Poems begining by A
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A Calendar of Sonnets: July
© Helen Hunt Jackson
Some flowers are withered and some joys have died;
The garden reeks with an East Indian scent
From beds where gillyflowers stand weak and spent;
The white heat pales the skies from side to side;
A Calendar of Sonnets: January
© Helen Hunt Jackson
O Winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire,
What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn
Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn
Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire
A Calendar of Sonnets: February
© Helen Hunt Jackson
Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white;
And reigns the winter's pregnant silence still;
No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill,
And willow stems grow daily red and bright.
A Calendar of Sonnets: December
© Helen Hunt Jackson
The lakes of ice gleam bluer than the lakes
Of water 'neath the summer sunshine gleamed:
Far fairer than when placidly it streamed,
The brook its frozen architecture makes,
A Calendar of Sonnets: August
© Helen Hunt Jackson
Silence again. The glorious symphony
Hath need of pause and interval of peace.
Some subtle signal bids all sweet sounds cease,
Save hum of insects' aimless industry.
A Calendar of Sonnets: April
© Helen Hunt Jackson
No days such honored days as these! While yet
Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide
For some fair thing which should forever bide
On earth, her beauteous memory to set
A Theory Of Prosody
© Philip Levine
When Nellie, my old pussy
cat, was still in her prime,
she would sit behind me
as I wrote, and when the line
Any Night
© Philip Levine
Look, the eucalyptus, the Atlas pine,
the yellowing ash, all the trees
are gone, and I was older than
all of them. I am older than the moon,
Another Song
© Philip Levine
Words go on travelling from voice
to voice while the phones are still
and the wires hum in the cold. Now
and then dark winter birds settle
An Abandoned Factory, Detroit
© Philip Levine
The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands,
An iron authority against the snow,
And this grey monument to common sense
Resists the weather. Fears of idle hands,
Of protest, men in league, and of the slow
Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence.
An Ending
© Philip Levine
Early March.
The cold beach deserted. My kids
home in a bare house, bundled up
and listening to rock music
A Sleepless Night
© Philip Levine
April, and the last of the plum blossoms
scatters on the black grass
before dawn. The sycamore, the lime,
the struck pine inhale
Animals Are Passing From Our Lives
© Philip Levine
It's wonderful how I jog
on four honed-down ivory toes
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.
At Bessemer
© Philip Levine
19 years old and going nowhere,
I got a ride to Bessemer and walked
the night road toward Birmingham
passing dark groups of men cursing
Among Children
© Philip Levine
I walk among the rows of bowed heads--
the children are sleeping through fourth grade
so as to be ready for what is ahead,
the monumental boredom of junior high
A Woman Waking
© Philip Levine
She wakens early remembering
her father rising in the dark
lighting the stove with a match
scraped on the floor. Then measuring
Answer
© Sir Walter Scott
Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.
A Serenade
© Sir Walter Scott
Ah! County Guy, the hour is nigh
The sun has left the lea,
The orange-flower perfumes the bower,
The breeze is on the sea.
Airly Beacon
© Charles Kingsley
Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon;
Oh, the pleasant sight to see
Shires and towns from Airly Beacon,
While my love climbed up to me!
A Myth
© Charles Kingsley
A FLOATING, a floating
Across the sleeping sea,
All night I heard a singing bird
Upon the topmast tree.
