you weigh not),
In your greatness, what one bliss
Have you gained, that I enjoy not?
.....

George Wither

Sonnet 014: Not From The Stars Do I My Judgement Pluck

Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy-
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
.....

William Shakespeare

Sonnet 032: If Thou Survive My Well-contented Day

If thou survive my well-contented day
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover,
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceasèd lover,
.....

William Shakespeare

The Iliad: Book 03

When the companies were thus arrayed, each under its own captain,
the Trojans advanced as a flight of wild fowl or cranes that scream
overhead when rain and winter drive them over the flowing waters of
Oceanus to bring death and destruction on the Pygmies, and they
.....

Homer

Why I Am A Liberal

"Why?" Because all I haply can and do,
All that I am now, all I hope to be,--
Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
.....

Robert Browning

Saadi

Trees in groves,
Kine in droves,
In ocean sport the scaly herds,
Wedge-like cleave the air the birds,
.....

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Her Last Words, At Parting.

Her last words, at parting, how can I forget?
Deep treasured thro' life, in my heart they shall stay;
Like music, whose charm in the soul lingers yet,
When its sounds from the ear have long melted away.
.....

Thomas Moore

Sonnets To The Sundry Notes Of Music

I.
IT was a lording's daughter, the fairest one of three,
That liked of her master as well as well might be,
Till looking on an Englishman, the fair'st that eye could see,
.....

William Shakespeare

Tamerlane - Early Version

I.

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

Edgar Allan Poe

Sonnet 037: As A Decrepit Father Takes Delight

As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.
.....

William Shakespeare

The Belles Of Mauchline

IN Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles,
The pride of the place and its neighbourhood a';
Their carriage and dress, a stranger would guess,
In Lon'on or Paris, they'd gotten it a'.
.....

Robert Burns

To Dives. A Fragment

Unhappy Dives! in an evil hour
'Gainst Nature's voice seduced to deeds accurst!
Once Fortune's minion, now thou feel'st her power;
Wrath's vial on thy lofty head bath burst.
.....

George Gordon Byron

The Sonnets Cxxiv - If My Dear Love Were But The Child Of State

If my dear love were but the child of state,
It might for Fortune's bastard be unfather'd,
As subject to Time's love or to Time's hate,
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather'd.
.....

William Shakespeare

Vixi Puellis Nuper Idoneus

They flee from me that sometime did me seek,
With naked foot stalking within my chamber:
Once have I seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild, and do not once remember
.....

Sir Thomas Wyatt

Here's To Thy Health, My Bonie Lass

HERE'S to thy health, my bonie lass,
Gude nicht and joy be wi' thee;
I'll come nae mair to thy bower-door,
To tell thee that I lo'e thee.
.....

Robert Burns

The Old Australian Ways

The London lights are far abeam
Behind a bank of cloud,
Along the shore the gaslights gleam,
The gale is piping loud;
.....

Banjo Paterson

The Golden Age

Is it the dawn of a Golden Age
And a swift release from pain?
The politicians fight and rage
Where doubt and chaos reign.
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

The Change

POOR River, now thou'rt almost dry,
What Nymph, or Swain, will near thee lie?
Since brought, alas! to sad Decay,
What Flocks, or Herds, will near thee stay?
.....

Anne Kingsmill Finch

Old Mister Laughter

Old Mister Laughter
Comes a-grinnin' down the way,
Singin': 'Never mind your troubles,
For they'll surely pass away.'
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

The Cremona Violin

Part First

Frau Concert-Meister Altgelt shut the door.
A storm was rising, heavy gusts of wind
.....

Amy Lowell

Stella-s Birth-day. 1724-5

As when a beauteous nymph decays,
We say she's past her dancing days;
So poets lose their feet by time,
And can no longer dance in rhyme.
.....

Jonathan Swift

The Rewards Of Industry

A FRIEND of mine said yesterday: 'There goes a man across the way
Who paid ten thousand dollars for a home a week ago;
He owns an automobile now, a saddle horse and keeps a cow,
And smokes cigars at fifty cents a throw.
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

The Widow On Windermere Side

I

How beautiful when up a lofty height
Honour ascends among the humblest poor,
.....

William Wordsworth

King Henry Vii And The Shipwrights

Harry, our King in England, from London town is gone,
And comen to Hamull on the Hoke in the Countie of Suthampton.
For there lay the Mary of the Tower, his ship of war so strong,
And he would discover, certaynely, if his shipwrights did him wrong.
.....

Rudyard Kipling

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 His Brother, Nicholas Herrick.

What others have with cheapness seen and ease
In varnish'd maps, by th' help of compasses,
Or read in volumes and those books with all
Their large narrations incanonical,
.....

Robert Herrick

The Wishing-caps

Life's all getting and giving,
I've only myself to give.
What shall I do for a living?
I've only one life to live.
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Troilus And Criseyde: Book 01

The double sorwe of Troilus to tellen,
That was the king Priamus sone of Troye,
In lovinge, how his aventures fellen
Fro wo to wele, and after out of Ioye,
.....

Geoffrey Chaucer