Children poems
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Magpiety
© Philip Levine
You pull over to the shoulder
of the two-lane
road and sit for a moment wondering
where you were going
Wisteria
© Philip Levine
The first purple wisteria
I recall from boyhood hung
on a wire outside the windows
of the breakfast room next door
Where We Live Now
© Philip Levine
We live here because the houses
are clean, the lawns run
right to the street
The Negatives
© Philip Levine
On March 1, 1958, four deserters from the French Army of North Africa,
August Rein, Henri Bruette, Jack Dauville, & Thomas Delain, robbed a
government pay station at Orleansville. Because of the subsequent
confession of Dauville the other three were captured or shot. Dauville
was given his freedom and returned to the land of his birth, the U.S.A.
For The Country
© Philip Levine
THE DREAMThis has nothing to do with war
or the end of the world. She
dreams there are gray starlings
on the winter lawn and the buds
Smoke
© Philip Levine
Back then we called this a date, some times
a blind date, though they'd written back and forth
for weeks. What actually took place is now lost.
It's become part of the mythology of a family,
Waking In March
© Philip Levine
Last night, again, I dreamed
my children were back at home,
small boys huddled in their separate beds,
and I went from one to the other
Animals Are Passing From Our Lives
© Philip Levine
It's wonderful how I jog
on four honed-down ivory toes
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.
The Manuscript of Saint Alexius
© Augusta Davies Webster
But, when my father thought my words took shape
of other than boy's prattle, he grew grave,
and answered me "Alexius, thou art young,
and canst not judge of duties; but know this
thine is to serve God, living in the world."
Among Children
© Philip Levine
I walk among the rows of bowed heads--
the children are sleeping through fourth grade
so as to be ready for what is ahead,
the monumental boredom of junior high
They Feed They Lion
© Philip Levine
Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,
Out of black bean and wet slate bread,
Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,
Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,
They Lion grow.
You Can Have It
© Philip Levine
My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.
The Three Fishers
© Charles Kingsley
1 Three fishers went sailing away to the west,
2 Away to the west as the sun went down;
3 Each thought on the woman who loved him the best,
4 And the children stood watching them out of the town;
Oh! That We Two Were Maying
© Charles Kingsley
1 Oh! that we two were Maying
2 Down the stream of the soft spring breeze;
3 Like children with violets playing
4 In the shade of the whispering trees.
The Parallel
© Thomas Moore
Yes, sad one of Sion, if closely resembling,
In shame and in sorrow, thy wither'd-up heart --
If drinking deep, deep, of the same "cup of trembling"
Could make us thy children, our parent thou art.
Song of the Battle Eve
© Thomas Moore
(Time -- the Ninth Century)
To-morrow, comrade, we
On the battle-plain must be,
There to conquer, or both lie low!
Sing, Sweet Harp
© Thomas Moore
Sing, sweet Harp, oh sing to me
Some song of ancient days,
Whose sounds, in this sad memory,
Long-buried dreams shall raise; --
Oh! Blame Not the Bard
© Thomas Moore
Oh! blame not the bard, if he fly to the bowers
Where Pleasure lies, carelessly smiling at Fame;
He was born for much more, and in happier hours
His soul might have burn'd with a holier flame.
Sordello: Book the Fifth
© Robert Browning
"Embrace him, madman!" Palma cried,
Who through the laugh saw sweat-drops burst apace,
And his lips blanching: he did not embrace
Sordello, but he laid Sordello's hand
On his own eyes, mouth, forehead.
Providence
© George Herbert
O Sacred Providence, who from end to end
Strongly and sweetly movest! shall I write,
And not of thee, through whom my fingers bend
To hold my quill? shall they not do thee right?
