诗 · CONTENT CATEGORY
World poetry
Read poetry across languages and traditions, with authors, source editions and reviewed translations kept distinct.
136 reviewed public itemsA Dialogue
Man and Saviour speak by turns: man calls his soul worthless and resigns the whole design, the Saviour replies that the reckoning is not his to make and recalls the glory freely parted with for him, and man breaks in to stop the speech, saying it breaks his heart.
The Pulley
God grants strength, beauty, wisdom, honour, and pleasure but withholds rest, so human weariness may draw people back toward the divine.
Love
Love welcomes a guest who draws back as unworthy, and answers each objection in turn until the guest agrees to sit down and eat.
On Time
Addressing Time as a devourer, the poem urges it to swallow all that is false until it consumes itself, after which eternity, truth, peace and love remain and the soul sits triumphing over Death, Chance and Time.
At a Solemn Musick
The poem calls on Voice and Verse to present the unbroken song sung before the heavenly throne, recalls how sin jarred against nature's chime, and asks that earthly voices be brought back into tune with heaven.
From ‘Arcades’
A singer invites the listener to follow him across untrodden green and under star-proof elms to where a rural Queen sits clad in splendour befitting her deity.
THE Star that bids the Shepherd fold
As the evening star rises and the sun sinks westward, the speaker declares severity asleep and calls for feasting, tipsy dance and midnight revelry, ending with a summons to knit hands in a round.
ii Echo
A singer calls on the nymph Echo, lists the green and violet places where she may be hidden, and asks her to tell where a 'gentle Pair' has been concealed, promising her a place among the harmonies of heaven.
On His Blindness
Fear that blindness has buried a biblical “talent” is answered by Patience: God needs neither human work nor gifts, and waiting can also be service.
To Mr. Lawrence
In muddy winter weather the speaker asks a friend where they may meet by the fire to redeem a sullen day with a light meal, wine, lute and song, concluding that one who can judge such delights and take them from time to time is not unwise.
To Cyriack Skinner
Addressing the grandson of a judge learned in the law, the speaker proposes to drown deep thoughts in a day of harmless mirth, setting aside Euclid, Archimedes and foreign politics, since knowing how to measure life means not refusing a cheerful hour when it is sent.
On His Deceased Wife
The speaker recounts dreaming that his dead wife came back to him veiled and clothed in white, with love and goodness shining in her, and that as she leaned to embrace him he woke and daylight restored his darkness.
To Lucasta, going to the Wars
A soldier frames departure for war as a conflict between love and honour, insisting that constancy to honour makes his love more worthy.
To Lucasta, going beyond the Seas
Before a sea voyage the speaker argues that absence would only deserve pity if it truly left them apart, refuses to beg wind or wave for favour, and claims that their faith meets above the highest sphere as spirits greet.
Gratiana Dancing
The dancer's steps raise the floor she treads into a firmament bearing her like a heaven, and each step both binds her watchers' hopes and, when she stops, leaves the floor paved with broken hearts.
To Amarantha, that she would dishevel her Hair
The speaker asks Amarantha to stop braiding her hair and let it fly loose like the wind's plaything, arguing that tangled tresses are best and that unbinding it will scatter daylight rather than cloud it.
The Grasshopper
The poem addresses a grasshopper swinging on an oat-beard, drunk nightly on dew, owner of earth and air by turns, who retires to a carved acorn-bed and wakes to greet the sun and make men merry.
To Althea, from Prison
Prison bars cannot confine love, fellowship, song, or a quiet conscience; the poem also binds inward freedom to declared loyalty to the king.
A Garden (excerpt from Upon Appleton House)
Flowers become regiments, stars a patrol, and bees armed sentinels before the passage laments a fallen island once imagined as the world’s garden.
The Picture of Little T. C. in a Prospect of Flowers
Watching a child name and play among flowers, the speaker foresees her future power over lovers, asks for terms before her eyes learn to wound, and ends warning her to spare the buds lest Flora nip her in the blossom.
Bermudas
A boat rowing past the remote Bermudas is overheard singing praise to the God who led them there, stocked the island with oranges, pomegranates, figs and cedars, and framed a temple in the rocks, while the oars keep time to the song.
An Epitaph
The epitaph refuses extended praise for a woman who declined courtship in life, sketches her chastity, modesty and daily reckoning with heaven, then concludes that all such praise is too weak and that her being dead says more.
To the Muses
The speaker searches heaven, earth, air and sea for the Nine Muses and ends by complaining that since they left, poetry's strings barely move and its notes are few.
To Spring
An address to Spring, urging the season to turn its eyes on the western isle, come over the eastern hills, and adorn a land described as lovesick and mourning in its absence.