Poems that Every Child Should Know: A Selection of the Best Poems of All Times for Young People

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Mary Elizabeth Burt
Doubleday, Page, 1904 - American poetry - 355 pages

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Contents

I
1
II
37
III
101
IV
143
V
215
VI
257
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Page 305 - 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 waylay.
Page 53 - AY, tear her tattered ensign down ! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon's roar; — The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more. Her deck once red with heroes...
Page 270 - Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Page 301 - Laertes' head. And these few precepts in thy memory See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel ; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel ; but being in, Bear't, that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice :...
Page 123 - Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea.
Page 344 - I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.
Page 322 - Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. // Near them, on the sand, / Half sunk, / a shattered visage lies, / whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, / Tell that its sculptor / well those passions read / Which yet survive, / stamped on these lifeless things, / The hand that mocked them, / and the heart that fed: // And on the pedestal / these words appear: // "My...
Page 311 - One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill, Along the heath, and near his favourite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he; "The next with dirges due in sad array Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne — Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.
Page 105 - One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear, When they reached the hall door and the charger stood near ; So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung, So light to the saddle before her he sprung ! — " She is won ! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur ; They'll have fleet steeds that follow,
Page 27 - Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea ! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon...

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