Short poems

And if I drink oblivion of a day,
So shorten I the stature of my soul.

George Meredith

Forgotten rimes, and college themes,
Worm-eaten plans, and embryo schemes
A mass of heterogeneous matter.
A chaos dark, nor land nor water.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld

It's hard to say why writing verse
Should terminate in drink or worse.

A. P. Herbert

A picture is a poem without words.

Horace

I've got the world in a jug
The stopper's in my hand.

Alberta Hunter

I am but as the spark that gleams for a moment,.

Allama Iqbal

Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, but young men think it is, and we were young.

A. E. Housman

Tomorrow, more's the pity,
Away we both must hie,
To air the ditty
and to earth I.

A. E. Housman

The laws of God, the laws of man he may keep that will and can, not I: let God and man decree laws for themselves and not for me.

A. E. Housman

On Monday, when the sun is hot,
I wonder to myself a lot:
Now is it true, or is it not,
That what is which and which is what?

A. A. Hodge

A master of a house, as I have read, must be the first man up and the last in bed.

Robert Herrick

But Satan now is wiser than of yore, and tempts by making rich, not making poor.

Alexander Pope

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

Alexander Pope

Soul of the Age!
The applause! delight! the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, rise
I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room
Thou art a monument without a tomb.

Ben Jonson

Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.

George Meredith

Well then,
I now do plainly see,
This busy world and I shall ne'er agree.

Abraham Cowley

To be bowed by grief is folly,.

Alcaeus

The world is not respectable,.

George Santayana

To love means loving the unlovable.
To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable.
Faith means believing the unbelievable.
Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

G. K. Chesterton

Hope, like the gleaming taper's light, adorns and cheers our way and still, as darker grows the night, emits a brighter ray.

Oliver Goldsmith

Drink today, and drown all sorrow
You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow
Best, while you have it, use your breath
There is no drinking after death.

Ben Jonson

Full of wiles, full of guile, at all times, in all ways,
Are the children of Men.

Aristophanes

In winter, when the dismal rain comes down in slanting lines, and wind, that grand old harper, smote his thunder-harp of pines.

Alexander Smith

Why always, "not yet"? Do flowers in spring say, "not yet"?

Norman Douglas

Folks are dumb where I come from
They ain't had any learnin'
Still they're happy as can be
Doin' what comes natur'ly.

Irving Berlin

I will go back to the great sweet mother,
Mother and lover of men, the sea.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea
Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air.

George Chapman

What shall I do to be forever known,
And make the age to come my own?

Abraham Cowley

Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.

George Meredith

And I myself a Catholic will be,
So far at least, great saint, to pray to thee.
Hail, Bard triumphant! and some care bestow
On us, the Poets militant below.

Abraham Cowley

Not till the fire is dying in the grate,
Look we for any kinship with the stars.

George Meredith

How beautiful they are,
The lordly ones,
Who dwell in the hills,
In the hollow hills.

Fiona Macleod

Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess, excellently bright.

Ben Jonson

Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die.

Ben Jonson

Sweet as Eden is the air,
And Eden-sweet the ray.

George Meredith