[ { "title": "In Thankful Remembrance for My Dear Husband's Safe Arrival", "author": "Anne Bradstreet", "lines": [ "What shall I render to Thy name", "Or how Thy praises speak?", "My thanks how shall I testify?", "O Lord, Thou know'st I'm weak.", "", "I owe so much, so little can", "Return unto Thy name,", "Confusion seizes on my soul,", "And I am filled with shame.", "", "O Thou that hearest prayers, Lord,", "To Thee shall come all flesh", "Thou hast me heard and answered,", "My plaints have had access.", "", "What did I ask for but Thou gav'st?", "What could I more desire?", "But thankfulness even all my days", "I humbly this require.", "", "Thy mercies, Lord, have been so great", "In number numberless,", "Impossible for to recount", "Or any way express.", "", "O help Thy saints that sought Thy face", "T' return unto Thee praise", "And walk before Thee as they ought,", "In strict and upright ways." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "Poem of Remembrance for a Girl or a Boy.", "author": "Walt Whitman", "lines": [ "YOU just maturing youth! You male or female!", "Remember the organic compact of These States,", "Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights, life, liberty,", " equality of", " man,", "Remember what was promulged by the founders, ratified by The States, signed in black and", " white", " by the Commissioners, and read by Washington at the head of the army,", "Remember the purposes of the founders,—Remember Washington;", "Remember the copious humanity streaming from every direction toward America;", "Remember the hospitality that belongs to nations and men; (Cursed be nation, woman, man,", " without hospitality!)", "Remember, government is to subserve individuals,", "Not any, not the President, is to have one jot more than you or me,", "Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less than you or me.", "", "Anticipate when the thirty or fifty millions, are to become the hundred, or two hundred", " millions, of equal freemen and freewomen, amicably joined.", "", "Recall ages—One age is but a part—ages are but a part;", "Recall the angers, bickerings, delusions, superstitions, of the idea of caste,", "Recall the bloody cruelties and crimes.", "", "Anticipate the best women;", "I say an unnumbered new race of hardy and well-defined women are to spread through all", " These", " States,", "I say a girl fit for These States must be free, capable, dauntless, just the same as a", " boy.", "", "Anticipate your own life—retract with merciless power,", "Shirk nothing—retract in time—Do you see those errors, diseases, weaknesses,", " lies,", " thefts?", "Do you see that lost character?—Do you see decay, consumption, rum-drinking, dropsy,", " fever, mortal cancer or inflammation?", "Do you see death, and the approach of death?" ], "linecount": "33" }, { "title": "Remembrances", "author": "John Clare", "lines": [ "Summer's pleasures they are gone like to visions every one,", "And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on.", "I tried to call them back, but unbidden they are gone", "Far away from heart and eye and forever far away.", "Dear heart, and can it be that such raptures meet decay?", "I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay,", "I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play", "On its bank at \"clink and bandy,\" \"chock\" and \"taw\" and \"ducking stone,\"", "Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own", "Like a ruin of the past all alone.", "", "When I used to lie and sing by old Eastwell's boiling spring,", "When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a swing,", "And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a thing,", "With heart just like a feather, now as heavy as a stone;", "When beneath old Lea Close oak I the bottom branches broke", "To make our harvest cart like so many working folk,", "And then to cut a straw at the brook to have a soak.", "O I never dreamed of parting or that trouble had a sting,", "Or that pleasures like a flock of birds would ever take to wing,", "Leaving nothing but a little naked spring.", "", "When jumping time away on old Crossberry Way,", "And eating awes like sugarplums ere they had lost the may,", "And skipping like a leveret before the peep of day", "On the roly poly up and downs of pleasant Swordy Well,", "When in Round Oak's narrow lane as the south got black again", "We sought the hollow ash that was shelter from the rain,", "With our pockets full of peas we had stolen from the grain;", "How delicious was the dinner time on such a showery day!", "O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away,", "The ancient pulpit trees and the play.", "", "When for school oer Little Field with its brook and wooden brig,", "Where I swaggered like a man though I was not half so big,", "While I held my little plough though twas but a willow twig,", "And drove my team along made of nothing but a name,", "\"Gee hep\" and \"hoit\" and \"woi\"--O I never call to mind", "These pleasant names of places but I leave a sigh behind,", "While I see little mouldiwarps hang sweeing to the wind", "On the only aged willow that in all the field remains,", "And nature hides her face while they're sweeing in their chains", "And in a silent murmuring complains.", "", "Here was commons for their hills, where they seek for freedom still,", "Though every common's gone and though traps are set to kill", "The little homeless miners--O it turns my bosom chill", "When I think of old Sneap Green, Puddock's Nook and Hilly Snow,", "Where bramble bushes grew and the daisy gemmed in dew", "And the hills of silken grass like to cushions to the view,", "Where we threw the pismire crumbs when we'd nothing else to do,", "All levelled like a desert by the never weary plough,", "All banished like the sun where that cloud is passing now", "And settled here for ever on its brow.", "", "O I never thought that joys would run away from boys,", "Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such summer joys;", "But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys", "To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone,", "Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last,", "Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast", "And boyhood's pleasing haunt like a blossom in the blast", "Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and done,", "Till vanished was the morning spring and set the summer sun", "And winter fought her battle strife and won.", "", "By Langley Bush I roam, but the bush hath left its hill,", "On Cowper Green I stray, tis a desert strange and chill,", "And the spreading Lea Close oak, ere decay had penned its will,", "To the axe of the spoiler and self-interest fell a prey,", "And Crossberry Way and old Round Oak's narrow lane", "With its hollow trees like pulpits I shall never see again,", "Enclosure like a Buonaparte let not a thing remain,", "It levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill", "And hung the moles for traitors--though the brook is running still", "It runs a sicker brook, cold and chill.", "", "O had I known as then joy had left the paths of men,", "I had watched her night and day, be sure, and never slept agen,", "And when she turned to go, O I'd caught her mantle then,", "And wooed her like a lover by my lonely side to stay;", "Ay, knelt and worshipped on, as love in beauty's bower,", "And clung upon her smiles as a bee upon a flower,", "And gave her heart my posies, all cropt in a sunny hour,", "As keepsakes and pledges all to never fade away;", "But love never heeded to treasure up the may,", "So it went the common road to decay." ], "linecount": "80" }, { "title": "Remembrance", "author": "George Gordon, Lord Byron", "lines": [ "'Tis done!--I saw it in my dreams:", "No more with Hope the future beams;", " My days of happiness are few:", "Chill'd by Misfortune's wintry blast,", "My dawn of Life is overcast;", " Love, Hope, and Joy, alike adieu!", " Would I could add Remembrance too!" ], "linecount": "7" }, { "title": "Remembrance", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Swifter far than summer's flight--", "Swifter far than youth's delight--", "Swifter far than happy night,", "Art thou come and gone--", "As the earth when leaves are dead,", "As the night when sleep is sped,", "As the heart when joy is fled,", "I am left lone, alone.", "", "The swallow summer comes again--", "The owlet night resumes her reign--", "But the wild-swan youth is fain", "To fly with thee, false as thou.--", "My heart each day desires the morrow;", "Sleep itself is turned to sorrow;", "Vainly would my winter borrow", "Sunny leaves from any bough.", "", "Lilies for a bridal bed--", "Roses for a matron's head--", "Violets for a maiden dead--", "Pansies let MY flowers be:", "On the living grave I bear", "Scatter them without a tear--", "Let no friend, however dear,", "Waste one hope, one fear for me." ], "linecount": "24" } ]