Poems begining by A
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Avalon
© Simon Armitage
To the Metropolitan Police Force, London:
the asylum gates are locked and chained, but undone
by wandering thoughts and the close study of maps.
So from San Francisco, patron city of tramps,
I scribble this note, having overshot Gloucester
by several million strides, having walked on water.
Alea Jacta
© Alfred Austin
Dearest, I know thee wise and good,
Beloved by all the best;
With fancy like Ithuriel's spear,
A judgment proof 'gainst rage or fear,
Heart firm through many a stormy year,
And conscience calm in rest.
A Hymn to Childhood
© Li-Young Lee
Childhood? Which childhood?
The one that didn’t last?
The one in which you learned to be afraid
of the boarded-up well in the backyard
and the ladder in the attic?
A Man Young And Old: VI. His Memories
© William Butler Yeats
We should be hidden from their eyes,
Being but holy shows
And bodies broken like a thorn
Whereon the bleak north blows,
To think of buried Hector
And that none living knows.
A Winter Daybreak above Vence
© James Wright
The night’s drifts
Pile up below me and behind my back,
After Thomas Kempis
© George MacDonald
Who follows Jesus shall not walk
In darksome road with danger rife;
But in his heart the Truth will talk,
And on his way will shine the Life.
Answer To Some Elegant Verses Sent By A Friend To The Author, Complaining That One Of His Descriptio
© George Gordon Byron
'But if any old lady, knight, priest or physician
Should condemn me for printing a second edition;
If good Madam Squintum my work should abuse,
May I venture to give her a smack of my muse?'~New Bath Guide.
A Man Young And Old: IX. The Secrets Of The Old
© William Butler Yeats
I have old women's secrets now
That had those of the young;
Madge tells me what I dared not think
When my blood was strong,
And what had drowned a lover once
Sounds like an old song.
An Excelente Balade of Charitie
© Thomas Chatterton
In Virgynë the sweltrie sun gan sheene,
And hotte upon the mees did caste his raie;
A quoi songeaient les deux cavaliers ...
© Victor Marie Hugo
La nuit était fort noire et la forêt très-sombre.
Hermann à mes côtés me paraissait une ombre.
Nos chevaux galopaient. A la garde de Dieu !
Les nuages du ciel ressemblaient à des marbres.
Les étoiles volaient dans les branches des arbres
Comme un essaim d'oiseaux de feu.
A Psalm of Freudian Life
© Edwin Morgan
Tell me not in mormonful numbers
“Life is but an empty dream!”
To a student of the slumbers
Things are never what they seem.
Atra Cura
© William Makepeace Thackeray
Before I lost my five poor wits,
I mind me of a Romish clerk,
Who sang how Care, the phantom dark,
Beside the belted horseman sits.
Methought I saw the grisly sprite
Jump up but now behind my Knight.
Ambition
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
I had ambition once. Like Solomon
I asked for wisdom, deeming wisdom fair,
And with much pains a little knowledge won
Of Nature's cruelty and Man's despair,
At the San Francisco Airport
© Yvor Winters
To my daughter, 1954
This is the terminal: the light
Gives perfect vision, false and hard;
The metal glitters, deep and bright.
Great planes are waiting in the yard—
They are already in the night.
An April Fool
© Alfred Austin
I sallied afield when the bud first swells,
And the sun first slanteth hotly,
And I came on a yokel in cap and bells,
And a suit of saffron motley.
