Short Empowerment Poems

Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years-
To remember with tears!

Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years-
To remember with tears!

A sunset's mounded cloud;
A diamond evening-star;
Sad blue hills afar;
Love in his shroud.

Scarcely a tear to shed;
Hardly a word to say;
The end of a summer day;
Sweet Love dead.

While haughty Gallia's dames, that pread
O'er their pale cheeks, an artful red,
Beheld this beauteous stranger there
In native charms, divinely fair;
Confusion in their looks they show'd;
And with unborrow'd blushes glow'd.

A man who keeps a diary, pays
Due toll to many tedious days;
But life becomes eventful--then
His busy hand forgets the pen.
Most books, indeed, are records less
Of fulness than of emptiness.

Hayrick some do spell thy name,
And thy verse approves the same;
For 'tis like fresh-scented hay,--
With country lasses in't at play.

A wild west Coast, a little Town,
Where little Folk go up and down,
Tides flow and winds blow:
Night and Tempest and the Sea,
Human Will and Human Fate:
What is little, what is great?
Howsoe'er the answer be,
Let me sing of what I know.

O Love! thou makest all things even
In earth or heaven;
Finding thy way through prison-bars
Up to the stars;
Or, true to the Almighty plan,
That out of dust created man,
Thou lookest in a grave,--to see
Thine immortality!

O Love! thou makest all things even
In earth or heaven;
Finding thy way through prison-bars
Up to the stars;
Or, true to the Almighty plan,
That out of dust created man,
Thou lookest in a grave,--to see
Thine immortality!

White wing, white wing,
Lily of the air,
What word dost bring,
On whose errand fare?

Red word, red word,
Snowy plumes abhor.
I, Christ's own bird,
Do the work of war.

THESE palms weave shadows of delight,
But the truant heart flies forth
To birch-boles glistening more than white
In the forests of the North.

THE wolf of want is howling
At doors no angel keeps.
Young Mary smiled on her Holy Child,
But many a mother weeps.
The Kings of the East brought treasures
Uncounted and unpriced.
Who bears a gift to arms that lift
A little famished Christ?

And in that rosy rosy hour,
When bird sang out and scented flower,
Came words to me from heaven above:
'Awake, young heart, awake and love!'

Torture will give a dozen pence or more
To keep a drab from bawling at his door.
The public taste is quite a different thing-
Torture is positively paid to sing.

To-night in million-voiced London I
Was lonely as the million-pointed sky
Until your single voice. Ah! So the sun
Peoples all heaven, although he be but one.

It was my shame, and now it is my boast,
That I have loved you rather more than most.

The species Man and Marmozet
Are intimately linked;
The Marmozet survives as yet,
But Men are all extinct.

Of all the gods that gave me all their glories
To-day there deigns to walk with me but one.
I lead him by the hand and tell him stories.
It is the Queen of Cyprus' little son.

May all my enemies go to hell,
Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel.

Three Graces; and the mother were a Grace,
But for profounder meaning in her face.