Family poems
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An Epistle To Fleetwood Shephard, Esq.
© Matthew Prior
When crowding folks, with strange ill faces,
Were making legs, and begging places,
The Precocious Baby - a Very True Tale
© William Schwenck Gilbert
An elderly person - a prophet by trade -
With his quips and tips
Jesse James
© Anonymous
Jesse James was a lad who killed many a man.
He robbed the Glendale train.
He stole from the rich and he gave to the poor,
Hed a hand and a heart and a brain.
Family Reunion by Catherine Barnett: American Life in Poetry #67 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004
© Ted Kooser
One in a series of elegies by New York City poet Catherine Barnett, this poem describes the first gathering after death has shaken a family to its core. The father tries to help his grown daughter forget for a moment that, a year earlier, her own two daughters were killed, that she is now alone. He's heartsick, realizing that drinking can only momentarily ease her pain, a pain and love that takes hold of the entire family. The children who join her in the field are silent guardians.
Family Reunion
My father scolded us all for refusing his liquor.
He kept buying tequila, and steak for the grill,
until finally we joined him, making margaritas,
cutting the fat off the bone.
An Essay on Man: Epistle II
© Alexander Pope
Superior beings, when of late they saw
A mortal Man unfold all Nature's law,
Admir'd such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And showed a Newton as we shew an Ape.
Amelia Jane
© David McKee Wright
In the lands away beyond the sea, where Khan and Sultan rule,
Where they drink their coffee thick and black, and sip the sherbet cool,
They have white Circassian girls for slaves, as well as the Negro black;
And it seems to me in our free land that slavery's coming back:
It's fenced about with custom and law, and they give it a prettier name.
But, spite of the paltry wage that's paid, it's slavery all the same.
Stupid
© Raymond Carver
It's what the kids nowadays call weed. And it drifts
like clouds from his lips. He hopes no one
Charades
© Charles Stuart Calverley
Spake John Grogblossom the coachman to Eliza Spinks the cook:
"Mrs. Spinks," says he, "I've foundered: 'Liza dear, I'm overtook.
Druv into a corner reglar, puzzled as a babe unborn;
Speak the word, my blessed 'Liza; speak, and John the coachman's yourn."
The King of Canoodle-Dum
© William Schwenck Gilbert
The story of FREDERICK GOWLER,
A mariner of the sea,
The Detective
© Sylvia Plath
What was she doing when it blew in
Over the seven hills, the red furrow, the blue mountain?
Was she arranging cups? It is important.
Was she at the window, listening?
In that valley the train shrieks echo like souls on hooks.
Song Of The Broad-Axe
© Walt Whitman
Strong shapes, and attributes of strong shapes-masculine trades,
sights and sounds;
Long varied train of an emblem, dabs of music;
Fingers of the organist skipping staccato over the keys of the great
organ.
A New Temperance Poem, in Memory of My Departed Parents
© William Topaz McGonagall
My parents were sober living, and often did pray
For their family to abstain from intoxicating drink alway;
Because they knew it would lead them astray
Which no God fearing man will dare to gainsay.
Aurora Leigh: Book Eighth
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
In my ears
The sound of waters. There he stood, my king!
The Meetings Of The Flowers
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
There is within this world of ours
Full many a happy home and hearth;
What time, the Saviour's blessed birth
Makes glad the gloom of wintry hours.
On Niobe (From The Greek)
© William Cowper
Charon! receive a family on board
Itself sufficient for thy crazy yawl,
Apollo and Diana, for a word
By me too proudly spoken, slew us all.
For Weeks After the Funeral by Andrea Hollander Budy: American Life in Poetry #96 Ted Kooser, U.S. P
© Ted Kooser
Grief can endure a long, long time. A deep loss is very reluctant to let us set it aside, to push it into a corner of memory. Here the Arkansas poet, Andrea Hollander Budy, gives us a look at one family's adjustment to a death.
For Weeks After the Funeral
The house felt like the opera,
the audience in their seats, hushed, ready,
but the cast not yet arrived.
Fidele's Grassy Tomb
© Sir Henry Newbolt
The Squire sat propped in a pillowed chair,
His eyes were alive and clear of care,
But well he knew that the hour was come
To bid good-bye to his ancient home.
Shakuntala Act VII (Final Act)
© Kalidasa
ACT VII
King Dushyant with Matali in the chariot of Indra (king of gods in heaven and also god of thunder), supposed to be above the clouds.
King Dushyant: I am sensible, O Matali, that, for having executed the commission which Indra gave me, I deserved not such a profusion of honours.
