Cool poems
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Acon and Rhodope; or, Inconstancy
© Heather Fuller
First of those
Who visited upon this solemn day
The Hamadryad’s oak, were Rhodope
And Acon; of one age, one hope, one trust.
Graceful was she as was the nymph whose fate
She sorrowed for: he slender, pale, and first
Clitophon And Lucippe Translated. To The Ladies
© Richard Lovelace
A new dispute there lately rose
Betwixt the Greekes and Latines, whose
Temples should be bound with glory,
In best languaging this story;
Sir Peter Harpdon's End
© William Morris
John Curzon
Of those three prisoners, that before you came
We took down at St. John's hard by the mill,
Two are good masons; we have tools enough,
And you have skill to set them working.
The Small Vases from Hebron
© Naomi Shihab Nye
Tip their mouths open to the sky.
Turquoise, amber,
the deep green with fluted handle,
pitcher the size of two thumbs,
tiny lip and graceful waist.
The Caucas
© Alexander Pushkin
The Caucas lies before my feet! I stand where
Glaciers gleam, beside a precipice rock-ribbed;
An eagle that has soared from off some distant cliff,
Lawless as I, sweeps through the radiant air!
Here I see streams at their sources up-welling,
The grim avalanches unrolling and swelling!
A Grave By The Sea
© George Essex Evans
No white cloud sails the lonely sky,
Thro the gaunt trees no breezes sigh,
The Words Under the Words
© Naomi Shihab Nye
for Sitti Khadra, north of Jerusalem
My grandmother’s hands recognize grapes,
the damp shine of a goat’s new skin.
When I was sick they followed me,
I woke from the long fever to find them
covering my head like cool prayers.
To The Same (John Dyer)
© William Wordsworth
ENOUGH of climbing toil!--Ambition treads
Here, as 'mid busier scenes, ground steep and rough,
Or slippery even to peril! and each step,
As we for most uncertain recompence
‘The Opal Sea’
© Ella Higginson
An inland sea – blue as a sapphire – set
Within a sparkling, emerald mountain chain
A Phonecall from Frank O’Hara
© Anne Waldman
“That all these dyings may be life in death”
I was living in San Francisco
Within and Without: Part IV: A Dramatic Poem
© George MacDonald
SCENE I.-Summer. Julian's room. JULIAN is reading out of a book of
poems.
Paths
© John Montague
Sealed off by sweetpea
clambering up its wired fence,
the tarred goats' shack
which stank in summer,
in its fallow, stone-heaped corner.
Half an Hour
© Jean Valentine
Hurt, hurtful, snake-charmed,
struck white together half an hour we tear
through the half-dark after
A Death in the Desert
© Robert Browning
Then Xanthus said a prayer, but still he slept:
It is the Xanthus that escaped to Rome,
Was burned, and could not write the chronicle.
Twas Summer
© Walther von der Vogelweide
All care was banished, and repose
Came o'er my wearied breast;
And kingdoms seemed to wait on me,
For I was with the blest.
The Lotos-eaters
© Alfred Tennyson
"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land,
"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
A Walk at Sunset
© William Cullen Bryant
When insect wings are glistening in the beam
Of the low sun, and mountain-tops are bright,
Oh, let me, by the crystal valley-stream,
Wander amid the mild and mellow light;
And while the wood-thrush pipes his evening lay,
Give me one lonely hour to hymn the setting day.
