Citatepedia^®.com

Lohengrin

THE holy bell, untouched by human hands,
Clanged suddenly, and tolled with solemn knell.

Between the massive, blazoned temple-doors,
Thrown wide, to let the summer morning in,
Sir Lohengrin, the youngest of the knights,
Had paused to taste the sweetness of the air.
All sounds came up the mountain-side to him,
Softened to music,— noise of laboring men,
The cheerful cock-crow and the low of kine,
Bleating of sheep, and twittering of the birds,
Commingled into murmurous harmonies—
When harsh, and near, and clamorous tolled the bell.
He started, with his hand upon his sword;
His face, an instant since serene and fair,
And simple with the beauty of a boy,
Heroic, flushed, expectant all at once.
The lovely valley stretching out beneath
Was now a painted picture,— nothing more;
All music of the mountain or the vale

[...] Read more

poem by Emma Lazarus
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Orlando Furioso Canto 1

CANTO 1

ARGUMENT
Angelica, whom pressing danger frights,
Flies in disorder through the greenwood shade.
Rinaldo's horse escapes: he, following, fights
Ferrau, the Spaniard, in a forest glade.
A second oath the haughty paynim plights,
And keeps it better than the first he made.
King Sacripant regains his long-lost treasure;
But good Rinaldo mars his promised pleasure.

I
OF LOVES and LADIES, KNIGHTS and ARMS, I sing,
Of COURTESIES, and many a DARING FEAT;
And from those ancient days my story bring,
When Moors from Afric passed in hostile fleet,
And ravaged France, with Agramant their king,
Flushed with his youthful rage and furious heat,

[...] Read more

poem by Ludovico Ariosto
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Tannhauser

The Landgrave Hermann held a gathering
Of minstrels, minnesingers, troubadours,
At Wartburg in his palace, and the knight,
Sir Tannhauser of France, the greatest bard,
Inspired with heavenly visions, and endowed
With apprehension and rare utterance
Of noble music, fared in thoughtful wise
Across the Horsel meadows. Full of light,
And large repose, the peaceful valley lay,
In the late splendor of the afternoon,
And level sunbeams lit the serious face
Of the young knight, who journeyed to the west,
Towards the precipitous and rugged cliffs,
Scarred, grim, and torn with savage rifts and chasms,
That in the distance loomed as soft and fair
And purple as their shadows on the grass.
The tinkling chimes ran out athwart the air,
Proclaiming sunset, ushering evening in,
Although the sky yet glowed with yellow light.
The ploughboy, ere he led his cattle home,

[...] Read more

poem by Emma Lazarus
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Thurso’s Landing

I
The coast-road was being straightened and repaired again,
A group of men labored at the steep curve
Where it falls from the north to Mill Creek. They scattered and hid
Behind cut banks, except one blond young man
Who stooped over the rock and strolled away smiling
As if he shared a secret joke with the dynamite;
It waited until he had passed back of a boulder,
Then split its rock cage; a yellowish torrent
Of fragments rose up the air and the echoes bumped
From mountain to mountain. The men returned slowly
And took up their dropped tools, while a banner of dust
Waved over the gorge on the northwest wind, very high
Above the heads of the forest.
Some distance west of the road,
On the promontory above the triangle
Of glittering ocean that fills the gorge-mouth,
A woman and a lame man from the farm below
Had been watching, and turned to go down the hill. The young
woman looked back,

[...] Read more

poem by Robinson Jeffers
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Obamalust

Thrusted upon us,
Comes an Obamalust.
A 'must' unprecedented...
To put an end to those,
Who have taken a quality of life...
With a greed that has flushed,
An economy once trusted!

A leadership determined,
To correct failures of the past.
With swift adjustments made to foundations,
Known.
With a fresh polish.
And an audacity to clean up,
Sitting trash!

Thrusted upon us,
Comes an Obamalust.
A 'must' unprecedented...
To put an end to those,

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

A Midnight Walk By The Sea...

And at midnight we walked
the serpentined path by the sea,
over thick, moistened planks
of aged, splintered wood-
imbued with salted moisture
from height anemic dunes
that had failed surf and shore,
ravaged by the sea-wolves-
with such simplicity
that the splinters felt as smooth
as sheets of organdy,
loosing their jagged edges
from the eye of a June nor'easter.
Yet it wouldn't have really mattered
if our barefoot midnight walk
felt like mal-acupunture
from a Greenwich Village cave;
as when I reached for her hand,
saw her flushed pink face smiling
my sense of romance ossified

[...] Read more

poem by Frank James Ryan Jr.
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Flushed

In my garden gambol
green beetles
by twos and threes,

who sing to High Tulips
blushing pink
in harmonies.

Flushed,
adoration-framed,
they rainbow through
emotions gained
from beetle songs
choir sung.

I part the foliage clef
to observe what enchantment deft
musical beetles pant
to flowered plants
swaying in the green.

[...] Read more

poem by Lonnie Hicks
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Municipal

"Why is my District death-rate low?"
Said Binks of Hezabad.
"Well, drains, and sewage-outfalls are
"My own peculiar fad.
"I learnt a lesson once, It ran
"Thus," quoth that most veracious man: --

It was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad,
I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad;
When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all,
A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.

I couldn't see he driver, and across my mind it rushed
That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth.
I didn't care to meet him, and I couldn't well get down,
So I let the Waler have it, and we headed for the town.

The buggy was a new one and, praise Dykes, it stood the strain,
Till he Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain;

[...] Read more

poem by Rudyard Kipling
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Poppy

To Monica

Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare,
And left the flushed print in a poppy there:
Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came,
And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame.

With burnt mouth, red like a lion's, it drank
The blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank,
And dipped its cup in the purpurate shine
When the Eastern conduits ran with wine.

Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss,
And hot as a swinked gipsy is,
And drowsed in sleepy savageries,
With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss.

A child and man paced side by side,
Treading the skirts of eventide;
But between the clasp of his hand and hers

[...] Read more

poem by Francis Thompson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Dance At Darmstadt

In the city of Darmstadt, the Sabbath morn
Shone over the broad Cathedral Square,
And to nobly, richly, and lowly born,
The belfry carilloned call to prayer.

Then banker, and burgher, and learn'd in law,
With clean-cut forehead and firm-set jaw,
Master, and prentice, and tradesman trim,
Pikemen stalwart of port and limb,
Pledged to die for their native town,
Scholars stately in cap and gown,
Splendid and simple, halt and hale,
Rosy tapster and student pale,
Stepped from their thresholds, and gravely trod
The streets that lead to the House of God.
And, hurrying after them, maid and dame,
Wives, and daughters, and sweethearts, came,
All in their Sabbath best arrayed,
Delicate ribbon and dainty braid,
Creaseless corset and kirtle clean,

[...] Read more

poem by Alfred Austin
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!