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Eight Variations
© Weldon Kees
1.
Prurient tapirs gamboled on our lawns,
But that was quite some time ago.
Now one is accosted by asthmatic bulldogs,
Sluggish in the hedges, ruminant.
A Hope
© Charles Kingsley
Twin stars, aloft in ether clear,
Around each other roll alway,
Within one common atmosphere
Of their own mutual light and day.
from The Testament of Love
© John Hall Wheelock
from Book I, Introduction
Man’s Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense,
Singing School
© Seamus Justin Heaney
Ulster was British, but with no rights on
The English lyric: all around us, though
We hadn’t named it, the ministry of fear.
Guinevere
© Alfred Tennyson
`Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
Eclogue 10: Gallus
© Publius Vergilius Maro
This now, the very latest of my toils,
Vouchsafe me, Arethusa! needs must I
Written For My Son, And Spoken By Him, At A public Examination For Victors.
© Mary Barber
Boys of a brutal, cruel Disposition,
Should go to Spain, to serve the Inquisition.
O what a Change in Landlords would appear!
Next Age, not one would rack his Tenants here.
A Story
© Harriet Monroe
He loved her and he was untrue
Untrue he was, let loved her still;
For out of nether darkness drew
The winds that lashed his wandering will.
The Chosen
© Thomas Hardy
A woman for whom great gods might strive!
I said, and kissed her there:
And then I thought of the other five,
And of how charms outwear.
An Essay on Criticism: Part 2
© Alexander Pope
Thus critics, of less judgment than caprice,
Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts
(As most in manners) by a love to parts.
The Pleasures of Imagination: Book The Fourth
© Mark Akenside
One effort more, one cheerful sally more,
Our destin'd course will finish. and in peace
Blood
© Naomi Shihab Nye
“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”
my father would say. And he’d prove it,
cupping the buzzer instantly
while the host with the swatter stared.
The Man On The Dump
© Wallace Stevens
Day creeps down. The moon is creeping up.
The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche
Spinning by Kevin Griffith : American Life in Poetry #217 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
American literature is rich with poems about the passage of time, and the inevitability of change, and how these affect us. Here is a poem by Kevin Griffith, who lives in Ohio, in which the years accelerate by their passing.
Spinning
Paradise Lost: Book XI (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
He added not, for Adam at the newes
Heart-strook with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discover'd soon the place of her retire.
Paradise Lost: Book IX
© Patrick Kavanagh
So gloz'd the Tempter, and his proem tun'd.
Into the heart of Eve his words made way,
Though at the voice much marvelling; at length,
Not unamaz'd, she thus in answer spake:
The Usurper
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
FOR weeks the languid southern wind had blown,
Fraught with Floridian balm; thro' winter skies
We seemed to catch the smile of April's eyes;
A queenly waif, from her far temperate zone
The Garden
© Jones Very
I saw the spot where our first parents dwelt;
And yet it wore to me no face of change,
