Fear poems
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Lines to Mr. Hodgson Written on Board the Lisbon Packet
© Lord Byron
Huzza! Hodgson, we are going,
Our embargo's off at last;
The Lover: A Ballad
© Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
At length, by so much importunity press'd,
Take, C, at once, the inside of my breast;
The Swamp Angel
© Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
Is this the proud City? the scorner
Which never would yield the ground?
Which mocked at the coal-black Angel?
The cup of despair goes round.
from The Seasons: Winter
© James Thomson
Father of light and life! thou Good Supreme!
O teach me what is good! teach me Thyself!
Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,
From every low pursuit; and feed my soul
With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure,
Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!
The Operation
© Anne Sexton
Clean of the body’s hair,
I lie smooth from breast to leg.
All that was special, all that was rare
is common here. Fact: death too is in the egg.
Fact: the body is dumb, the body is meat.
And tomorrow the O.R. Only the summer was sweet.
When the World as We Knew It Ended
© Joy Harjo
Two towers rose up from the east island of commerce and touched
the sky. Men walked on the moon. Oil was sucked dry
by two brothers. Then it went down. Swallowed
by a fire dragon, by oil and fear.
Eaten whole.
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
© André Breton
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
Very Strong February
© Bernadette Mayer
A man and a woman pretend to be white ice
Three men at the lavender door are closed in by the storm
Men at My Father’s Funeral
© William Matthews
The ones his age who shook my hand
on their way out sent fear along
my arm like heroin. These weren’t
men mute about their feelings,
or what’s a body language for?
In the Fog
© Plato
I stared into the valley: it was gone—
wholly submerged! A vast flat sea remained,
gray, with no waves, no beaches; all was one.
Yarrow Revisited
© André Breton
The gallant Youth, who may have gained,
Or seeks, a "winsome Marrow,"
To a Mouse
© Robert Burns
I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!
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.
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
© Edward Estlin Cummings
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
There Came a Soul
© Rita Dove
After IVAN ALBRIGHT’s Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida
She arrived as near to virginal
from First Book of Odes: 13. Fearful Symmetry
© Ted Hughes
Muzzle and jowl and beastly brow,
bilious glaring eyes, tufted ears,
recidivous criminality in the slouch,
—This is not the latest absconding bankrupt
but a ‘beautiful’ tiger imported at great expense from
Kuala Lumpur.
Marrying the Hangman
© Margaret Atwood
She has been condemned to death by hanging. A man
may escape this death by becoming the hangman, a
woman by marrying the hangman. But at the present
time there is no hangman; thus there is no escape.
[The Doleful Lay of Clorinda]
© Mary Sidney Herbert
Ay me, to whom shall I my case complain,
That may compassion my impatient grief?
