All Poems
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The Ideal
© Frances Anne Kemble
Thou shalt behold it once, and once believe
Thou may'st possess itLove shall make the dream,
Stars were racing
© Boris Pasternak
Stars were racing; waves were washing headlands.
Salt went blind, and tears were slowly drying.
Darkened were the bedrooms; thoughts were racing,
And the Sphinx was listening to the desert.
At a Certain Age by Deborah Cummins: American Life in Poetry #138 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 200
© Ted Kooser
You've surely heard it said that the old ought to move over to make room for the young. But in the best of all possible worlds, people who love their work should be able to do it as long as they wish. Those forced to retire, well, they're a sorry lot. Here the Chicago poet, Deborah Cummins, shows a man trying to adjust to life after work.
At a Certain Age
To My Brothers
© Norman Rowland Gale
O BROTHERS, who must ache and stoop
Oer wordy tasks in London town,
Genesis BK VII
© Caedmon
(ll. 322-336) The other fiends who waged so fierce a war with God
lay wrapped in flames. They suffer torment, hot and surging
"Where Is Thy Brother?"
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Oh! when I think in what a thorny way
The feet of men must ever walk and stray,
I do not wonder that so many fall,
But wonder more that any stand at all.
High waving heather 'neath stormy blasts bending
© Emily Jane Brontë
High waving heather 'neath stormy blasts bending,
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars,
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,
Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,
Man's spirit away from its drear dungeon sending,
Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.
Teresinas Face
© Margaret Widdemer
He saw it last of all before they herded in the steerage,
Dark against the sunset where he lingered by the hold,
The tear-stained dusk-rose face of her, the little Teresina,
Sailing out to lands of gold:
Mutation.
© Robert Crawford
The peaceful years, and then the stormy time
When the perturbed Earth moans, and Death himself
Seems ready to seize all his prey, "to smite
Once and to smite no more." Not yet the end,
The Dancers: (During A Great Battle, 1916)
© Dame Edith Sitwell
The floors are slippery with blood:
The world gyrates too. God is good
That while His wind blows out the light
For those who hourly die for is
We still can dance each night.
Petrov and Kamarov
© Daniil Ivanovich Kharms
Petrov: Hey, Kamarov, old chap!
Let's catch a few of these gnats!
Kamarov: No, I'm not yet up to that;
We'd do better to catch some tom-cats!
The Net-Menders
© Sylvia Plath
Halfway up from the little harbor of sardine boats,
Halfway down from groves where the thin, bitter almond pips
Fatten in green-pocked pods, the three net-menders sit out,
Dressed in black, everybody in mourning for someone.
They set their stout chairs back to the road and face the dark
Dominoes of their doorways.
Lassitude
© Mathilde Blind
I laid me down beside the sea,
Endless in blue monotony;
The clouds were anchored in the sky.
Sometimes a sail went idling by.
Home
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
I want to go to the heather hills,
To the heather hills and rocky shore.
The Pastime of Pleasure: Of dysposycyon the II. parte of rethoryke - (til line 1456)
© Stephen Hawes
The seconde parte of crafty rethoryke
Maye well be called dysposycyon
822 That doth so hyghe mater aromatytyke
823 Adowne dystyll / by consolacyon
The Last Survivor
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
YES! the vacant chairs tell sadly we are going, going fast,
And the thought comes strangely o'er me, who will live to be the last?
When the twentieth century's sunbeams climb the far-off eastern hill,
With his ninety winters burdened, will he greet the morning still?
On The Difficulty Of Conjuring Up A Dryad
© Sylvia Plath
Ravening through the persistent bric-à-brac
Of blunt pencils, rose-sprigged coffee cup,
Postage stamps, stacked books' clamor and yawp,
Neighborhood cockcrowall nature's prodigal backtalk,
To the Old Gods
© Muriel Stuart
O YE, who rode the gales of Sicily,
Sandalled with flame,
Spread on the pirate winds; o ye who broke
No wind-flower as ye came-
Though Pelion shivered when the thunder spoke
The gods' decree!-
