Cool poems
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Poor Devil!
© Stephen Vincent Benet
Well, I was tired of life; the silly folk,
The tiresome noises, all the common things
I loved once, crushed me with an iron yoke.
I longed for the cool quiet and the dark,
May Morning
© Stephen Vincent Benet
This is the time of all-sufficing laughter
At idiotic things some one has done,
And there is neither past nor vague hereafter.
And all your body stretches in the sun
And drinks the light in like a liquid thing;
Filled with the divine languor of late spring.
Before an Examination
© Stephen Vincent Benet
The breeze blows cool and there are stars and stars
Beyond the dark, soft masses of the elms
That whisper things in windy tones and light.
They seem to wheel for dim, celestial wars;
And I -- I hear the clash of silver helms
Ring icy-clear from the far deeps of night.
Alexander VI Dines with the Cardinal of Capua
© Stephen Vincent Benet
Next, then, the peacock, gilt
With all its feathers. Look, what gorgeous dyes
Flow in the eyes!
And how deep, lustrous greens are splashed and spilt
Along the back, that like a sea-wave's crest
Scatters soft beauty o'er th' emblazoned breast!
Spring Offensive
© Wilfred Owen
Halted against the shade of a last hill,
They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
And, finding comfortable chests and knees
Carelessly slept. But many there stood still
To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
La Solitude de St. Amant
© Katherine Philips
1O! Solitude, my sweetest choice
Places devoted to the night,
Remote from tumult, and from noise,
How you my restless thoughts delight!
A Retir'd Friendship
© Katherine Philips
Come, my Ardelia, to this bowre,
Where kindly mingling Souls a while,
Let's innocently spend an houre,
And at all serious follys smile
The Ballad Of The Proverbs
© Francois Villon
Prince, so long as a fool persists, he grows wiser;
so, round the world he goes, but return he will,
so humbled and beaten back into servility.
So loud you cry Christmas, it is here.
The Round Table or, King Arthur's Feast
© Thomas Love Peacock
His speech was cut short by a general dismay;
For William the Second had fainted away,
At the smell of some New Forest venison before him;
But a tweak on the nose, Arthur said, would restore him.
Who Bides His Time
© James Whitcomb Riley
Who bides his time, and day by day
Faces defeat full patiently,
And lifts a mirthful roundelay,
However poor his fortunes be,--
At Broad Ripple
© James Whitcomb Riley
Oh luxury! Beyond the heat
And dust of town, with dangling feet
Astride the rock below the dam,
In the cool shadows where the calm
The Song of Yesterday
© James Whitcomb Riley
My head was fair
With flaxen hair,
And fragrant breezes, faint and rare,
And, warm with drouth
From out the south,
Blew all my curls across my mouth.
Ash Wednesday
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.
Encounter In The Chestnut Avenue
© Rainer Maria Rilke
He felt the entrance's green darkness
wrapped cooly round him like a silken cloak
that he was still accepting and arranging;
when at the opposite transparent end, far off,
Along The Sun-Drenched Roadside
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Thus, if you came, I could be satisfied
to let my hand rest lightly, for a moment,
lightly, upon your shoulder or your breast.
To Lou Andreas-Salome
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Memory won't suffice here: from those moments
there must be layers of pure existence
on my being's floor, a precipitate
from that immensely overfilled solution.
In Every Direction
© Ralph Angel
As if you actually died in that dream
and woke up dead. Shadows of untangling vines
tumble toward the ceiling. A delicate
lizard sits on your shoulder, its eyes
blinking in every direction.
INTRODUCTION from New Poems
© Edward Estlin Cummings
The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople-- it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike
