All Poems
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The Ride
© Richard Wilbur
The horse beneath me seemed
To know what course to steer
Through the horror of snow I dreamed,
And so I had no fear,
Having Misidentified A Wildflower
© Richard Wilbur
A thrush, because I'd been wrong,
Burst rightly into song
In a world not vague, not lonely,
Not governed by me only.
Juggler
© Richard Wilbur
A ball will bounce; but less and less. It's not
A light-hearted thing, resents its own resilience.
Falling is what it loves, and the earth falls
So in our hearts from brilliance,
Settles and is forgot.
It takes a sky-blue juggler with five red balls
A Fable
© Richard Wilbur
Securely sunning in a forest glade,
A mild, well-meaning snake
Approved the adaptations he had made
For safetys sake.
To the Etruscan Poets
© Richard Wilbur
Dream fluently, still brothers, who when young
Took with your mother's milk the mother tongue,In which pure matrix, joining world and mind,
You strove to leave some line of verse behindLike still fresh tracks across a field of snow,
Not reckoning that all could melt and go.
Praise In Summer
© Richard Wilbur
Obscurely yet most surely called to praise,
As sometimes summer calls us all, I said
The hills are heavens full of branching ways
Where star-nosed moles fly overhead the dead;
A Fire-Truck
© Richard Wilbur
Shift at the corner into uproarious gear
And make it around the turn in a squall
of traction,
The headlong bell maintaining sure and
clear,
Thought is degraded action!
For K.R. on her Sixtieth Birthday
© Richard Wilbur
Blow out the candles of your cake.
They will not leave you in the dark,
Who round with grace this dusky arc
Of the grand tour which souls must take.
A Hole In The Floor
© Richard Wilbur
The carpenter's made a hole
In the parlor floor, and I'm standing
Staring down into it now
At four o'clock in the evening,
As Schliemann stood when his shovel
Knocked on the crowns of Troy.
Boy at the Window
© Richard Wilbur
Seeing the snowman standing all alone
In dusk and cold is more than he can bear.
The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare
A night of gnashings and enormous moan.
Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World
© Richard Wilbur
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded
soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and
A Plain Song For Comadre
© Richard Wilbur
That Bruna Sandoval has kept the church
Of San Ysidro, sweeping
And scrubbing the aisles, keeping
The candlesticks and the plaster faces bright,
And seen no visions but the thing done right
>From the clay porch
Wedding Toast
© Richard Wilbur
St. John tells how, at Cana's wedding feast,
The water-pots poured wine in such amount
That by his sober count
There were a hundred gallons at the least.
The Beautiful Changes
© Richard Wilbur
The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.
The Writer
© Richard Wilbur
In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.
Winds of May
© James Joyce
Winds of May, that dance on the sea,
Dancing a ring-around in glee
From furrow to furrow, while overhead
The foam flies up to be garlanded,
Who Goes Amid the Green Wood
© James Joyce
Who goes amid the green wood
With springtide all adorning her?
Who goes amid the merry green wood
To make it merrier?
When the Shy Star Goes Forth in Heaven
© James Joyce
When the shy star goes forth in heaven
All maidenly, disconsolate,
Hear you amid the drowsy even
One who is singing by your gate.
His song is softer than the dew
And he is come to visit you.
What Counsel Has the Hooded Moon
© James Joyce
What counsel has the hooded moon
Put in thy heart, my shyly sweet,
Of Love in ancient plenilune,
Glory and stars beneath his feet -- -
A sage that is but kith and kin
With the comedian Capuchin?
Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba
© James Joyce
I heard their young hearts crying
Loveward above the glancing oar
And heard the prairie grasses sighing:
No more, return no more!
