Poems begining by F
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Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
For Hans Carossa
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting
still has a shape in the kindgdom of transformation.
When something's let go of, it circles; and though we are
rarely the center
of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous
curve.
from The Tenth Elegy
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Ah, but the City of Pain: how strange its streets are:
the false silence of sound drowning sound,
and there--proud, brazen, effluence from the mold of emptiness--
the gilded hubbub, the bursting monument.
Fire's Reflection
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Perhaps it's no more than the fire's reflection
on some piece of gleaming furniture
that the child remembers so much later
like a revelation.
Falling Stars
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Do you remember still the falling stars
that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes--do you recall? And we
FOREWARD, is 5
© Edward Estlin Cummings
F O R E W A R DOn the assumption that my technique is either complicated or original
or both, the publishers have politely requested me to write an intro-
duction to this book.
At least my theory of technique, if I have one, is very far from
flotsam and jetsam
© Edward Estlin Cummings
flotsam and jetsam
are gentlemen poeds
urseappeal netsam
our spinsters and coeds)
Fame Speaks
© Edward Estlin Cummings
Stand forth,John Keats! On earth thou knew'st me not;
Steadfast through all the storms of passion,thou,
True to thy muse,and virgin to thy vow;
Resigned,if name with ashes were forgot,
For Bartleby The Scrivener
© Billy Collins
ice skating into a sixty
mile an hour wind, fully exerting
the legs and swinging arms
Flames
© Billy Collins
Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.
Father and Son
© Stanley Kunitz
Now in the suburbs and the falling light
I followed him, and now down sandy road
Whitter than bone-dust, through the sweet
Curdle of fields, where the plums
Fear Is What Quickens Me
© James Wright
2
What is that tall woman doing
There, in the trees?
I can hear rabbits and mourning dovees whispering together
In the dark grass, there
Under the trees.
Frederick Douglass
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
A hush is over all the teeming lists,
And there is pause, a breath-space in the strife;
A spirit brave has passed beyond the mists
And vapors that obscure the sun of life.
And Ethiopia, with bosom torn,
Laments the passing of her noblest born.
From Far Dakotas Cañons.
© Walt Whitman
FROM far Dakotas cañons,
Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the silence,
Haply to-day a mournful wail, haply a trumpet-note for heroes.
France, the 18th year of These States.
© Walt Whitman
1
A GREAT year and place;
A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mothers heart closer
than
Facing West from Californiaâs Shores.
© Walt Whitman
FACING west, from Californias shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the land of migrations,
look afar,
From Paumanok Starting.
© Walt Whitman
FROM Paumanock starting, I fly like a bird,
Around and around to soar, to sing the idea of all;
To the north betaking myself, to sing there arctic songs,
To Kanada, till I absorb Kanada in myselfto Michigan then,
From Pent-up Aching Rivers.
© Walt Whitman
FROM pent-up, aching rivers;
From that of myself, without which I were nothing;
From what I am determind to make illustrious, even if I stand sole among men;
From my own voice resonantsinging the phallus,
From My Last Years.
© Walt Whitman
FROM my last years, last thoughts I here bequeath,
Scatterd and dropt, in seeds, and wafted to the West,
Through moisture of Ohio, prairie soil of Illinoisthrough Colorado, California air,
For Time to germinate fully.
