Experience poems
/ page 20 of 36 /
Ulysses
© Alfred Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Iowa City: Early April
© Robert Hass
And last night the sapphire of the raccoon's eyes in the beam of the flashlight.
He was climbing a tree beside the house, trying to get onto the porch, I think, for a wad of oatmeal
Simmered in cider from the bottom of the pan we'd left out for the birds.
The March into Virginia Ending in the First Manassas (July, 1861)
© Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
All they feel is this: ’tis glory,
A rapture sharp, though transitory,
Yet lasting in belaureled story.
So they gayly go to fight,
Chatting left and laughing right.
Paradise Lost: Book I
© Patrick Kavanagh
So spake th' apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but rack'd with deep despair.
And him thus answer'd soon his bold compeer:
Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl
© John Greenleaf Whittier
To the Memory of the Household It Describes
This Poem is Dedicated by the Author
Introduction to the Songs of Experience
© William Blake
Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future sees
Whose ears have heard,
The Holy Word,
That walk'd among the ancient trees.
Over and Over Stitch
© Jorie Graham
Late in the season the world digs in, the fat blossoms
hold still for just a moment longer.
Nothing looks satisfied,
but there is no real reason to move on much further:
this isn’t a bad place;
why not pretend
September Notebook: Stories
© Robert Hass
Driving up 80 in the haze, they talked and talked.
(Smoke in the air shimmering from wildfires.)
His story was sad and hers was roiled, troubled.
Afterword
© Louise Gluck
Reading what I have just written, I now believe
I stopped precipitously, so that my story seems to have been
slightly distorted, ending, as it did, not abruptly
but in a kind of artificial mist of the sort
sprayed onto stages to allow for difficult set changes.
Mary Shelley in Brigantine
© Stephen Dunn
Because the ostracized experience the world
in ways peculiar to themselves, often seeing it
clearly yet with such anger and longing
that they sometimes enlarge what they see,
she at first saw Brigantine as a paradise for gulls.
She must be a horseshoe crab washed ashore.
Father and Son
© Delmore Schwartz
FRANZ KAFKA
Father:
On these occasions, the feelings surprise,
Spontaneous as rain, and they compel
Explicitness, embarrassed eyes——
Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle II: To a Lady on the Characters of Women
© Alexander Pope
Nothing so true as what you once let fall,
"Most Women have no Characters at all."
Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
And best distinguish'd by black, brown, or fair.
The Columbiad: Book VIII
© Joel Barlow
On fame's high pinnacle their names shall shine,
Unending ages greet the group divine,
Whose holy hands our banners first unfurl'd,
And conquer'd freedom for the grateful world.
Reflections Of A Magistrand
© Robert Fuller Murray
on returning to St. Andrews
In the hard familiar horse-box I am sitting once again;
Creeping back to old St. Andrews comes the slow North British train,
Bearing bejants with their luggage (boxes full of heavy books,
Unmediated experience
© Richard Jones
She does this thing. Our seventeen-
year-old dog. Our mostly deaf dog.
Later On
© William Percy French
Later on, later on,
Oh what many friends have gone,
Sweet lips that smiled and loving eyes that shone
Through the darkness into light,
One by one they've winged their flight
And perhaps we'll play together -- later on.
Note to Reality
© Tony Hoagland
but your honeycombs and beetles; the dry blond fascicles of grass
thrust up above the January snow.
Your postcards of Picasso and Matisse,
from the museum series on European masters.
Cold Calls: War Music, Continued
© Christopher Logue
Take Quinamid
The son of a Dardanian astrologer
Who disregarded what his father said
And came to Troy in a taxi.
