Here is a handful of my favorite verse.

Boadicea: An Ode Then the progeny that springs   From the forests of our land, Armed with thunder, clad with wings,   Shall a wider world command. Regions Ceasar never knew   Thy posterity shall sway, Where his eagles never flew,   None invincible as they.

Inscribed on a statue of Queen Boadicea sculpted by Thomas Thornycroft between 1856 and 1885. In 1902 it was moved to the Westminster Bridge, on the north bank of the River Thames in London.

William Cowper (1731-1800)

On His Blindness   When I consider how my light is spent        Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,        And that one talent which is death to hide        Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent   To serve therewith my Maker, and present        My true account, lest he returning chide,        "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"        I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent   That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need        Either man's work or his own gifts: who best        Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed        And post o'er land and ocean without rest:        They also serve who only stand and wait."

John Milton

The Oracles "The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning; His fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air, And he that stays will die for naught, and home there's no returning." The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair.

A poetic paraphase of the section in Herodotus V.226 where Xerxes is marching against Greece before the battle of Thermopylae. His army is so massive they can reportedly blacken the sun with the sheer number of arrows. The Greeks calmly exercise and comb their hair as they prepare for death. ("King Xerxes, beware. / Leonidas is combing his hair.")

A.E. Housman

Upon This Age Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour, Rains from the sky a meteoric shower Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined. Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill Is daily spun; but there exists no loom To weave it into fabric.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Red Wheel Barrow so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.

Somehow I like this poem much more than I want to admit.

William Carlos Williams, 1923

[Unknown title] He drifts in from my memories, To come and comfort me, I can sense his presence here, The boy I used to be. He looks at me so wistfully, As if something had been lost, I know that he just longs to be The man I almost was.

Quoted by Dave Gentry

When We Two Parted When we two parted     In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted     To sever for years, Pale grew thy cheek and cold,     Colder thy kiss; Truly that hour foretold     Sorrow to this. The dew of the morning     Sunk chill on my brow-- It felt like the warning     Of what I feel now. Thy vows are all broken,     And light is thy fame; I hear thy name spoken,     And share in its shame. They name thee before me,     A knell to mine ear; A shudder comes o'er me--     Why wert thou so dear? They know not I knew thee,     Who knew thee so well-- Long, long I shall rue thee,     Too deeply to tell. In secret we met--     In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget,     Thy spirit deceive If I should meet thee     After long years, How should I greet thee?--     With silence and tears.

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Is It True? Is it true O Christ in Heaven,    That the highest suffer most; That the strongest wander furthest    And more helplessly are lost; That the mark of rank in nature    Is capacity of pain; And the anguish of the singer    Makes the sweetness of the strain?" Is it true O Christ in Heaven,    That whichever way we go Walls of darkness must surround us,    Things we would but cannot know? That the infinite must bound us    Like a temple veil untent, Whilst the finite ever wearies,    So that none's therein content? Is it true, O Christ in Heaven,    That the fullness yet to come Is so glorious and so perfect    That to know would strike us dumb? That if ever for a moment    We could pierce beyond the sky With these poor dim eyes of mortals    We should just see God and die?"

I found this in an old book of my Grandmother's.

Sarah Williams 7001 Religious Verses

To the Stonecutters Stone cutters fighting time with marble,     you foredefeated challengers of oblivion Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down The square-limbed Roman letters Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well Builds his monument mockingly, For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun Die blind and blacken to the heart: Yet stones have stood for a thousand years,     and pained thoughts found The honey of peace in old poems.

Robinson Jeffers, 1887-1962

"One Ring to rule them all, one Ring to find them, one Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."

Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring

"Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread     with bitter tidings laden, Shall summon to unwelcome bed     A melancholy maiden! We are but older children, dear,     Who fret to find our bedtime near."

Lewis Carrol, Through the Looking Glass preface about a little girl fretting at bedtime.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, with sea-girls wreathed in seaweed, red and brown till human voices wake us, and we drown."

T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

"Ozymandias" I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: 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 name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Shelley (1818)

Flesh and Stone We are creatures of flesh    in a world of stone; We have the souls of children    in times of holocaust.

Mitch Fincher, 1993

Haiku #322 Ceaselessly we code but requirements still fall, like a gentle rain

Mitch Fincher, 1998

And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold: Bring me my arrows of desire: Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire. I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land.

William Blake