Car poems
/ page 525 of 738 /The Minstrel; Or, The Progress Of Genius : Book I.
© James Beattie
I.
Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar!
Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime
Ambulances
© Philip Larkin
Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited.
The Song Of Honour
© Ralph Hodgson
I heard no more of bird or bell,
The mastiff in a slumber fell,
I stared into the sky,
As wondering men have always done
Since beauty and the stars were one,
Though none so hard as I.
The Fellowship Of Books
© Edgar Albert Guest
I care not who the man may be,
Nor how his tasks may fret him,
Nor where he fares, nor how his cares
And troubles may beset him,
If books have won the love of him,
Talking In Bed
© Philip Larkin
Talking in bed ought to be easiest
Lying together there goes back so far
An emblem of two people being honest.
At 14 by Don Welch: American Life in Poetry #201 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Don Welch lives in Nebraska and is one of those many talented American poets who have never received as much attention as they deserve. His poems are distinguished by the meticulous care he puts into writing them, and by their deep intelligence. Here is Welch's picture of a 14-year-old, captured at that awkward and painfully vulnerable step on the way to adulthood.
At 14
To be shy,
to lower your eyes
after making a greeting.
Love Again
© Philip Larkin
Love again: wanking at ten past three
(Surely he's taken her home by now?),
The bedroom hot as a bakery,
The drink gone dead, without showing how
To meet tomorrow, and afterwards,
And the usual pain, like dysentery.
Sonnet To Fanny Alexander
© James Russell Lowell
Unconscious as the sunshine, simply sweet
And generous as that, thou dost not close
The Grog-an'Grumble Steeplechase
© Henry Lawson
'Twixt the coastline and the border lay the town of Grog-an'-Grumble
In the days before the bushman was a dull 'n' heartless drudge,
In the Hour of Trial
© James Montgomery
In the hour of trial, Jesus, plead for me,
Lest by base denial I depart from Thee.
When Thou seest me waver, with a look recall,
Nor for fear or favor suffer me to fall.
The Whitsun Weddings
© Philip Larkin
That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
The Windigo
© William Henry Drummond
Cyprien is los' hees w'issle, Cyprien is los' hees
chain
Injun Johnnie he mus' fin' it, even if de win'
is high
Verses IV
© Charlotte Turner Smith
On the Death of the same Lady, written in Sept. 1794.
LIKE a poor ghost the night I seek;
Its hollow winds repeat my sighs;
The cold dews mingle on my cheek
Fanciful creators
© Yahia Lababidi
What fanciful creators we are:
bestowing shock absorbers on cars
sprinkling tenderizer on meats
and stitching wrinkle-resistant shirts
An Old-Year Song
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
As through the forest, disarrayed
By chill November, late I strayed,
Words
© Yahia Lababidi
Words are like days:
coloring books or pickpockets,
signposts or scratching posts,
fakirs over hot coals.
The Rebel Scot
© John Cleveland
Yet wonder not at this their happy choice,
The serpent's fatal still to Paradise.
Sure, England hath the hemorrhoids, and these
On the north postern of the patient seize
Like leeches; thus they physically thirst
After our blood, but in the cure shall burst!