Family poems
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Hortense Robbins
© Edgar Lee Masters
My name used to be in the papers daily
As having dined somewhere,
Or traveled somewhere,
Or rented a house in Paris,
Lilian Stewart
© Edgar Lee Masters
I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins,
Born in a cottage near the grist-mill,
Reared in the mansion there on the hill,
With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate.
Mrs. Kessler
© Edgar Lee Masters
Mr Kessler, you know, was in the army,
And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,
And stood on the corner talking politics,
Or sat at home reading Grant's Memoirs;
Editor Whedon
© Edgar Lee Masters
To be able to see every side of every question;
To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;
To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,
To use great feelings and passions of the human family
Gigolo
© Sylvia Plath
Pocket watch, I tick well.
The streets are lizardly crevices
Sheer-sided, with holes where to hide.
It is best to meet in a cul-de-sac,
Barry Holden
© Edgar Lee Masters
The very fall my sister Nancy Knapp
Set fire to the house
They were trying Dr. Duval
For the murder of Zora Clemens,
Percival Sharp
© Edgar Lee Masters
Observe the clasped hands!
Are they hands of farewell or greeting,
Hands that I helped or hands that helped me?
Would it not be well to carve a hand
From The 'Antigone'
© William Butler Yeats
Overcome - O bitter sweetness,
Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl -
The rich man and his affairs,
The fat flocks and the fields' fatness,
Mariners, rough harvesters;
Overcome Gods upon Parnassus;
Two Infants II
© Khalil Gibran
A prince stood on the balcony of his palace addressing a great multitude summoned for the occasion and said, "Let me offer you and this whole fortunate country my congratulations upon the birth of a new prince who will carry the name of my noble family, and of whom you will be justly proud
A Jewish Family In A Small Valley Opposite St. Goar, Upon The Rhine
© William Wordsworth
GENIUS of Raphael! if thy wings
Might bear thee to this glen,
To Jeoffry His Cat
© Christopher Smart
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily
Reminiscence
© Sukasah Syahdan
I am reminiscing you; and the little boy who often stole some change from the left pocket of your pants that would hang behind the door in the front room; his pride in bringing home for Mom, his three brothers and as many sisters, a plastic bagful of bananas or oranges from the money hed stolen; the one afternoon you once asked him about the vanishing money; how he could bring home oleh-oleh for the family; the childish lies and made-up stories; and the relief he felt when you did not pursue the truth hidden in his pinkish heart
Lesson
© Forrest Hamer
It was 1963 or 4, summer,
and my father was driving our family
from Ft. Hood to North Carolina in our 56 Buick.
We'd been hearing about Klan attacks, and we knew
When We Were Young
© Ivan Donn Carswell
As a child I played in the same frosty fields
barefoot as my no lesser loved classmates,
whom we challenged to show courage in the numbing cold,
then together we held our chilled fingers over the roaring stove
that warmed our prefabricated, asbestos-sided classroom.
The same embrace
© Ivan Donn Carswell
We talked with family last night, not mine or yours
specifically but ours, the ones we love familiarly. When
little Jake (though not so little now) was heard to say ,
Goodbye, I gotta go, it was like our hearts were breaking;
Ode To Tranquillity
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Tranquillity! thou better name
Than all the family of Fame!
Thou ne'er wilt leave my riper age
To low intrigue, or factious rage;
Simple pleasures that you bring
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Do you mind if I write a few lines for you tonight?
Im fuelled for sure, perhaps a bit ebullient,
(now theres a rhyme that will be hard to find
a word to suit!) Ill try, but time will surely take
Out of The Annexe
© Ivan Donn Carswell
It grew out of the Annexe and our Corps in a world at peace
while our army trained, magnificent in its heroic pretence,
for an implausible war. They were halcyon days
in the shelter, days that combine in easy recollections
Touched my family
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Even from afar came shouts of recognition
joyful voices rang across the years disdained and
faces of our childhood unforgot fit instantly familiar names;
voices still the same despite the extra grey, the extra lines,
