Birthday poems
/ page 12 of 16 /
For A Thirteenth Birthday
© Lisel Mueller
You have read War and Peace.
Now here is Sister Carrie,
not up to Tolstoy; still
it will second the real world:
To the Memory of Mrs. Lefroy who died Dec:r 16 -- my Birthday.
© Jane Austen
Angelic Woman! past my power to praise
In Language meet, thy Talents, Temper, mind.
Thy solid Worth, they captivating Grace!--
Thou friend and ornament of Humankind!--
Magnificat
© Edith Nesbit
THIS is Christ's birthday: long ago
He lay upon His Mother's knee,
Who kissed and blessed Him soft and low--
God's gift to her, as you to me.
Stratton Water
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
O HAVE you seen the Stratton flood
That's great with rain to-day?
Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 2. The Poet's Tale; Lady Wentworth
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Such was the mansion where the great man dwelt.
A widower and childless; and he felt
The loneliness, the uncongenial gloom,
That like a presence haunted every room;
For though not given to weakness, he could feel
The pain of wounds, that ache because they heal.
The Moment I Knew My Life Had Changed
© Maria Mazziotti Gillan
It was not until later
that I knew, recognized the moment
for what it was, my life before it,
a gray landscape, shapeless and misty;
On His Seventy-fifth Birthday
© Walter Savage Landor
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
On His Eightieth Birthday
© Walter Savage Landor
To my ninth decade I have tottered on,
And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady;
She, who once led me where she would, is gone,
So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready.
Waking in the Blue
© Robert Lowell
In between the limits of day,
hours and hours go by under the crew haircuts
and slightly too little nonsensical bachelor twinkle
of the Roman Catholic attendants.
(There are no Mayflower
screwballs in the Catholic Church.)
Dream Song 97: Henry of Donnybrook bred like a pig
© John Berryman
Henry of Donnybrook bred like a pig,
bred when he was brittle, bred when big,
how he's sweating to support them.
Which birthday of the brighter darker man,
the Goya of the Globe & Blackfriars, whomâ
our full earth smiled on him
Writ On The Eve Of My 32nd Birthday
© Gregory Corso
I am 32 years old
and finally I look my age, if not more.
Roan Stallion
© Robinson Jeffers
She rose at length, she unknotted the halter; she walked and led
the stallion; two figures, woman and stallion,
Came down the silent emptiness of the dome of the hill, under
the cataract of the moonlight.
Dream Song 112: My framework is broken, I am coming to an end
© John Berryman
My framework is broken, I am coming to an end,
God send it soon. When I had most to say
my tongue clung to the roof
I mean of my mouth. It is my Lady's birthday
which must be honoured, and has been. God send
it soon.
For Joseph
© Dale Harcombe
*first published Westerly 1993 - Republished Central Western Daily January 12, 1996
recently republished in On Common Water the Ginninderra 10th birthday anthology
Wild Grapes
© Robert Frost
What tree may not the fig be gathered from?
The grape may not be gathered from the birch?
It's all you know the grape, or know the birch.
As a girl gathered from the birch myself
To Brenda Williams On Her Fiftieth Birthday
© Barry Tebb
The years become you as Oxford becomes you,
Yankee Doodle
© Vachel Lindsay
This poem is intended as a description of a sort of Blashfield mural painting on the sky. To be sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle, yet in a slower, more orotund fashion. It is presumably an exercise for an entertainment on the evening of Washington's Birthday.
Dawn this morning burned all red
Watching them in wonder.
There I saw our spangled flag
