All Poems

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The Swimmer

© Adam Lindsay Gordon

With short, sharp violent lights made vivid,
To the southward far as the sight can roam,
Only the swirl of the surges livid,
The seas that climb and the surfs that comb,

Ah! those days and nights we squandered at the Logans' in the glen --
The Logans, man and wife, have long been dead.
Elsie's tallest girl seems taller than your little Elsie then;
And Ethel is a woman grown and wed.

The Last Leap

© Adam Lindsay Gordon

ALL is over! fleet career,
Dash of greyhound slipping thongs,
Flight of falcon, bound of deer,
Mad hoof-thunder in our rear,
Cold air rushing up our lungs,
Din of many tongues.

Gone

© Adam Lindsay Gordon

IN Collins Street standeth a statute tall,
A statue tall, on a pillar of stone,
Telling its story, to great and small,
Of the dust reclaimed from the sand waste lone;

An Exile's Farewell

© Adam Lindsay Gordon

The ocean heaves around us still
With long and measured swell,
The autumn gales our canvas fill,
Our ship rides smooth and well.

A Song of Autumn

© Adam Lindsay Gordon

WHERE shall we go for our garlands glad
At the falling of the year,
When the burnt-up banks are yellow and sad,
When the boughs are yellow and sere?

A Dedication

© Adam Lindsay Gordon

They are rhymes rudely strung with intent less
Of sound than of words,
In lands where bright blossoms are scentless,
And songless bright birds;

The Olive Tree

© Karl Shapiro

Now on the lawn
The olives fall by thousands, and I delight
To shed my tennis shoes and walk on them,
Pressing them coldly into the deep grass,
In love and reverence for the total loss.

Manhole Covers

© Karl Shapiro

The beauty of manhole covers--what of that?
Like medals struck by a great savage khan,
Like Mayan calendar stones, unliftable, indecipherable,
Not like the old electrum, chased and scored,

A Garden In Chicago

© Karl Shapiro

A gutter of poetry flowed outside the yard,
Making me think I was a bird of prose;
For overhead, bagged in a golden cloud,
There hung the fatted souls of animals,
Wile at my eyes bright dots of butterflies
Turned off and on like distant neon signs.

Lament for Zenocrate

© Christopher Morley

Black is the beauty of the brightest day,
The golden belle of heaven's eternal fire,
That danced with glory on the silver waves,
Now wants the fuel that inflamed his beams:

Hero and Leander: The First Sestiad

© Christopher Morley

1 On Hellespont, guilty of true love's blood,
2 In view and opposite two cities stood,
3 Sea-borderers, disjoin'd by Neptune's might;
4 The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight.

The face that launch'd a thousand ships

© Christopher Morley

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies!

Hero and Leander

© Christopher Morley

It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is over-rul'd by fate.
hen two are stript long ere the course begin,
We wish that one should lose, the other win;

Who Ever Loved That Loved Not at First Sight?

It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is overruled by fate.
When two are stripped, long ere the course begin,
We wish that one should love, the other win;

The Passionate Shepherd To His Love

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
And all the craggy mountain yields.

Modern Nature

Red cows
on the asphalt road have settled.
Lazing on the asphalt pan they lie.
We drive them round

The Song

Sailor, my dear, my heaven-made spouse!
There is one thing that I beg of you, man:
Kiss any strangers, and give them your flowers,
love many women. But, pray, don't love one.