Topic: Life

The Widow

HOW near me came the hand of Death, When at my side he struck my Dear, And took away the precious breath What quicken’d my belovèd peer! How helpless am I thereby made! By day how grieved, by night how sad! And now my life’s delight is gone, —Alas! how I am...

By George Wither
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30 October

The End of the Play

THE PLAY is done; the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter’s bell: A moment yet the actor stops, And looks around, to say farewell. It is an irksome word and task; And, when he’s laughed and said his say, He shows, as he removes the mask, A face that’s anything but...

By William Makepeace Thackeray
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23 October

Requiescat

STREW on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew. In quiet she reposes: Ah! would that I did too. Her mirth the world required: She bathed it in smiles of glee. But her heart was tired, tired, And now they let her be. Her life was turning, turning, In mazes of heat...

By Matthew Arnold
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21 October

Mimnermus in Church

YOU promise heavens free from strife, Pure truth, and perfect change of will; But sweet, sweet is this human life, So sweet, I fain would breathe it still: Your chilly stars I can forego, This warm kind world is all I know. You say there is no substance here, One great reality...

By William Cory
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20 October

The Past

THOU unrelenting Past! Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain, And fetters, sure and fast, Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign. Far in thy realm withdrawn, Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom, And glorious ages gone Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb. Childhood, with all its mirth, Youth, Manhood,...

By William Cullen Bryant
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18 October

In the Highlands

IN the highlands, in the country places, Where the old plain men have rosy faces, And the young fair maidens Quiet eyes; Where essential silence chills and blesses, And for ever in the hill-recesses Her more lovely music Broods and dies— O to mount again where erst I haunted; Where the old red hills...

By Robert Louis Stevenson
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16 October

Annabel Lee

IT was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea That a maiden there 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...

By Edgar Allan Poe
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15 October

The Slave’s Dream

BESIDE the ungathered rice he lay, His sickle in his hand; His breast was bare, his matted hair Was buried in the sand. Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep, He saw his native land. Wide through the landscape of his dreams The lordly Niger flowed; Beneath the palm-trees on the plain Once...

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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08 October

1620–1920

Face to the Indian arrows. Daughter of Truth and mother of Courage, Yet even as we in our pride rejoice, Land of our fathers, when the tempest rages, And when we sail as Pilgrims’ sons and daughters Before him rolls the dark, relentless ocean; Behind him stretch the cold and barren...

By LeBaron Russell Briggs
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06 October

The World Must Turn Upon Its Axis

Well — well, the world must turn upon its axis, And all mankind turn with it, heads or tails, And live and die, make love and pay our taxes, And as the veering wind shifts, shift our sails; The king commands us, and the doctor quacks us, The priest instructs,...

By Lord Byron
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01 October