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Best Famous With Approval Poems

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Written by Wendell Berry | Create an image from this poem

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

 Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more 
of everything ready-made. Be afraid 
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head. 
Not even your future will be a mystery 
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card 
and shut away in a little drawer. 

When they want you to buy something 
they will call you. When they want you 
to die for profit they will let you know. 
So, friends, every day do something 
that won't compute. Love the Lord. 
Love the world. Work for nothing. 
Take all that you have and be poor. 
Love someone who does not deserve it. 

Denounce the government and embrace 
the flag. Hope to live in that free 
republic for which it stands. 
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man 
has not encountered he has not destroyed. 

Ask the questions that have no answers. 
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias. 
Say that your main crop is the forest 
that you did not plant, 
that you will not live to harvest. 

Say that the leaves are harvested 
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. 
Put your faith in the two inches of humus 
that will build under the trees 
every thousand years. 

Listen to carrion -- put your ear 
close, and hear the faint chattering 
of the songs that are to come. 
Expect the end of the world. Laugh. 
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful 
though you have considered all the facts. 
So long as women do not go cheap 
for power, please women more than men. 

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy 
a woman satisfied to bear a child? 
Will this disturb the sleep 
of a woman near to giving birth? 

Go with your love to the fields. 
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head 
in her lap. Swear allegiance 
to what is nighest your thoughts. 

As soon as the generals and the politicos 
can predict the motions of your mind, 
lose it. Leave it as a sign 
to mark the false trail, the way 
you didn't go. 

Be like the fox 
who makes more tracks than necessary, 
some in the wrong direction. 
Practice resurrection.


Written by Margaret Atwood | Create an image from this poem

Is/Not

 Love is not a profession
genteel or otherwise

sex is not dentistry
the slick filling of aches and cavities

you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,

nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveller

Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,

permit yourself anger
and permit me mine

which needs neither
your approval nor your suprise

which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease

but agaist you,
which does not need to be understood

or washed or cauterized,
which needs instead

to be said and said.
Permit me the present tense.
Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

Centenarian's Story The

 GIVE me your hand, old Revolutionary; 
The hill-top is nigh—but a few steps, (make room, gentlemen;) 
Up the path you have follow’d me well, spite of your hundred and extra years; 
You can walk, old man, though your eyes are almost done; 
Your faculties serve you, and presently I must have them serve me.

Rest, while I tell what the crowd around us means; 
On the plain below, recruits are drilling and exercising; 
There is the camp—one regiment departs to-morrow; 
Do you hear the officers giving the orders? 
Do you hear the clank of the muskets?

Why, what comes over you now, old man? 
Why do you tremble, and clutch my hand so convulsively? 
The troops are but drilling—they are yet surrounded with smiles; 
Around them, at hand, the well-drest friends, and the women; 
While splendid and warm the afternoon sun shines down;
Green the midsummer verdure, and fresh blows the dallying breeze, 
O’er proud and peaceful cities, and arm of the sea between. 
But drill and parade are over—they march back to quarters; 
Only hear that approval of hands! hear what a clapping! 

As wending, the crowds now part and disperse—but we, old man,
Not for nothing have I brought you hither—we must remain; 
You to speak in your turn, and I to listen and tell. 

THE CENTENARIAN.
When I clutch’d your hand, it was not with terror; 
But suddenly, pouring about me here, on every side, 
And below there where the boys were drilling, and up the slopes they ran,
And where tents are pitch’d, and wherever you see, south and south-east and
 south-west, 
Over hills, across lowlands, and in the skirts of woods, 
And along the shores, in mire (now fill’d over), came again, and suddenly raged, 
As eighty-five years agone, no mere parade receiv’d with applause of friends, 
But a battle, which I took part in myself—aye, long ago as it is, I took part in it,
Walking then this hill-top, this same ground. 

Aye, this is the ground; 
My blind eyes, even as I speak, behold it re-peopled from graves; 
The years recede, pavements and stately houses disappear; 
Rude forts appear again, the old hoop’d guns are mounted;
I see the lines of rais’d earth stretching from river to bay; 
I mark the vista of waters, I mark the uplands and slopes: 
Here we lay encamp’d—it was this time in summer also. 

As I talk, I remember all—I remember the Declaration; 
It was read here—the whole army paraded—it was read to us here;
By his staff surrounded, the General stood in the middle—he held up his
 unsheath’d
 sword, 
It glitter’d in the sun in full sight of the army. 

’Twas a bold act then; 
The English war-ships had just arrived—the king had sent them from over the sea; 
We could watch down the lower bay where they lay at anchor,
And the transports, swarming with soldiers. 

A few days more, and they landed—and then the battle. 

Twenty thousand were brought against us, 
A veteran force, furnish’d with good artillery. 

I tell not now the whole of the battle;
But one brigade, early in the forenoon, order’d forward to engage the red-coats; 
Of that brigade I tell, and how steadily it march’d, 
And how long and how well it stood, confronting death. 

Who do you think that was, marching steadily, sternly confronting death? 
It was the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong,
Rais’d in Virginia and Maryland, and many of them known personally to the General. 

Jauntily forward they went with quick step toward Gowanus’ waters; 
Till of a sudden, unlook’d for, by defiles through the woods, gain’d at night, 
The British advancing, wedging in from the east, fiercely playing their guns, 
That brigade of the youngest was cut off, and at the enemy’s mercy.

The General watch’d them from this hill; 
They made repeated desperate attempts to burst their environment; 
Then drew close together, very compact, their flag flying in the middle; 
But O from the hills how the cannon were thinning and thinning them! 

It sickens me yet, that slaughter!
I saw the moisture gather in drops on the face of the General; 
I saw how he wrung his hands in anguish. 

Meanwhile the British maneuver’d to draw us out for a pitch’d battle; 
But we dared not trust the chances of a pitch’d battle. 

We fought the fight in detachments;
Sallying forth, we fought at several points—but in each the luck was against us; 
Our foe advancing, steadily getting the best of it, push’d us back to the works on
 this
 hill; 
Till we turn’d, menacing, here, and then he left us. 

That was the going out of the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong; 
Few return’d—nearly all remain in Brooklyn.

That, and here, my General’s first battle; 
No women looking on, nor sunshine to bask in—it did not conclude with applause; 
Nobody clapp’d hands here then. 

But in darkness, in mist, on the ground, under a chill rain, 
Wearied that night we lay, foil’d and sullen;
While scornfully laugh’d many an arrogant lord, off against us encamp’d, 
Quite within hearing, feasting, klinking wine-glasses together over their victory. 

So, dull and damp, and another day; 
But the night of that, mist lifting, rain ceasing, 
Silent as a ghost, while they thought they were sure of him, my General retreated.

I saw him at the river-side, 
Down by the ferry, lit by torches, hastening the embarcation; 
My General waited till the soldiers and wounded were all pass’d over; 
And then, (it was just ere sunrise,) these eyes rested on him for the last time. 

Every one else seem’d fill’d with gloom;
Many no doubt thought of capitulation. 

But when my General pass’d me, 
As he stood in his boat, and look’d toward the coming sun, 
I saw something different from capitulation. 

TERMINUS.
Enough—the Centenarian’s story ends;
The two, the past and present, have interchanged; 
I myself, as connecter, as chansonnier of a great future, am now speaking. 

And is this the ground Washington trod? 
And these waters I listlessly daily cross, are these the waters he cross’d, 
As resolute in defeat, as other generals in their proudest triumphs?

It is well—a lesson like that, always comes good; 
I must copy the story, and send it eastward and westward; 
I must preserve that look, as it beam’d on you, rivers of Brooklyn. 

See! as the annual round returns, the phantoms return; 
It is the 27th of August, and the British have landed;
The battle begins, and goes against us—behold! through the smoke, Washington’s
 face; 
The brigade of Virginia and Maryland have march’d forth to intercept the enemy; 
They are cut off—murderous artillery from the hills plays upon them; 
Rank after rank falls, while over them silently droops the flag, 
Baptized that day in many a young man’s bloody wounds,
In death, defeat, and sisters’, mothers’ tears. 

Ah, hills and slopes of Brooklyn! I perceive you are more valuable than your owners
 supposed; 
Ah, river! henceforth you will be illumin’d to me at sunrise with something besides
 the
 sun. 

Encampments new! in the midst of you stands an encampment very old; 
Stands forever the camp of the dead brigade.
Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

John Brown

 Though for your sake I would not have you now 
So near to me tonight as now you are, 
God knows how much a stranger to my heart 
Was any cold word that I may have written; 
And you, poor woman that I made my wife,
You have had more of loneliness, I fear, 
Than I—though I have been the most alone, 
Even when the most attended. So it was 
God set the mark of his inscrutable 
Necessity on one that was to grope,
And serve, and suffer, and withal be glad 
For what was his, and is, and is to be, 
When his old bones, that are a burden now, 
Are saying what the man who carried them 
Had not the power to say. Bones in a grave,
Cover them as they will with choking earth, 
May shout the truth to men who put them there, 
More than all orators. And so, my dear, 
Since you have cheated wisdom for the sake 
Of sorrow, let your sorrow be for you,
This last of nights before the last of days, 
The lying ghost of what there is of me 
That is the most alive. There is no death 
For me in what they do. Their death it is 
They should heed most when the sun comes again
To make them solemn. There are some I know 
Whose eyes will hardly see their occupation, 
For tears in them—and all for one old man; 
For some of them will pity this old man, 
Who took upon himself the work of God
Because he pitied millions. That will be 
For them, I fancy, their compassionate 
Best way of saying what is best in them 
To say; for they can say no more than that, 
And they can do no more than what the dawn
Of one more day shall give them light enough 
To do. But there are many days to be, 
And there are many men to give their blood, 
As I gave mine for them. May they come soon! 

May they come soon, I say. And when they come,
May all that I have said unheard be heard, 
Proving at last, or maybe not—no matter— 
What sort of madness was the part of me 
That made me strike, whether I found the mark 
Or missed it. Meanwhile, I’ve a strange content,
A patience, and a vast indifference 
To what men say of me and what men fear 
To say. There was a work to be begun, 
And when the Voice, that I have heard so long, 
Announced as in a thousand silences
An end of preparation, I began 
The coming work of death which is to be, 
That life may be. There is no other way 
Than the old way of war for a new land 
That will not know itself and is tonight
A stranger to itself, and to the world 
A more prodigious upstart among states 
Than I was among men, and so shall be 
Till they are told and told, and told again; 
For men are children, waiting to be told,
And most of them are children all their lives. 
The good God in his wisdom had them so, 
That now and then a madman or a seer 
May shake them out of their complacency 
And shame them into deeds. The major file
See only what their fathers may have seen, 
Or may have said they saw when they saw nothing. 
I do not say it matters what they saw. 
Now and again to some lone soul or other 
God speaks, and there is hanging to be done,—
As once there was a burning of our bodies 
Alive, albeit our souls were sorry fuel. 
But now the fires are few, and we are poised 
Accordingly, for the state’s benefit, 
A few still minutes between heaven and earth.
The purpose is, when they have seen enough 
Of what it is that they are not to see, 
To pluck me as an unripe fruit of treason, 
And then to fling me back to the same earth 
Of which they are, as I suppose, the flower—
Not given to know the riper fruit that waits 
For a more comprehensive harvesting. 

Yes, may they come, and soon. Again I say, 
May they come soon!—before too many of them 
Shall be the bloody cost of our defection.
When hell waits on the dawn of a new state, 
Better it were that hell should not wait long,— 
Or so it is I see it who should see 
As far or farther into time tonight 
Than they who talk and tremble for me now,
Or wish me to those everlasting fires 
That are for me no fear. Too many fires 
Have sought me out and seared me to the bone— 
Thereby, for all I know, to temper me 
For what was mine to do. If I did ill
What I did well, let men say I was mad; 
Or let my name for ever be a question 
That will not sleep in history. What men say 
I was will cool no cannon, dull no sword, 
Invalidate no truth. Meanwhile, I was;
And the long train is lighted that shall burn, 
Though floods of wrath may drench it, and hot feet 
May stamp it for a slight time into smoke 
That shall blaze up again with growing speed, 
Until at last a fiery crash will come
To cleanse and shake a wounded hemisphere, 
And heal it of a long malignity 
That angry time discredits and disowns. 

Tonight there are men saying many things; 
And some who see life in the last of me
Will answer first the coming call to death; 
For death is what is coming, and then life. 
I do not say again for the dull sake 
Of speech what you have heard me say before, 
But rather for the sake of all I am,
And all God made of me. A man to die 
As I do must have done some other work 
Than man’s alone. I was not after glory, 
But there was glory with me, like a friend, 
Throughout those crippling years when friends were few,
And fearful to be known by their own names 
When mine was vilified for their approval. 
Yet friends they are, and they did what was given 
Their will to do; they could have done no more. 
I was the one man mad enough, it seems,
To do my work; and now my work is over. 
And you, my dear, are not to mourn for me, 
Or for your sons, more than a soul should mourn 
In Paradise, done with evil and with earth. 
There is not much of earth in what remains
For you; and what there may be left of it 
For your endurance you shall have at last 
In peace, without the twinge of any fear 
For my condition; for I shall be done 
With plans and actions that have heretofore
Made your days long and your nights ominous 
With darkness and the many distances 
That were between us. When the silence comes, 
I shall in faith be nearer to you then 
Than I am now in fact. What you see now
Is only the outside of an old man, 
Older than years have made him. Let him die, 
And let him be a thing for little grief. 
There was a time for service and he served; 
And there is no more time for anything
But a short gratefulness to those who gave 
Their scared allegiance to an enterprise 
That has the name of treason—which will serve 
As well as any other for the present. 
There are some deeds of men that have no names,
And mine may like as not be one of them. 
I am not looking far for names tonight. 
The King of Glory was without a name 
Until men gave Him one; yet there He was, 
Before we found Him and affronted Him
With numerous ingenuities of evil, 
Of which one, with His aid, is to be swept 
And washed out of the world with fire and blood. 

Once I believed it might have come to pass 
With a small cost of blood; but I was dreaming—
Dreaming that I believed. The Voice I heard 
When I left you behind me in the north,— 
To wait there and to wonder and grow old 
Of loneliness,—told only what was best, 
And with a saving vagueness, I should know
Till I knew more. And had I known even then— 
After grim years of search and suffering, 
So many of them to end as they began— 
After my sickening doubts and estimations 
Of plans abandoned and of new plans vain—
After a weary delving everywhere 
For men with every virtue but the Vision— 
Could I have known, I say, before I left you 
That summer morning, all there was to know— 
Even unto the last consuming word
That would have blasted every mortal answer 
As lightning would annihilate a leaf, 
I might have trembled on that summer morning; 
I might have wavered; and I might have failed. 

And there are many among men today
To say of me that I had best have wavered. 
So has it been, so shall it always be, 
For those of us who give ourselves to die 
Before we are so parcelled and approved 
As to be slaughtered by authority.
We do not make so much of what they say 
As they of what our folly says of us; 
They give us hardly time enough for that, 
And thereby we gain much by losing little. 
Few are alive to-day with less to lose.
Than I who tell you this, or more to gain; 
And whether I speak as one to be destroyed 
For no good end outside his own destruction, 
Time shall have more to say than men shall hear 
Between now and the coming of that harvest
Which is to come. Before it comes, I go— 
By the short road that mystery makes long 
For man’s endurance of accomplishment. 
I shall have more to say when I am dead.
Written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Create an image from this poem

Original Preface

 I feel no small reluctance in venturing to give to the public a 
work of the character of that indicated by the title-page to the 
present volume; for, difficult as it must always be to render satisfactorily 
into one's own tongue the writings of the bards of other lands, 
the responsibility assumed by the translator is immeasurably increased 
when he attempts to transfer the thoughts of those great men, who 
have lived for all the world and for all ages, from the language 
in which they were originally clothed, to one to which they may 
as yet have been strangers. Preeminently is this the case with Goethe, 
the most masterly of all the master minds of modern times, whose 
name is already inscribed on the tablets of immortality, and whose 
fame already extends over the earth, although as yet only in its 
infancy. Scarcely have two decades passed away since he ceased to 
dwell among men, yet he now stands before us, not as a mere individual, 
like those whom the world is wont to call great, but as a type, 
as an emblem--the recognised emblem and representative of the human 
mind in its present stage of culture and advancement.

Among the infinitely varied effusions of Goethe's pen, perhaps 
there are none which are of as general interest as his Poems, which 
breathe the very spirit of Nature, and embody the real music of 
the feelings. In Germany, they are universally known, and are considered 
as the most delightful of his works. Yet in this country, this kindred 
country, sprung from the same stem, and so strongly resembling her 
sister in so many points, they are nearly unknown. Almost the only 
poetical work of the greatest Poet that the world has seen for ages, 
that is really and generally read in England, is Faust, the translations 
of which are almost endless; while no single person has as yet appeared 
to attempt to give, in an English dress, in any collective or systematic 
manner, those smaller productions of the genius of Goethe which 
it is the object of the present volume to lay before the reader, 
whose indulgence is requested for its many imperfections. In addition 
to the beauty of the language in which the Poet has given utterance 
to his thoughts, there is a depth of meaning in those thoughts which 
is not easily discoverable at first sight, and the translator incurs 
great risk of overlooking it, and of giving a prosaic effect to 
that which in the original contains the very essence of poetry. 
It is probably this difficulty that has deterred others from undertaking 
the task I have set myself, and in which I do not pretend to do 
more than attempt to give an idea of the minstrelsy of one so unrivalled, 
by as truthful an interpretation of it as lies in my power.

The principles which have guided me on the present occasion are 
the same as those followed in the translation of Schiller's complete 
Poems that was published by me in 1851, namely, as literal a rendering 
of the original as is consistent with good English, and also a very 
strict adherence to the metre of the original. Although translators 
usually allow themselves great license in both these points, it 
appears to me that by so doing they of necessity destroy the very 
soul of the work they profess to translate. In fact, it is not a 
translation, but a paraphrase that they give. It may perhaps be 
thought that the present translations go almost to the other extreme, 
and that a rendering of metre, line for line, and word for word, 
makes it impossible to preserve the poetry of the original both 
in substance and in sound. But experience has convinced me that 
it is not so, and that great fidelity is even the most essential 
element of success, whether in translating poetry or prose. It was 
therefore very satisfactory to me to find that the principle laid 
down by me to myself in translating Schiller met with the very general, 
if not universal, approval of the reader. At the same time, I have 
endeavoured to profit in the case of this, the younger born of the 
two attempts made by me to transplant the muse of Germany to the 
shores of Britain, by the criticisms, whether friendly or hostile, 
that have been evoked or provoked by the appearance of its elder 
brother.

As already mentioned, the latter contained the whole of the Poems 
of Schiller. It is impossible, in anything like the same compass, 
to give all the writings of Goethe comprised under the general title 
of Gedichte, or poems. They contain between 30,000 and 40,000 verses, 
exclusive of his plays. and similar works. Very many of these would 
be absolutely without interest to the English reader,--such as those 
having only a local application, those addressed to individuals, 
and so on. Others again, from their extreme length, could only be 
published in separate volumes. But the impossibility of giving all 
need form no obstacle to giving as much as possible; and it so happens 
that the real interest of Goethe's Poems centres in those classes 
of them which are not too diffuse to run any risk when translated 
of offending the reader by their too great number. Those by far 
the more generally admired are the Songs and Ballads, which are 
about 150 in number, and the whole of which are contained in this 
volume (with the exception of one or two of the former, which have 
been, on consideration, left out by me owing to their trifling and 
uninteresting nature). The same may be said of the Odes, Sonnets, 
Miscellaneous Poems, &c.

In addition to those portions of Goethe's poetical works which 
are given in this complete form, specimens of the different other 
classes of them, such as the Epigrams, Elegies, &c., are added, 
as well as a collection of the various Songs found in his Plays, 
making a total number of about 400 Poems, embraced in the present 
volume.

A sketch of the life of Goethe is prefixed, in order that the 
reader may have before him both the Poet himself and the Poet's 
offspring, and that he may see that the two are but one--that Goethe 
lives in his works, that his works lived in him.

The dates of the different Poems are appended throughout, that 
of the first publication being given, when that of the composition 
is unknown. The order of arrangement adopted is that of the authorized 
German editions. As Goethe would never arrange them himself in the 
chronological order of their composition, it has become impossible 
to do so, now that he is dead. The plan adopted in the present volume 
would therefore seem to be the best, as it facilitates reference 
to the original. The circumstances attending or giving rise to the 
production of any of the Poems will be found specified in those 
cases in which they have been ascertained by me.

Having said thus much by way of explanation, I now leave the book 
to speak for itself, and to testify to its own character. Whether 
viewed with a charitable eye by the kindly reader, who will make 
due allowance for the difficulties attending its execution, or received 
by the critic, who will judge of it only by its own merits, with 
the unfriendly welcome which it very probably deserves, I trust 
that I shall at least be pardoned for making an attempt, a failure 
in which does not necessarily imply disgrace, and which, by leading 
the way, may perhaps become the means of inducing some abler and 
more worthy (but not more earnest) labourer to enter upon the same 
field, the riches of which will remain unaltered and undiminished 
in value, even although they may be for the moment tarnished by 
the hands of the less skilful workman who first endeavours to transplant 
them to a foreign soil.


Written by Jane Austen | Create an image from this poem

When Winchester races

 When Winchester races first took their beginning
It is said the good people forgot their old Saint
Not applying at all for the leave of Saint Swithin
And that William of Wykeham's approval was faint. 

The races however were fixed and determined
The company came and the Weather was charming
The Lords and the Ladies were satine'd and ermined
And nobody saw any future alarming.-- 

But when the old Saint was informed of these doings
He made but one Spring from his Shrine to the Roof
Of the Palace which now lies so sadly in ruins
And then he addressed them all standing aloof. 

'Oh! subjects rebellious! Oh Venta depraved
When once we are buried you think we are gone
But behold me immortal! By vice you're enslaved
You have sinned and must suffer, ten farther he said 

These races and revels and dissolute measures
With which you're debasing a neighboring Plain
Let them stand--You shall meet with your curse in your pleasures
Set off for your course, I'll pursue with my rain. 

Ye cannot but know my command o'er July
Henceforward I'll triumph in shewing my powers
Shift your race as you will it shall never be dry
The curse upon Venta is July in showers--'.
Written by Eugene Field | Create an image from this poem

Two valentines

 I.--TO MISTRESS BARBARA

There were three cavaliers, all handsome and true,
On Valentine's day came a maiden to woo,
And quoth to your mother: "Good-morrow, my dear,
We came with some songs for your daughter to hear!"

Your mother replied: "I'll be pleased to convey
To my daughter what things you may sing or may say!"

Then the first cavalier sung: "My pretty red rose,
I'll love you and court you some day, I suppose!"

And the next cavalier sung, with make-believe tears:
"I've loved you! I've loved you these many long years!"

But the third cavalier (with the brown, bushy head
And the pretty blue jacket and necktie of red)
He drew himself up with a resolute air,
And he warbled: "O maiden, surpassingly fair!
I've loved you long years, and I love you to-day,
And, if you will let me, I'll love you for aye!"

I (the third cavalier) sang this ditty to you,
In my necktie of red and my jacket of blue;
I'm sure you'll prefer the song that was mine
And smile your approval on your valentine.


II.--TO A BABY BOY

Who I am I shall not say,
But I send you this bouquet
With this query, baby mine:
"Will you be my valentine?"

See these roses blushing blue,
Very like your eyes of hue;
While these violets are the red
Of your cheeks. It can be said
Ne'er before was babe like you.

And I think it is quite true
No one e'er before to-day
Sent so wondrous a bouquet
As these posies aforesaid--
Roses blue and violets red!

Sweet, repay me sweets for sweets--
'Tis your lover who entreats!
Smile upon me, baby mine--
Be my little valentine!
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

Navels

 Men have navels more or less;
 Some are neat, some not
Being fat I must confess
 Mine is far from hot.
Woman's is a pearly ring,
 Lovely to my mind;
So of it to shyly sing
 I am inclined.

I believe in nudity.
 Female forms divine
Should be bared for all to see
 In colour and in line.
So dear ladies, recognise
 The dimpling of your waist
Has approval in my eyes,
 Favour in my taste.

Darlings, please you, paint them gold,
 Or some pastel hue;
Make them starry to behold,
 Witching to the view.
Though I know I never should
 Say such things as this:
How a rosebud navel would
 Be sweet to kiss!
Written by Francesco Petrarch | Create an image from this poem

Sonnet CCI

SONNET CCI.

Real natura, angelico intelletto.

ON THE KISS OF HONOUR GIVEN BY CHARLES OF LUXEMBURG TO LAURA AT A BANQUET.

A kingly nature, an angelic mind,A spotless soul, prompt aspect and keen eye,Quick penetration, contemplation highAnd truly worthy of the breast which shrined:In bright assembly lovely ladies join'dTo grace that festival with gratulant joy,Amid so many and fair faces nighSoon his good judgment did the fairest find.Of riper age and higher rank the restGently he beckon'd with his hand aside,And lovingly drew near the perfect one:So courteously her eyes and brow he press'd,All at his choice in fond approval vied—Envy through my sole veins at that sweet freedom run.
Macgregor.
A sovereign nature,—an exalted mind,—A soul proud—sleepless—with a lynx's eye,—[Pg 212]An instant foresight,—thought as towering high,E'en as the heart in which they are enshrined:A bright assembly on that day combinedEach other in his honour to outvie,When 'mid the fair his judgment did descryThat sweet perfection all to her resign'd.Unmindful of her rival sisterhood,He motion'd silently his preference,And fondly welcomed her, that humblest one:So pure a kiss he gave, that all who stood,Though fair, rejoiced in beauty's recompense:By that strange act nay heart was quite undone!
Wollaston.

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