15 Line Poems

Table of Contents

1. If Love Were Mine

   by Annette Wynne | Total Words: 81, Lines: 15

   If love were mine, if love were mine,
   I know what I would do,
   I'd take it, spare it,
   Give it, share it,
   Lend it, spend it, too.
   

   If beauty I could claim for mine,
   To hold, to cherish, too,
   I'd strive to spread it,
   Pour it, shed it,
   Till it flowed the whole world through.
   

   But toil—just common toil—is mine;
   And so what I shall do
   Is strive to take it,
   Carve it, make it,
   Into love and beauty, too.
   

2. The Comparative Degree

   Make not a man your measuring-rod
   If you would span the way to God; But fix your eyes on perfectness.
   Make for the loftiest point in view,
   And draw your friends along with you.
   

   – Amos R. Wells
   The Comparative Degree

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   by Amos Russel Wells

   
   

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    Full Text

   What weight of woe we owe to thee,
   Accurst comparative degree!
   Thy paltry step can never give
   Access to the superlative;
   For he who would the wisest be,
   

   Strives to make others wise as he,
   And never yet was man judged best
   Who would be better than the rest;
   So does comparison unkind
   Dwarf and debase the haughty mind.
   

   Make not a man your measuring-rod
   If you would span the way to God; Heed not our petty "worse" or "less,"
   But fix your eyes on perfectness.
   Make for the loftiest point in view,
   And draw your friends along with you.
   

3. The Good Man

   by Richard Lynott O'Malley

   I met a man on Life's thronged way,
   And thought at once that man was good;
   I learned to know him; strange to say,
   Still thought I that the man was good.
   A virtue loves he, not for praise,
   But for that virtue's sake; to daze
   By show disdained he, Years his ways
   I watched, and still, O still I thought him good.
   

   Ah! ask you why, amidst the van
   Of heroes, place I him who ran
   His race of life in goodness true?
   Ask you what marvel did he do?
   Duty to God, and self, and man!
   He ended good as he began;
   Such men, alas, are few!
   

4. Not They Who Soar

   by Paul Laurence Dunbar

   Not they who soar, but they who plod
   Their rugged way, unhelped, to God
   Are heroes; they who higher fare,
   And, flying, fan the upper air,
   Miss all the toil that hugs the sod.
   'Tis they whose backs have felt the rod,
   Whose feet have pressed the path unshod,
   May smile upon defeated care,
   Not they who soar.
   High up there are no thorns to prod,
   Nor boulders lurking 'neath the clod
   To turn the keenness of the share,
   For flight is ever free and rare;
   But heroes they the soil who've trod,
   Not they who soar!
   

   In the world’s broad field of battle,
   In the bivouac of Life,
   Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
   Be a hero in the strife!
   

   – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
   A Psalm of Life

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