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Echo by Robert West: American Life in Poetry #114 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Poetry can be thought of as an act of persuasion: a poem attempts to bring about some kind of change in its reader, perhaps no more than a moment of clarity amidst the disorder of everyday life. And successful poems not only make use of the meanings and sounds of words, as well as the images those words conjure up, but may also take advantage of the arrangement of type on a page. Notice how this little poem by Mississippi poet Robert West makes the very best use of the empty space around it to help convey the nature of its subject.
Echo
The Immortality Of Rome
© Richard Monckton Milnes
``Urbi et Orbi,''--mystic euphony,
What depth of Christian meaning lies in Thee!
How, from this world apart, this world above,
Selected by a special will of Love,
You Will Not Come Again
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
The green has come to the leafless tree,
The earth brings forth its grain;
The Lady of the Lake: Canto VI. - The Guardroom
© Sir Walter Scott
Our vicar still preaches that Peter and Poule
Laid a swinging long curse on the bonny brown bowl,
That there 's wrath and despair in the jolly black-jack,
And the seven deadly sins in a flagon of sack;
Yet whoop, Barnaby! off with thy liquor,
Drink upsees out, and a fig for the vicar!
Hampton Beach
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Ononwe tread with loose-flung rein
Our seaward way,
Through dark-green fields and blossoming grain,
Where the wild brier-rose skirts the lane,
And bends above our heads the flowering locust spray.
Carolan's Prophecy
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Of bridal melody, soon dash'd with grief,
As if some wailing spirit in the strings
Met and o'ermaster'd him: but yielding then
To the strong prophet-impulse, mournfully,
Like moaning waters o'er the harp he pour'd
The trouble of his haunted soul, and sangâ
The Angel In The House. Book II. Canto XII.
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Preludes
I The Married Lover
On Revisiting a Scene of Early Life
© Alaric Alexander Watts
It is the same clear dazzling scene,
Perhaps the grass is scarce as green;
Perhaps the river's troubled voice,
Does not so plainly say âRejoice.â ~ W. B. PROCTER.
Lady Geraldine's Hardship
© Rudyard Kipling
I turned - Heaven knows we women turn too much
To broken reeds, mistaken so for pine
A Manchester Poem
© George MacDonald
'Tis a poor drizzly morning, dark and sad.
The cloud has fallen, and filled with fold on fold
The chimneyed city; and the smoke is caught,
And spreads diluted in the cloud, and sinks,
A black precipitate, on miry streets.
And faces gray glide through the darkened fog.
With Dog And Gun
© Edgar Albert Guest
Out in the woods with a dog an' gun
Is my idea of a real day's fun.
A Winter Walk
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
WE never had believed, I wis,
At primrose time when west winds stole
Like thoughts of youth across the soul,
In such an altered time as this,
The Wisdom Of Merlyn
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
These are the time--words of Merlyn, the voice of his age recorded,
All his wisdom of life, the fruit of tears in his youth, of joy in his manhood hoarded,
All the wit of his years unsealed, to the witless alms awarded.
Hymn For The Inauguration Of The Statue Of Governor Andrew
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
BEHOLD the shape our eyes have known!
It lives once more in changeless stone;
So looked in mortal face and form
Our guide through peril's deadly storm.
To A Young Mother On The Birth Of Her First Born Child
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
Young mother! proudly throbs thine heart, and well may it rejoice,
Well mayst thou raise to Heaven above in grateful prayer thy voice:
A gift hath been bestowed on thee, a gift of priceless worth,
Far dearer to thy womans heart than all the wealth of earth.
The Columbiad: Book III
© Joel Barlow
His eldest hope, young Rocha, at his call,
Resigns his charge within the temple wall;
In whom began, with reverend forms of awe,
The functions grave of priesthood and of law,
The Old Days
© Edgar Albert Guest
WHEN I was but a little tad I used to hear my dear old dad
Tell friends about the good old days forever gone from him;
Astraea
© John Greenleaf Whittier
"Jove means to settle
Astraea in her seat again,
And let down his golden chain
An age of better metal."
Ben Johnson 1615
The Brook Rhine
© Augusta Davies Webster
SMALL current of the wilds afar from men,
Changing and sudden as a baby's mood;
