All Poems
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Hymn To Eros
© Denise Levertov
O Eros, silently smiling one, hear me.
Let the shadow of thy wings
brush me.
Let thy presence
The Garden Wall
© Denise Levertov
Bricks of the wall,
so much older than the house -
taken I think from a farm pulled down
when the street was built -
narrow bricks of another century.
Sound Sleep
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
Some are laughing, some are weeping;
She is sleeping, only sleeping.
Round her rest wild flowers are creeping;
There the wind is heaping, heaping
Sweetest sweets of Summer's keeping.
By the corn-fields ripe for reaping.
On the Mystery of the Incarnation
© Denise Levertov
It's when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart:
Sonnet: "It is not to be thought of"
© William Wordsworth
IT is not to be thought of that the Flood
Of British freedom, which, to the open sea
The Quest
© Denise Levertov
High, hollowed in green
above the rocks of reason
lies the crater lake
whose ice the dreamer breaks
to find a summer season.
Maiden-Song
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
But I have a will to work,
And a heart for you:
Bid me stay or bid me go.'
September 1961
© Denise Levertov
This is the year the old ones,
the old great ones
leave us alone on the road.
An Invitation
© Robert Fuller Murray
Dear Ritchie, I am waiting for the signal word to fly,
And tell me that the visit which has suffered such belating
Is to be a thing of now, and no more of by-and-by.
Dear Ritchie, I am waiting.
The Sea's Wash In The Hollow Of The Heart...
© Denise Levertov
Turn from that road's beguiling ease; return
to your hunger's turret. Enter, climb the stair
chill with disuse, where the croaking toad of time
regards from shimmering eyes your slow ascent
The Avowal
© Denise Levertov
As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
The Book
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Gallery of sacred pictures manifold,
A minster rich in holy effigies,
Everything That Acts Is Actual
© Denise Levertov
into December? a lowland
of space, perception of space
towering of shadows of clouds blown upon
clouds over new ground, new made
under heavy December footsteps? the only
way to live?
This Quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies
© Emily Dickinson
This quiet dust was gentlemen and ladies
And lads and girls;
Was laughter and ability and sighing,
And frocks and curls;
Contraband
© Denise Levertov
The tree of knowledge was the tree of reason.
That's why the taste of it
drove us from Eden. That fruit
was meant to be dried and milled to a fine powder
The Nightingale
© Mark Akenside
To-night retired, the queen of heaven
With young Endymion stays;
And now to Hesper it is given
Awhile to rule the vacant sky,
Till she shall to her lamp supply
A stream of brighter rays.
Illustrious Ancestors
© Denise Levertov
The Rav
of Northern White Russia declined,
in his youth, to learn the
language of birds, because
To Caroline: Oh When Shall The Grave Hide
© George Gordon Byron
Oh when shall the grave hide for ever my sorrow?
Oh when shall my soul wing her flight from this clay?
The present is hell, and the coming to-morrow
But brings, with new torture, the curse of to-day.
An Embroidery
© Denise Levertov
Rose Red's hair is brown as fur
and shines in firelight as she prepares
supper of honey and apples, curds and whey,
for the bear, and leaves it ready
on the hearth-stone.
