Cool poems
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First Anniversary
© Andrew Marvell
Like the vain curlings of the watery maze,
Which in smooth streams a sinking weight does raise,
So Man, declining always, disappears
In the weak circles of increasing years;
And his short tumults of themselves compose,
While flowing Time above his head does close.
Lines To My Father
© Countee Cullen
The many sow, but only the chosen reap;
Happy the wretched host if Day be brief,
That with the cool oblivion of sleep
A dawnless Night may soothe the smart of grief.
A Far Cry From Africa
© Derek Walcott
A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
The Linden Avenue
© Boris Pasternak
A house of unimagined beauty
Is set in parkland, cool and dark;
Gates with an arch; then meadows, hillocks,
And oats and woods beyond the park.
To A Young Poet Who Killed Himself
© Joyce Kilmer
When you had played with life a space
And made it drink and lust and sing,
You flung it back into God's face
And thought you did a noble thing.
The Twelve-Forty-Five
© Joyce Kilmer
(For Edward J. Wheeler)Within the Jersey City shed
The engine coughs and shakes its head,
The smoke, a plume of red and white,
Waves madly in the face of night.
Tourists
© Yehuda Amichai
Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
The Tree
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
Fair tree! for thy delightful shade
'Tis just that some return be made;
Sure some return is due from me
To thy cool shadows, and to thee.
The Poor Man's Lamb
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
Where art thou Nathan? where's that Spirit now,
Giv'n to brave Vice, tho' on a Prince's Brow?
In what low Cave, or on what Desert Coast,
Now Virtue wants it, is thy Presence lost?
The Search After Happiness. A Pastoral Drama
© Hannah More
"To rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot,
To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind,
To breathe th' enlivening spirit, and to fix
The generous purpose in the female breast." ~Thomson.
To Aramantha, That She Would Dishevel Her Hair
© Richard Lovelace
Amarantha sweet and faire,
Ah brade no more that shining haire!
As my curious hand or eye,
Hovering round thee, let it flye.
A Pastoral Dialogue Between Two Shepherdesses
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
[Dorinda] No! my Chaplet wou'd decay;
Ev'ry drooping Flow'r wou'd mourn,
And wrong the Face, they shou'd adorn.
Butter
© Connie Wanek
Butter, like love,
seems common enough
yet has so many imitators.
I held a brick of it, heavy and cool,
The Siege of Corinth
© Lord Byron
Still the old man stood erect,
And Alp's career a moment check'd.
"Yield thee, Minotti; quarter take,
For thine own, thy daughter's sake."
Bride of Abydos, The
© Lord Byron
"Had we never loved so kindly,
Had we never loved so blindly,
Never met or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted." Burns
