Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander, Esq.
Terry College of Business>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>University of Georgia
Dr. B-A's Goodie Bag
The Poetry Corner
Because I believe that life is larger than the classroom and that you should always stop and take time to smell the roses, I read poems before each class, and students often want copies of them. I put these here strictly for the purpose of sharing them with my students. All other uses are prohibited by copyright laws. Click on the poem you wish to see, then enjoy.
Dawn D. Bennett-AlexanderWhat I Want You to Know - Dr. B-A
Legacy - Tonika Thompson
A Poem for Thought - RuNell Ni Ebo
Mother Nature - J. Dalrymple
Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost
Mending Wall - Robert Frost
A Negro Love Song - Paul Laurence Dunbar
Mother to Son - Langston Hughes
April is on the Way - Alice Dunbar Nelson
They Are Calling Me - Gertrude Parthenia McBrown
Spring Dawn - Ethel Caution
Play A Blues for Louise - Waring Cuney
No Images - Waring Cuney
Symphonies - Esther Popel
The Mask - Clarissa Scott Delaney
Life - Paul Laurence Dunbar
My People - Langston Hughes
Lines on Leadership - Leslie Pinckney Hill
Dream Variation - Langston Hughes
The Seedling - Paul Laurence Dunbar
Keep A Pluggin' Away - Paul Laurence Dunbar
Disappointed - Paul Laurence Dunbar
Invitation to Love - Paul Laurence Dunbar
We Wear the Mask - Paul Laurence Dunbar
The Phantom Kiss - Paul Laurence Dunbar
Then and Now - Paul Laurence Dunbar
Curiosity - Paul Laurence Dunbar
Little Brown Baby - Paul Laurence Dunbar
Be Nobody's Darling - Alice Walker
Silver Writes - Alice Walker
Us Two - A.A. Milne
Disobedience - A.A. Milne
Way Down in the Music - Eloise Greenfield
Honey, I Love - Eloise Greenfield
I Never Saw A Moor - Emily Dickinson
Bread Making - E.L.M. King
Sonnet 23 - William Shakespeare
Sonnet 16 - William Shakespeare
The Daffodils - Wordsworth
Exhortation to Courage - William Shakespeare
Hamlet's Soliloquy - William Shakespeare
Knowledge and Wisdom - Cowper
November - Bryant
Make Your Mark - David Barker
Only One Life – Horatio Bonar
Time - Young
Advice to a Reckless Youth - Ben Johnson
Disasters - Longfellow
My Childhood’s Home – Caroline Sheridan Norton
Life's Morning, Noon and Evening - L. M. D
Building Upon The Sand - Eliza Cook
The Flight of Youth – Richard Henry Stoddard
Sweet Rememberances
-
Solitude - Byron
Rain in Summer - Longfellow
We Met - Thomas Haynes Bayley
Me - Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander
The Last Rose of Summer - Thomas Moore
How Do I Love Thee? – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If Thou Must Love Me - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If You're Ever Going To Love Me -
The Passionate Shepard to His Love - Christopher Marlowe
Sonnet - Shakespeare
Crossing The Bar - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways - William Wordsworth
She Walks in Beauty - Lord Byron
Annabel Lee - Edgar Allen Poe
Perfect Woman - William Wordsworth
If - Rudyard Kipling
Myself - Ruby Okla (Manross) Shorts
The World is Too Much With Us - William Wordsworth
Invictus - William Ernest Henley
Love - Roy Croft
Home -Edgar A. Guest
A Psalm of Life - Henry Longfellow
Laugh and the World Laughs With You - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
What Have We Done Today? - Nixon Waterman
To the Virgins - Robert Herrick
April Rain - Rovert Loveman
The Spider and the Fly - Mary Howitt
Leisure - William Henry Davies
Goodbye - Delbert Ellerton
Thief of Your Heart- Mike Bowen
Waiting for Your Return- Mike Bowen
If You Were Here - Mike Bowen
What Happened to Us?- Mike Bowen
Your Beauty - Mike Bowen
You Came Along - Mike Bowen
Can't Help Missing You - Mike Bowen
A Brave and Startling Truth - Maya Angelou
Before You Knock... - Dr. B-A
Memories - Jenniffer Dawn Bennett Alexander
Idea Came While in Mississippi - Delbert Ellerton
What Good - April Sinclair
If - Paul Laurence Dunbar
What's the Use - Paul Laurence Dunbar
The Chase - Paul Laurence Dunbar
Lonesome - Paul Laurence Dunbar
After the Quarrel - Paul Laurence Dunbar
A Creed to Live By - Author Unknown
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WHAT I WANT YOU TO KNOW
More than anything, I want you to know,
that life and living is all to grow.
You'll appreciate life more, and learn more too,
If you open yourself up to things that are new.
Live life on YOUR terms, not the terms of others,
Even though you love and respect, people like your friends and your mother.
Know that it will be okay to differ with them;
If you decide their
way is not
your way, you can still be friends.
Everyone must be able to choose what is right for themselves,
Without having to
worry about
whether they can still be someone's "pal."
Learn to celebrate diversity, and differences too.
Don't think of them
first as
threatening, as many people do.
Skin color, politics, orientation of affinity;
Judge the person
first; not
what you may have heard from many.
Accept and embrace, the differences in others.
Know that it makes
life more
interesting, and we can still respect each other.
There's so much of life to live; so much to do, see and experience;
Don't lock yourself up
in a cage,
and let your one go round be deleterious.
What you stand to gain, by deciding things on your own
Is
new experiences, openness, and an appreciation for being grown.
Education is about learning, and learning can happen anywhere.
Though you have left college, you'll never stop learning, if you do as I say,
I swear.
© 1992 Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander, Esq.
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MOTHER NATURE
Come and listen to my story
Of Mother Nature in all her glory.
Of gardens filled with precious flowers,
In which I love to
walk for hours.
And sometimes just like in a dream,
I sit beside a crystal stream,
Or maybe in the water wade,
Or lay contented in a
shade.
Come and hear of scenes so grand,
Like oceans blue with golden sand,
And mountains leaping t'ward the sky,
Where
gay and
cheerful birds go by.
And how at dusk the sun do set,
And all my care I soon forget,
As twinkling stars and moon shine bright,
And in my heart is sweet delight.
Come and listen.
BY: J. Dalrymple
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STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY
EVENING
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods
fill up with
snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The
darkest
evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of
easy wind and
downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
By: Robert Frost
from "The Collected Poems, The Poetry of Robert Frost"
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MENDING WALL
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
BY: Robert Frost
from "The Collected Poems, The Poetry of Robert Frost"
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A NEGRO LOVE SONG
Seen my lady home las' night,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hel' huh han' an' sque'z it tight,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hyeahd huh sigh a little sigh,
Seen a light gleam f'om huh eye,
An' a smile go flittin' by--
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hyeahd de win' blow thoo de pine,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Mockin'-bird was singin' fine,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
An' my hea't was beatin' so,
When I reached my lady's do',
Dat I couldn't ba' to go--
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Put my ahm aroun' huh wais',
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Raised huh lips an' took a tase,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
"Love me, honey, love me true?
Love me well ez I love you?"
An' she answe'd, "'Cose I do"--
Jump back, honey, jump back.
BY: Paul Laurence Dunbar
from "
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MOTHER TO SON
Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor--
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now--
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
BY: Langston Hughes
from "
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APRIL IS ON THE WAY
April is on the way!
I saw the scarlet flash of a blackbird's wing
As he sang in the cold, brown February trees;
And children said that they caught a glimpse of the
Sky on a bird's wing from the far South.
(Dear God, was that a stark figure outstretched in the bare
branches
Etched brown against
the amethyst
sky?)
April is on the way!
The ice crashed in the brown mud-pool under my tread,
The warning earth clutched my bloody feet with great fecund
fingers.
I saw a boy rolling a hoop up the road,
His little bare hands were red with cold,
But his brown hair blew backward in the southwest wind.
(Dear God! He screamed
when he saw
my awful woe-spent eyes.)
April is on the way!
I met a woman in the lane;
Her burden was heavy as it is always, but today her step was
light,
And a smile drenched the tired look away from her eyes.
(Dear God, she had dreams of vengeance for her slain mate,
Perhaps the west wind has blown the mist of hate from her heart,
The dead man was cruel
to her, you
know that, God.)
April is on the way!
My feet spurn the ground now, instead of dragging on the bitter
road.
I laugh in my throat as I see the grass greening beside the
patches of snow
(Dear God, those were wild fears. Can there be hate when the
southwest
wind is blowing?)
April is on the way!
The crisp brown hedges stir with the bustle of bird wings.
There is business of building, and songs from brown thrush
throats
As the bird-carpenters make homes against Valentines Day.
(Dear God, could they build me a shelter in the hedge from the
icy
winds that will come with the dark?)
April is on the way!
I sped through the town this morning. The florist shops have
put yellow flowers in the windows,
Daffodils and tulips and primroses, pale and yellow flowers
Like the tips of her fingers when she waved me that frightened
farewell.
And the women in the market have stuck pussy willows in long-
necked bottles on their stands.
(Willow trees are kind, Dear God. They will not bear a body
on
their limbs.)
April is on the way!
The soul within me cried that all the husk of indifference to
sorrow was but the crust of ice with which winter disguises
life;
It will melt, and reality will burgeon forth like the crocuses
in the glen.
(Dear God! Those thoughts were from long ago, when we read
poetry after the day's toil, and got religion together at the
revival
meeting.)
April is on the way!
The infinite miracle of unfolding life in the brown February
fields.
(Dear God, the hounds are baying!)
Murder and wasted love, lust and weariness, deceit and vain-
glory--what are they but the spent breath of the runner?
(God, you know he laid hairy red hands on the golden loveli-
ness of her little daffodil body.)
Hate may destroy me, but from my brown limbs will bloom the
golden buds with which we once spelled love.
(Dear God! How light eyes glow into black pin points of
hate!)
April is on the way!
Wars are made in April, and they sing at Easter time of the
Resurrection.
Therefore I laugh in their faces.
(Dear God, give her strength to join me before her golden
petals are fouled in the slime!)
April is on the way!
BY: Alice Dunbar-Nelson
from "
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THEY ARE CALLING ME
The woods and fields are calling me,
I hear a whisper from a tree,
I can't stay in today;
I must go out to play.
The woods and fields are calling me,
I hear a whisper from a tree,
Now I hear the singing brooks
So good-bye to work and books,
I can't stay in today;
I must go out to play.
BY: Gertrude Parthenia
McBrown
from "
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SPRING DAWN
There comes to my heart from regions remote
A wild desire for the hedge and the brush,
Whenever I hear the first wild note
Of
the meadow
lark and the hermit thrush.
The broken and upturned earth to the air,
By a million thrusting blades of Spring,
Sends out from the sod and everywhere
Its
pungent
aromas over everything.
Then it's Oh, for the hills, the dawn, and the dew,
The breath of the fields and the silent lake,
And watching the wings of light burst through
The
scarlet
blush of the new daybreak.
It is then when the earth still nestles in sleep,
And the robes of light are scarce unfurled,
You can almost feel, in its mightly sweep,
The onward rush and roll of the world.
BY: Ethel Caution
from "
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PLAY A BLUES FOR LOUISE
O jazz band,
Play a blues for Louise tonight--
Play a moanin' sobbin' song
For a good gal
Whose man done her wrong.
O play
a
blues for Louise tonight.
She packed her trunk
An' left dis town-
Said she was
Play a heart-broken song
For a po' heart-broken gal.
O play
a
blues for her.
De ole wheels turn
An' regret runs through her mind
About a man who was unkind.
O play a song of pain
For a heart-sick gal
On a fast, fast train.
O play a blues for Louise tonight.
BY: Waring Cuney
from "
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NO IMAGES
She does not know
Her beauty,
She thinks her brown body
Has no glory.
If she could dance
Naked,
Under palm trees
And see her image in the river
She would know.
But there are no palm trees
On the street,
And dish water gives back no images.
BY: Waring
Cuney
from "
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SYMPHONIES
I
The red-gold sun
Sinking to rest
At day's end,
Tucking under its chin
The fleecy down comforter
That men call clouds.
II
The glimmer of moonlight
Rippling over the
Or starshine
That sparkles
And makes of the lonely dark
A
wondrous
thing.
III
The first green of Springtime
Draping the shoulders
Of shivering trees
That whisper their words
Of gratitude to Him
Who covers their nudeness.
IV
The carol of robins
Bursting their throats
With riotous welcome
To a world reborn,
Risen from the tomb
Of
dead
forgotten things.
V
And love . . .
Filling young hearts
With strange yearning,
Linking two souls with their glories
Of sunsets and starshine and bird songs
And whispering trees in the Springtime.
BY: Esther Popel
from "
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So detached and cool she is
No motion e'er betrays
The secret life within her soul,
The
anguish of
her days.
She seems to look upon the world
With cold ironic eyes,
To spurn emotion's fevered sway,
To
scoff at
tears and sighs.
But once a woman with a child
Passed by her on the street,
And once she heard from casual lips
A
man's name,
bitter-sweet.
Such baffled yearning in her eyes,
Such pain upon her face!
I turned aside until the mask
Was slipped once more in place.
BY: Clarissa Scott Delaney
From "
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LIFE
A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in,
A minute to smile and an hour to weep in,
A pint of joy to a peck of trouble,
And never laugh but the moans come double;
And that is life!
A crust and a corner that love makes precious,
With the smile to warm and the tears to refresh us;
And joy seems sweeter when cares come after,
And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter;
And that is life!
BY: Paul Laurence Dunbar
from "
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My People
The night is beautiful,
So
the faces of
my people.
The stars are beautiful,
So
the eyes of
my people.
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.
BY: Langston Hughes
from "
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LINES ON LEADERSHIP
To be a leader! What is that to be?
To stand between a people and their foes
And earn suspicion for a recompense;
To care for men more than they care themselves;
To keep a clear, discriminating mind
Between the better counsel and the best;
To be a judge of men, that none may rank
In estimation higher than his worth;
Nor fail of scope to prove his quality;
To search the motive that explains the act
Before it is accounted good or bad;
To trust a man, and yet not be dismayed
To find him faithless, going on again
To trust another; to build failure up
Into tedious structure of success;
To meet the subtle enemy within
As well as him without, and vanquish both;
To see the cause betrayed by those who pledge
The strictest loyalty; to overmatch
The envious with magnanimity;
To labor through the day, and through the night
To watch and plan and exorcise by prayer
The devil troop of doubts that tease the will;
To have a body that endures the strain
Of labor after labor, each in turn
Demanding more of nerve and hardihood;
To stand before your conscience offering
The utmost tithe of mortal sacrifice,
While selfish little critic parasites
Heckle and plot and spread malignant lies;
To walk through trouble with a heart that drips
the blood of agony, yet with a face
Of confidence and bright encouragement;
To do and do and die to raise a tribe
So robbed and bound and ignorantly weak
That God himself conceals their destiny--
To be a leader! God, that is the cost!
BY: Leslie Pinckney Hill
from "
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DREAM VARIATION
To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me--
That is my dream!
To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! whirl! whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . .
A tall, slim tree . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.
BY: Langston Hughes
from "
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THE SEEDLING
As a quiet little seedling
Lay within its darksome bed,
To itself it fell a-talking,
And this is what it
said:
"I am not so very robust,
But I'll do the best I can;"
And the seedling from that moment
Its work of life began.
So it pushed a little leaflet
Up into the light of day,
To examine the surroundings
And show the rest the
way.
The leaflet liked the prospect,
So it called its brother, Stem;
Then two other leaflets heard it,
And
quickly
followed them.
To be sure, the haste and hurry
Made the seedlings sweat and pant;
But almost before it knew it
It found itself a
plant.
The sunshine poured upon it,
And the clouds they gave a shower;
And the little plant kept growing
Till
it found
itself a flower.
Little folks, be like the seedling,
Always do the best you can;
Every child must share life's labor
Just as well as every
man.
And the sun and showers will help you
Through the lonesome, struggling hours,
Till you raise to light and beauty
Virtue's fair, unfading flowers.
BY: Paul Laurence Dunbar
from "Lyrics of Lowly Life"
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KEEP A-PLUGGIN' AWAY
I've a humble little motto
That is homely, though it's true,--
Keep a-pluggin' away.
It's a thing when I've an object
That I always try to do,--
Keep a-pluggin' away.
When you've rising storms to quell,
When opposing waters swell,
It will never fail to tell,--
Keep a-pluggin'
away.
If the hills are high before
And the paths are hard to climb,
Keep a-pluggin' away.
And remember that successes
Come to him who bides his time,--
Keep a-pluggin' away.
From the greatest to the least,
None are from the rule released.
Be thou toiler, poet, priest,
Keep a-pluggin'
away.
Delve away beneath the surface,
There is treasure farther down,--
Keep a-pluggin' away.
Let the rain come down in torrents,
Let the threat'ning heavens frown,
Keep a-pluggin' away.
When the clouds have rolled away,
There will come a brighter day
All your labor to repay,--
Keep a-pluggin'
away.
There'll be lots of snears to swallow,
There'll be lots of pain to bear,--
Keep a-pluggin' away.
If you've got your eye on heaven,
Some bright day you'll wake up there,--
Keep a-pluggin' away.
Perseverance still is king;
Time its sure reward will bring;
Work and wait unwearying,--
Keep a-pluggin' away.
BY: Paul Laurence Dunbar
from "Lyrics of Lowly Life"
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Dr. B-A’s Poetry Corner
dawndba@uga.edu
DISAPPOINTED
An old man planted and dug and tended,
Toiling in joy from dew to dew;
The sun was kind, and the rain befriended;
Fine grew his orchard and fair to view.
Then he said: "I will quiet my thrifty fears,
For here is fruit for
my failing
years."
But even then the storm-clouds gathered,
Swallowing up the azure sky;
The sweeping winds into white foam lathered
The placid breast of the bay, hard by;
Then the spirits that raged in the darkened air
Swept o'er his orchard
and left it
bare.
The old man stood in the rain, uncaring,
Viewing the place the storm had swept;
And then with a cry from his soul despairing,
He bowed him down to the earth and wept.
But a voice cried aloud from the driving rain;
"Arise, old man, and plant again!"
BY: Paul Laurence Dunbar
from "Lyrics of Lowly Life"
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dawndba@uga.edu
INVITATION TO LOVE
Come when the nights are bright with stars
Or when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O Love, whene'er you may,
And you are welcome,
welcome.
You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,
You are soft as the nesting dove.
Come to my heart and bring it rest
As
the bird
flies home to its welcome nest.
Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or
when the redd'ning cherry.
Come when the year's first blossom blows,
Come when the summer gleams and glows,
Come with the winter's drifting snows,
And you are welcome, welcome.
By: Paul Laurence Dunbar
from "Lyrics of Lowly Life"
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dawndba@uga.edu
WE WEAR THE MASK
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad
subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
BY: Paul Laurence Dunbar
from "Lyrics of Lowly Life"
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One night in my room, still and beamless,
With will and with thought in eclipse,
I rested in sleep that was dreamless;
When softly there fell
on my lips
A touch, as of lips that were pressing
Mine own with the message of bliss--
A sudden, soft, fleeting caressing,
A
breath like a
maiden's first kiss.
I woke--and the scoffer may doubt me--
I peered in surprise through the gloom;
But nothing and none were about me,
And I was alone in my
room.
Perhaps 'twas the wind that caressed me
And touched me with dew-laden breath;
Or, maybe, close-sweeping, there passed me
The
low-winging
Angel of Death.
Some sceptic may choose to disdain it,
Or one feign to read aright;
Or wisdom may seek to explain it--
This
mystical
kiss in the night.
But rather let fancy thus clear it:
That, thinking of me here alone,
The miles were made naught, and, in spirit,
Thy lips, love, were laid on my own.
BY: Paul Laurence Dunbar
from "Lyrics of the Hearthside"
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Then
He loved her, and through many years,
Had paid his fair devoted court,
Until she wearied, and with sneers
Turned
all his
ardent love to sport.
That night within his chamber lone,
He long sat writing by his bed
A note in which his heart made moan
For love; the morning
found him
dead.
Now
Like him, a man of later day
Was jilted by the maid he sought,
And from her presence turned away,
Consumed
by
burning, bitter thought.
He sought his room to write--a curse
Like him before and die, I ween.
Ah no, he put his woes in verse,
And sold them to a magazine.
Paul Laurence Dunbar
from "Lyrics of the Hearthside"
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Mammy's in de kitchen, an' de do' is shet;
All de pickaninnies climb an' tug an' sweat,
Gittin' to de winder, stickin' dah lak flies,
Evah one ermong us des all nose an' eyes.
"Whu't she cookin', Isaac?" "Whut's she cookin', Jake?"
"Is it sweet pertaters? Is hit pie er cake?"
But we couldn't mek out even whah we stood
Whut
was mammy cookin' dat
could
smell so good.
Mammy spread de winder, an' she frown an' frown,
How de pickaninnies come a-tumblin' down!
Den she say: "Ef you-all keeps a-peepin' in,
How I'se gwine to whup you, my! t'll be a sin!
Need'n come a-sniffin' an' a-nosin' hyeah,
'Ca'se I knows my business, nevah feah."
Won't somebody tell us--how I wish dey would!--
Whut
is mammy cookin' dat
it
smells so good?
We know she means business, an' we dassent stay,
Dough it's mighty tryin' fuh to go erway;
But we goes a-troopin' down de ol' wood-track
'Twell dat steamin' kitchen brings us stealin' back,
Climbin' an' a-peepin' so's to see inside.
Whut on earf kin mammy be so sha'p to hide?
I'd des up an' tell folks w'en I knowed I could,
Ef
I was a-cookin' t'ings
dat smelt so good.
Mammy's in de oven, an' I see huh smile;
Moufs mus' be a-wat'rin' roun' hyeah fuh a mile;
Den we almos' hollah ez we hu'ies down,
'Ca'se hit's apple dumplin's, big an' fat an' brown!
W'en de do' is opened, solemn lak an' slow,
Wisht you see us settin' all dah in a row
Innercent an' p'opah, des lak chillun should
W'en dey mammy's cookin' t'ings dat smell so good.
BY: Paul Laurence Dunbar
from "The Paul Laurence Dunbar Reader"
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Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes,
Come to you' pappy an' set on his knee.
What you been doin', suh--makin' san' pies?
Look at dat bib--you's ez du'ty ez me.
Look at dat mouf--dat's merlasses, I bet;
Come hyeah, Maria, an' wipe off his han's.
Bees gwine to ketch you an' eat you up yit,
Bein'
so sticky and' sweet--goodness lan's!
Little brown baby wif spak'lin eyes,
Who's pappy's darlin' an' who's pappy's chile?
Who is it all de day nevah once tries
Fu' to be cross, er once loses dat smile?
Whah did you git dem teef? My, you's a scamp!
Whah did dat dimple come f'om in yo' chin?
Pappy do' know--I b'lieves you's a tramp;
Mammy, dis
hyeah's some ol'
straggler
got in!
Let's th'ow him outen de do' in de san',
We do' want stragglers a-layin' 'roun' hyeah;
Let's gin him 'way to de big buggah-man;
I know he's hidin' erroun' hyeah righ neah.
Buggah-man, buggah-man, come in de do',
Hyeah's a bad boy you kin have fu' to eat.
Mammy an pappy do' want him no mo',
Swaller
him down f'om his haid
to
his feet!
Dah, now, I t'ought dat you'd hug me up close.
Go back, ol' buggah, you shan't have dis boy.
He ain't no tramp, ner no straggler, of co'se;
He's pappy's pa'dner an' playmate an' joy.
Come to you' pallet now--go to yo' res';
Wisht you could allus know ease an' cleah skies;
Wisht you could stay jes' a chile on my breas'--
Little brown baby wif spa'klin eyes!
Paul Laurence Dunbar
from "The Paul Laurence Dunbar Reader"
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Be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm.
Watch the people succumb
To madness
With ample cheer;
Let them look askance at you
And you askance reply.
Be an outcast;
Be pleased to walk alone
(Uncool)
Or line the crowded
River beds
With other impetuous
Fools.
Make a merry gathering
On the bank
Where thousands perished
For brave hurt words
They said.
Be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Qualified to live
Among your dead.
BY: Alice Walker
from "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens"
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It is true--
I've always loved
the daring
ones
Like the black young
man
Who tried
to crash
All barriers
at once,
wanted to
swim
At a white
beach
(in
Nude.
Alice Walker
from "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens"
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Wherever I am, there's always Pooh,
There's always Pooh and Me.
Whatever I do, he wants to do,
"Where are you going today?" says Pooh:
"Well, that's very odd 'cos I was too.
Let's go together," says Pooh, says he.
"Let's go together,"
says Pooh.
"What's twice eleven?" I said to Pooh.
("Twice what?" said Pooh to Me.)
"I think it ought to be twenty-two."
"Just what I think myself," said Pooh.
"It wasn't an easy sum to do,
But that's what it is," said Pooh, said he.
"That's what it is," saidooh.
"Let's look for dragons," I said to Pooh.
"Yes, let's" said Pooh to Me.
We crossed the river and found a few--
"Yes, those are dragons all right," said Pooh.
"As soon as I saw their beaks I knew.
That's what they are," said Pooh, said he.
"That's what they
are,"
said Pooh.
"Let's frighten the dragons," I said to Pooh.
"That's right," said Pooh to Me.
"I'm not afraid," I said to Pooh,
And I held his paw and I shouted "Shoo!
Silly old dragons!"--and off they flew.
"I wasn't afraid," said Pooh, said he,
I'm never
afraid with
you."
So wherever I am, there's always Pooh,
There's always Pooh and Me.
"What would I do?" I said to Pooh,
"If it wasn't for you," and Pooh said: "True,
It isn't much fun for One, but Two
Can stick together," says Pooh, says he.
"That's how it is," says Pooh.
BY: A.A. Milne
from "Now We Are Six"
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James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
James James
Said to his Mother,
"Mother," he said, said he:
"You must never go down to the end of the town,
if
you don't go down with me."
James James
Morrison's Mother
Put on her golden gown,
James James
Morrison's Mother
Drove to the end of the town.
James James
Morrison's Mother
Said to herself, said she:
"I can get right down to the end of the town and be
back
in time for tea."
King John
Put up a notice,
"LOST or STOLEN or STRAYED!
JAMES JAMES
MORRISON'S MOTHER
SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MISLAID.
LAST SEEN
WANDERING VAGUELY:
QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD,
SHE TRIED TO GET DOWN TO THE END
OF THE TOWN--FORTY SHILLINGS
REWARD!"
James James
Morrison Morrison
(Commonly known as Jim)
Told his
Other relations
Not to go blaming him.
James James
Said to his Mother,
"Mother," he said, said he:
"You must never go down to the end of the town
without
consulting me."
Continued...
James James
Morrison's mother
Hasn't been heard of since.
King John
Said he was sorry,
So did the Queen and the Prince.
King John
(Somebody told me)
Said to a man he knew:
"If people go down to the end of the town, well,
what
can anyone do?"
(Now then, very softly)
J.J.
M.M.
W.G. DuP.
Took great
C/o his M*****
Though he was only 3.
J.J.
Said to his M*****
"M*****," he said, said he:
"You-must-never-go-down-to-the-end-of-the-town-
if-you-don't-go-down-with-ME!"
A.A. Milne
from "When We Were Very Young"
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I get way down in the music
Down inside the music
I let it wake me
take me
Spin me around and make me
Uh-get down
Inside the sound of the Jackson Five
Into the tune of Earth, Wind and Fire
Down in the bass where the beat comes from
Down in the horn and down in the drum
I get down
I get down
I get way down in the music
Down inside the music
I let it wake me
me take me
Spin me around and shake me
I get down, down I get down
BY: Eloise Greenfield
from "Honey I Love and other Poems" Private Collection
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I love I love a lot of things,
a whole lot of things
Like My cousin comes to visit
and you know he's from the South 'Cause
every word he says
just kind of slides right out of his mouth
I like the way he whistles
and I like the way he walks
But honey, let me tell you
that I LOVE the way he talks
I love the way my cousin talks
and
The day is hot and icky
and the sun sticks to my skin
Mr. Davis turns the hose on,
everybody jumps right in
The water stings my stomach
and I feel so nice and cool
Honey, let me tell you
that I LOVE a flying pool
I love to feel a flying pool
and
Renee comes out to play
and brings her doll without a dress
I make a dress with paper
and that doll sure looks a mess
We laugh so loud and long and hard
the doll falls to the ground
Honey, let me tell you
that I LOVE the laughing sound
I love to make the laughing sound
and
My uncle's car is crowded
and there's lots of food to eat
We're going down the country
where the church folks like to meet
I'm looking out the window
at the cows and trees outside
Honey, let me tell you
that I LOVE to take a ride
I love to take a family ride
and
My mama's on the sofa
sewing buttons on my coat
I go and sit beside her,
I'm through playing with my boat
I hold her arm and kiss it
'cause it feels so soft and warm
Honey, let me tell you
that I LOVE my mama's arm
I love to kiss my mama's arm
and
It's not so late at night,
but still I'm lying in my bed
I guess I need my rest,
at least that's what my Mama said
She told me not to cry
'cause she don't want to hear a peep
Honey, let me tell you
I DON'T love to go to sleep
I do not love to go to sleep
But
I love
I love a lot of things,
a whole lot of things
And honey, I love you, too.
BY: Eloise Greenfield
from "Honey, I Love & Other Poems"
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I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.
BY: Emily Dickinson
from "One Hundred Best Poems for Girls & Boys"
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Mother's kneading, kneading dough,
In and out her knuckles go;
Till the sticky, shapeless lump
Grows a pillow, smooth and plump.
Then she cuts it, pops it in
To the neatly buttered tin,
Leaves it rising high and higher,
While she goes to make the fire.
How the glad flames leap and roar,
Through the open oven-door;
Till their hot breath, as they play,
Makes us wink and run away.
When they've burnt to embers red
Mother shovels in the bread;
And that warm, delicious smell
Tells her it is baking well.
When it's golden, just like wheat,
We shall get a crust to eat;
How I wish we could be fed
Every day on new-made bread!
BY: E.L.M. King
from "Best 100 Poems for Girls and Boys"
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When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the Lark at break of day arising)
From sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate;
For they sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with Kings.
BY: Shakespeare
from "Shakespeare's Sonnets"
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Let not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
BY: Shakespeare
From "Shakespeare's Sonnets"
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I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beside the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced,
but they Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;--
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company;
I gazed, and gazed, but little thought
What wealth that show to me had brought.
For oft when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
BY: Wordsworth
from "The Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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But wherefore do you droop? why look you sad?
Be great in fact, as you have been in thought;
Let not the world see fear and sad distrust
Govern the motion of a kingly eye;
Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire;
Threaten the threatener, and outface the brow
Of bragging horror; so shall inferior eyes,
That borrow their behaviors from the great,
Grow great by your example; and put on
The dauntless spirit of resolution;
Show boldness and aspiring confidence.
What! shall they seek the lion in his den,
And fight him there, and make him tremble there?
O, let it not be said! Forage, and run
To meet displeasure further from the doors,
And grapple with him ere he comes so nigh!
BY: Shakespeare
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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To be, or not to be, that is the question:--
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them.
To die--to sleep;
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,--'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.
To die--to sleep;
To sleep! perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect,
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death--
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller return--puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of!
Thus conscience does make coward of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
BY: Shakespeare
from "A Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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Knowledge and wisdom,
far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection.
Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge--a rude, unprofitable mass,
The mere materials with which Wisdom builds,
Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to its place--
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
BY: Cowper
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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Let one smile more, departing, distant sun,
One mellow smile through the soft, vaporing air,
Ere o'er the frozen earth the loud winds run,
Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare;
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees;
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,
And the blue gentian flower, that in the breeze
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in the ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.
BY: Bryant
from :Little Treasury of Favorite Poems
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In the quarries should you toil,
Make your mark;
Do you delve upon the soil,
Make your mark;
In whatever path you go,
In whatever place you stand
Moving swift or moving slow,
With a firm and honest hand
Make your mark.
Should opponents hedge your way,
Make your mark;
Work by night
or work by day,
Make your mark;
Struggle manfully and well,
Let no obstacles oppose;
None, right-shielded, ever fell
By the weapons of his foes;
Make your mark.
What though born a peasant's son;
Make your mark;
Good by poor men can be done;
Make your mark;
Peasant's garbs may warm the cold,
Peasants' word may calm a fear;
Better far than hoarding gold
Is the drying of a tear;
Make your mark.
Life is fleeting as a shade;
Make your mark;
Marks of some kind must be made;
Make your mark;
Make it while the arm is strong,
In the golden hours of youth;
Never, never, make it wrong;
Make it with the stamp of truth;
Make your mark.
BY: David Barker
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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'Tis not for man to trifle:
life is brief, And sin is here.
Our age is but the falling of a leaf,
A dropping tear.
We have no time to sport away the hours;
All must be earnest in a world like ours.
Not many lives,
but only one have we;
One, only one.
How sacred should that one life ever be--
Day after day filled with blessed toil,
Hour after hour still bringing in new spoil!
Horatio Bonar
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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The bell strikes one;
we take no note of time,
But from its loss.
To give it, then, a tongue
Is wise in man.
As if an angel spoke,
I feel the solemn sound.
If heard aright,
It is the knell of my departed hours.
Where are they?
With the years beyond the flood.
It is the signal that demands dispatch;
How much is to be done.
BY: Young
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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What would I have you do?
I'll tell you, kinsman:
Learn to be wise, and practise how to thrive,
That would I have you do; and not to spend
Your coin on every bauble that you fancy,
Or every foolish brain that humors you.
I would not have you to invade each place,
Nor thrust yourself on all societies,
Till men's affections or your desert,
Should worthily invite you to your rank.
He that is so respectless in his courses,
Oft sells his reputation at cheap market.
Nor would I you should melt away yourself
In flashing bravery, lest, while you affect
To make a blaze of gentry to the world,
A little puff of scorn extinguish it,
And you be left like an unsavory snuff,
Whose property is only to offend.
I'd ha' you sober, and contain yourself;
Not that your sail be bigger than your boat;
But moderate your expenses now (at first),
As you may keep the same proportion still.
Nor stand so much on your gentility,
Which is an airy and mere borrowed thing,
From dead men's dust and bones; and none of yours,
Except you make, or hold it.
BY: Ben Johnson
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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Disasters come not singly,
But as if they watched and waited,
Scanning one another's motions.
When the first descends, the others
Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise
Round their victim sick and wounded--
First a shadow, then a sorrow,
Till the air is dark with anguish.
BY: Longfellow
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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I have tasted each varied pleasure,
And drank of the cup of delight;
I have danced to the gayest measure,
In the halls of dazzling light.
I have dwelt in a blaze of splendor,
And stood in the courts of kings;
I have snatched at each toy that could render
More rapid the flight of Time's wings.
But vainly I've sought for joy and peace
In the life of light and shade;
And I turn with a sigh to my own dear home,
That home where my childhood played.
When jewels are sparkling round me,
And dazzling with their rays,
I weep for ties that bound me
In life's first early days.
I sigh for one of the sunny hours,
Ere day was turned to night;
For one of my nosegays of fresh wild flowers,
Instead of these jewels bright.
BY: Caroline Sheridan Norton
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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LIFE'S MORNING,
I saw her when life's tide was high,
When youth was hovering o'er her brow;
When joy was dancing in her eye,
And her cheek blushed hope's crimson glow.
I saw her mid a fairy throng;
She seemed the gayest of the gay;
I saw her lightly glide along, '
Neath beauty's smile and pleasure's lay.
I saw her bridal robe;
The blush of joy was mounting high;
I marked her bosom's heaving throb,
I marked her dark and downcast eye.
I saw her when a mother's love
Asked at her hand a mother's care;
She looked an angel from above,
Hovering around a cherub fair.
I saw her not till, cold and pale,
She slumbered on Death's icy arm;
The rose had faded on her cheek,
Her lip had lost its power to charm.
That eye was dim which brightly shone,
That brow was cold, that heart was still;
The witcheries of that form had flown,
The lifeless clay had ceased to feel.
I saw her wedded to the grave;
Her bridal robes were weeds of death;
And o'er her pale, cold brow was hung
The damp, sepulchral, icy wreath.
BY: L.M.D.
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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'Tis well to woo, 'tis well to wed,
For so the world has done
Since myrtles grew and roses blew,
And morning brought the sun.
But have a care, ye young and fair;
Be sure ye pledge with truth;
Be certain that your love will wear
Beyond the days of youth.
For if ye give not heart to heart,
As well as hand for hand,
You'll find you've played the "unwise part,"
And "built upon the sand."
'Tis well to save, 'tis well to have
A goodly store of gold,
And hold enough of sterling stuff,
for charity is cold.
But place not all your hopes and trust
In what the deep mine brings;
We cannot live on yellow dust,
Unmixed with purer things.
And he who piles up wealth alone
Will often have to stand
Behind his coffer-chest, and own
'Tis "built upon the sand."
'Tis good to speak in kindly guise,
And soothe whate'er we can;
For speech should bind the human mind,
And love link man to man.
But stay not at the gentle words;
Let deeds with language dwell;
The one who pities starving birds
Should scatter crumbs as well.
The mercy that is warm and true
Must lend a helping hand;
For those who talk, yet fail to do,
But "build upon the sand."
BY: Eliza Cook
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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There are gains for all our losses,
There are balms for all our pain;
But when youth, the dream, departs,
It takes something from our hearts,
and it never comes again.
We are stronger, and are better,
Under manhood's sterner reign;
Still we feel that something sweet
Followed youth with flying feet,
And will never come again.
Something beautiful is vanished,
And we sigh for it in vain;
We behold it everywhere,
On the earth and in the air,
But it never comes again.
Richard Henry Stoddard
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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Let Fate do her worst; there are relics of joy,
Bright dreams of the past, which she cannot destroy;
And which come in the night-time of sorrow and care,
And bring back the features that joy used to wear;
Long, long be my heart with such memories filled;
Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled,
You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
BY:
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes
By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
BY: Byron
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and the heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide, With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!
The sick man from his chamber looks
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His feverish brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.
From the neighboring school
Come the boys,
With more than their wonted noise
And commotion;
And down the wet streets
Sail their mimic fleets,
Till the treacherous pool
Engulfs them in its whirling
And turbulent ocean.
In the country on every side,
Where far and wide,
Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide
Stretches the plain,
To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!
In the furrowed land
The toilsome and patient oxen stand;
Lifting the yoke-encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread,
They silently inhale
The clover-scented gale,
And the vapors that arise
From the well-watered and smoking soil.
For this rest in the furrow after toil
Their large and lustrous eyes
Seem to thank the Lord,
More than man's spoken word.
Near at hand,
From under the sheltering trees,
The farmer sees
His pastures and his fields of grain,
As they bend their tops
To the numberless beating drops
Of the incessant rain.
He counts it as no sin
That he sees therein
Only his own thrift and gain.
BY: Longfellow
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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We met--'twas in a crowd--and I thought he would shun me;
He came--I could not breathe, for his eye was upon me;
He spoke--his words were cold, and his smile was unaltered;
I knew how much he felt, for his deep-toned voice falter'd.
I wore my bridal robe, and I rivall'd its whiteness;
Bright gems were in my hair, how I hated their brightness!
He called me by my name, as the bride of another--
Oh, thou hast been the cause of this anguish, my mother!
And once again we met, and a fair girl was near him:
He smiled, and whispered low--as I once used to hear him.
She leant upon his arm--once t'was mine, and mine only--
I wept, for I deserved to feel wretched and lonely.
And she will be his bride! at the altar he'll give her
The love that was too pure for a heartless deceiver.
The world may think me gay, for my feelings I smother--
Oh, thou hast been the cause of this anguish, my mother!
BY: Thomas Haynes Bayly
from "Little Treasury of Favorite Poems"
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Often students wonder,
and few are bold enough to ask,
"Who's this person in front of me,
for whom teaching me law is her task?"
Well I've put a few facts together
So an idea of me you will have
And if it facilitates you learning
Then its time well spent, I'd say.
I'm a manga cum laude graduate
Of
And cum laude law school graduate
from Howard U Law School in the same city.
Since leaving law school I've worked several places:
Among them the D.C. Court of Appeals, the White House and the Federal Labor Relations Authority
Litigating federal sector appellate labor cases.
I live in a house called Contentment Cottage
So named because that’s how it feels.
With honeysuckle breezes and roses in season
And dogwoods like you wouldn't believe.
I'm divorced with 3 daughters, 11, 9 and 2
Jenniffer, Alexis and Tess.
I love to quilt, do needlework, garden and read
Tho my time for each gets less and less.
What else is that you want to know?
How and why I'm here with you?
Lets just say it was destiny or kismet
or even serendipity.
So here I am, and there you are
Each not knowing the other.
By the time we're done
And have had hours of fun (learning law)
I'll be as loved by you as your mother.
BY: Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander, Esq. F
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'Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud, is nigh
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh!
I'll not leave thee, thou lone one,
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o'er the bed
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from love's shining circle
The gems drop away!
When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
BY: Thomas Moore
From "A Collection of Poems" Robert Troutman
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How do I love thee?Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight,
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely,
as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
From "A Collection of Poems," Robert Troutman
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If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only.
Do not say, "I love her for her smile--her look--her way
Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"--
For these things in themselves,
Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,--
and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so.
Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake,
that evermore
Thou mayst love on,
through love's eternity.
BY: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
From "A Collection of Poems," Robert Troutman
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If You're Ever Going To Love Me
If you're ever going to love me love me now, while I can know
All the sweet and tender feelings which from real affection flow.
Love me now, while I am living; do not wait till I am gone
And then chisel it in marble--warm love words on ice-cold stone.
If you've dear, sweet thoughts about me, why not whisper them to me?
Don't you know 'twould make me happy and as glad as glad could be?
If you wait till I am sleeping, ne'er to waken here again,
There'll be walls of earth between us and I couldn't hear you then.
If you knew someone was thirsting for a drop of water sweet
Would you be so slow to bring it? Would you step with laggard feet?
There are tender hearts all round us who are thirsting for our love;
Why withhold from them what nature makes them crave all else above?
I won't need your kind caresses when the grass grows o'er my face;
I won't crave your love or kisses in my last low resting place.
So, then, if you love me any, if it's but a little bit,
Let me know it now while living; I can own and treasure it.
No author provided
From "A Collection of Poems," Robert Troutman
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The Passionate Shepherd To His Love
Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.
There will we sit upon the rocks
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
There will I make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle.
A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair lin'ed slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.
A belt of straw and ivy buds
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my Love.
Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepared each day for thee and me.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my Love.
BY:Christopher Marlowe
From "A Collection of Poems," Robert Troutman
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To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
BY: William Shakespeare
From "A Collection of Poems," Robert Troutman
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Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
May there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
BY: Alfred, Lord Tennyson
From "A Collection of Poems", Robert Troutman
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She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye --
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
BY: William Wordsworth
From "A Collection of Poems," Robert Troutman
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She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes,
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o'er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express.
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek and o'er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,--
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.
BY: Lord Byron
From "A Collection of Poems", Robert Troutman
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It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden lived, whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love, and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love,
I and my Annabel Lee,--
With a love that the wing'ed seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came,
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher,
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me.
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know)
In this kingdom by the sea,
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we,
Of many far wiser than we;
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever disserve my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
And the stars never rise
but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
And so, all the night-tide
I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life, and my bride,
In her sepulcher there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
BY: Edgar Allen Poe
From "A Collection of Poems," Robert Troutman
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She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight,
A lovely Apparition sent To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.
And now I see with eyes serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.
BY: William Wordsworth
From "A Collection of Poems", Robert Troutman
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If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you:
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, not talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master;
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!
BY: Rudyard Kipling
From "A Collection of Poems", Robert Troutman
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I have to live with myself, and so
I want to be fit for myself to know,
I want to be able, as days go by,
Always to look myself straight in the eye;
I don't want to stand, with the setting sun,
And hate myself for things I have done.
I don't want to keep on a closet shelf
A lot of secrets about myself,
And fool myself, as I come and go,
Into thinking that nobody else will know
The kind of a man I really am;
I don't want to dress up myself in sham.
I want to go out with my head erect,
I want to deserve all men's respect;
But here in the struggle for fame and pelf
I want to be able to like myself.
I don't want to look at myself and know
That I'm a bluster and bluff and empty show.
I can never hide myself from me; I see what others may never see;
I know what others may never know,
I never can fool myself, and so,
Whatever happens, I want to be
Self-respecting and conscience free
BY: Ruby Okla (Manross) Shorts
From "A Collection of Poems," Robert Troutman
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The World is too much with us: late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon.
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--
Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
BY: William Wordsworth
From "A Collection of Poems," Robert Troutman
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Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
BY: William Ernest Henley
From "A Collection of Poems" Loaned by Andrew
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I love you,
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.
I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what You are making of me.
I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;
I love you
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can't help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.
I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple;
Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.
I love you
Because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done.
To make me good,
And more than any fate
Could have done
To make me happy.
You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.
You have done it
By being yourself.
Perhaps that is what
Being a friend means,
After all
BY: Roy Croft
From "A Collection of Poems"
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It takes a heap o'livin in a house t'make it home,
A heap o' sun an' shadder, an' ye sometimes have t' roam
Afore ye really 'preciate the things ye lef' behind,
An' hunger fer 'em somehow, with 'em allus on yer mind.
It don't make any differunce how rich ye get t' be,
How much yer chairs an' tables cost, how great yer luxury;
It ain't home t'ye, though it be the palace of a king,
Until somehow yer soul is sort o' wrapped round everything.
Home ain't a place that gold can buy or get up in a minute;
Afore it's home there's got t' be a heap o ' livin' in it;
Within the walls there's got t' be some babies born, and then
Right there ye've got t'bring 'em up t' women good, an' men;
And gradjerly, as time goes on, ye find ye wouldn't part
With anything they ever used--they've grown into yer heart;
The old high chairs, the playthings, too, the little shoes they wore
Ye hoard; an' if ye could ye'd keep the thumb-marks on the door.
Ye've got t'weep t'make it home, ye've got t'sit an' sigh
An' watch beside a loved one's bed, an' know that Death is nigh;
An' in the stillness o' the night t'see Death's angel come.
An' close the eyes o'her that smiled, an' leave her sweet voice dumb.
For these are scenes that grip the heart, an' when yer tears are dried,
Ye find the home is dearer than it was, an' sanctified;
An' tuggin' at ye always are the pleasant memories
O' her that was an' is no more--ye can't escape from these.
Ye've got to sing an' dance fer years, ye've got t' romp an' play,
An' learn t' love the things ye have by usin' 'em each day;
Even the roses round the porch must blossom year by year
Afore they 'come a part o' ye, suggestin' someone dear
Who used t' love 'em long ago, and trained 'em just t' run
The way they do, so's they would get the early mornin' sun;
Ye've got to love each brick an' stone from cellar up t' dome;
It takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home.
BY: Edgar A Guest
From "A Collection of Poems," Robert Troutman
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Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!--
For the soul is dead that slumbers
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
ailing o'er life's solemn main
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
BY: Henry W. Longfellow
From "A Collection of Poems," Robert Troutman
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Laugh And The World Laughs With You
Laugh and the world laughs with you,
weep and you weep alone,
For this brave old earth must borrow its mirth;
it has troubles enough of its own.
Sing and the hills will answer,
sigh, it is lost on the air!
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
but shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice and men will seek you,
grieve and they turn and go,
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
but they do not want your woe.
Be glad and your friends are many,
be sad and you lose them all,
There are none to decline your nectar'd wine,
but alone you must drink life's gall.
Feast and your halls are crowded,
fast and the world goes by,
Succeed and give and it helps you live,
but no man can help you die;
There is room in the halls of pleasure
for a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must file on through
the narrow aisles of pain.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
From "A Collection of Poems", Robert Troutman
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We shall do so much in the years to come,
But what have we done today?
We shall give our gold in a princely sum.
But what did we give today?
We shall lift the heart and dry the tear,
We shall plant a hope in the place of fear,
We shall speak the words of love and cheer,
But what did we speak today?
We shall be so kind in the afterwhile,
But what have we been today?
We shall bring each lonely life a smile,
But what have we brought today?
We shall give to truth a grander birth,
And to steadfast faith a deeper worth,
We shall feed the hungering souls of earth,
But whom have we fed today?
We shall reap such joys in the by and by,
But what have we sown today?
We shall build us mansions in the sky,
But what have we built today? '
Tis sweet in idle dreams to bask,
But here and now, do we do our tasks?
Yes, this is the thing our souls must ask,
"What have we done today?"
BY: Nixon Waterman
From "A Collection of Poems"
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Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a flying;
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of Heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
The age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And, while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.
BY: Robert Herrick
From "A Collection of Poems," Robert Troutman
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It is not raining rain for me,
It's raining daffodils;
In every dimpled drop I see
Wild flowers on the hills.
The clouds of gray engulf the day
And overwhelm the town;
It is not raining rain to me,
It's raining roses down.
It is not raining rain to me,
But fields of clover bloom,
Where any buccaneering bee
Can find a bed and room.
A health unto the happy,
A fig for him who frets!
It is not raining rain to me,
It's raining violets.
BY: Robert Loveman
From "A Collection of Poems," Robert Troutman
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"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the spider to the fly;
" 'Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.
The way to into my parlor is up a winding stair,
And I have many pretty things to show when you are there."
"O no, no," said the little fly, "to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."
"I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high.
Will you rest upon my little bed?", said the spider to the fly.
"There are pretty curtains drawn around, the sheets are fine and thin,
And if you like to rest awhile, I'll snugly tuck you in."
"O no, no," said the little fly, "for I've often heard it said,
They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed.
Said the cunning spider to the fly, "Dear friend, what shall I do,
To prove the warm affection I've always felt for you?
I have within my pantry good store of all that's nice;
I'm sure you're very welcome; will you please take a slice?"
"O no, no." said the little fly, "kind sir, that cannot be;
I've heard what's in your pantry, and I do not wish to see."
"Sweet creature!" said the spider, "you're witty and you're wise,
How handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes!
I have a little looking-glass upon my parlor shelf,
If you'll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself."
"I thank you, gentle sir," she said, "for what you're pleased to say,
And bidding you good-morning now, I'll call another day."
The spider turned him round about, and went into his den,
For well he knew the silly fly would soon be back again;
So he wove a subtle web, in a little corner sly,
And set his table ready to dine upon the fly,
Then he came out to his door again, and merrily did sing,
"Come hither, hither, pretty fly, with the pearl and silver wing:
Your robes are green and purple; there's a crest upon your head;
Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead."
Alas, alas! how very soon this silly little fly,
Hearing his wily flattering words, came slowly flitting by,
With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew,
Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and green and purple hue;
Thinking only of her crested head--poor foolish thing! At last,
Up jumped the cunning spider, and fiercely held her fast.
He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den,
Within his little parlor; but she ne'er came out again!
And now, dear little children, who may his story read,
To idle, silly , flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed;
Unto an evil counselor close heart, and ear, and eye,
And take a lesson from this tale of the Spider and the Fly.
Mary Howitt
From "A Collection of Poems", Robert Troutman
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Women
No act is ever to be done according to her own will by a young girl, a young woman, or even by an old woman, though in their own houses.
In her childhood a girl should be under the will of her father; in her youth, of her husband; her husband being dead, of her sons....
She must always be cheerful and clever in household business, with the furniture well cleaned, and with not a free hand in expenditure....
The good wife of a husband must never do anything disagreeable to him....
She must be till death subdued, intent, chaste....
Wife, son and slave, these three are said to be without property:
whatever property they acquire is his to whom they belong.
Hinduism, from the Ordinances of Manu
From "A Collection of Poems", Robert Troutman
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What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have not time to stand and stare.
BY: William Henry Davies
From "A Collection of Poems," by Robert Troutman
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The pain is so deep,
Yet my heart is still tender,
I look deep into your eyes,
And think of all the love, I dare not surrender.
When in your presence,
I wonder who I am,
I feel so uneasy,
As if, I really don`t give a damn.
I sometimes stop and wonder,
Just what do I really want,
Is it true love,
Or is it just stubborn pride, I just want to flaunt.
When you are not by,
The days are quite long,
My heart is overwhelmed,
By this feeling, So strong.
How could it be love,
For love is never real,
It captures my soul,
And my bright smile, It slowly kills.
Finally, Good-bye, Ashaki.
BY: Delbert Ellerton
Given to me by author 11/9/89
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