Art poems
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Daily Trials by a Sensitive Man
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
At morning's call
The small-voiced pug-dog welcomes in the sun,
And flea-bit mongrels, wakening one by one,
Give answer all.
A Farewell to Agassiz
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
How the mountains talked together,
Looking down upon the weather,
When they heard our friend had planned his
Little trip among the Andes
A Familiar Letter
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
YES, write, if you want to, there's nothing like trying;
Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold?
I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying,
If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold.
Democritus And His Neighbors
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
IN Vulgar Minds what Errors do arise!
How diff'ring are the Notions, they possess,
Some Foreign Letters
© Anne Sexton
I knew you forever and you were always old,
soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold
me for sitting up late, reading your letters,
as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me.
The Last Attack. To Klaus
© Zbigniew Herbert
Permit me to open by expressing joy and wonder
that we're marching at the head of our companies
in different uniforms under a different command
but with a single aimto survive
The Big Heart
© Anne Sexton
"Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold." - From an essay by W. B. Yeats Big heart,
wide as a watermelon,
but wise as birth,
there is so much abundance
God the Artist
© Angela Morgan
God, when you thought of a pine tree,
How did you think of a star?
How did you dream of the Milky Way
To guide us from afar.
How did you think of a clean brown pool
Where flecks of shadows are?
The Double Image
© Anne Sexton
They sent me letters with news
of you and I made moccasins that I would never use.
When I grew well enough to tolerate
myself, I lived with my mother, the witches said.
But I didn't leave. I had my portrait
done instead.
Going Gone
© Anne Sexton
Over stone walls and barns,
miles from the black-eyed Susans,
over circus tents and moon rockets
you are going, going.
Flee On Your Donkey
© Anne Sexton
Today an intern knocks my knees,
testing for reflexes.
Once I would have winked and begged for dope.
Today I am terribly patient.
Today crows play black-jack
on the stethoscope.
Rumpelstiltskin
© Anne Sexton
Inside many of us
is a small old man
who wants to get out.
No bigger than a two-year-old
Colemira. A Culinary Eclogue
© William Shenstone
Nec tantum Veneris, quantum studiosa culinae.
Imitation.
Insensible of soft desire,
Behold Colemira prove
More partial to the kitchen fire
Than to the fire of Love.
Kenmare River
© Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
'Tis pretty to be in Ballinderry,
'Tis pretty to be in Ballindoon,
Suicide Note
© Anne Sexton
Once upon a time
my hunger was for Jesus.
O my hunger! My hunger!
Before he grew old
he rode calmly into Jerusalem
in search of death.
The Horse And The Olive: Or, War And Peace
© Thomas Parnell
With Moral Tale let Ancient Wisdom move,
Which thus I sing to make the Moderns wise:
Tract
© William Carlos Williams
I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral
for you have it over a troop
of artists
unless one should scour the world
you have the ground sense necessary.
The Princess (part 2)
© Alfred Tennyson
At break of day the College Portress came:
She brought us Academic silks, in hue
