Freedom poems
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Song (“The world is full of loss ... ”)
© Katha Pollitt
The world is full of loss; bring, wind, my love,
my home is where we make our meeting-place,
and love whatever I shall touch and read
within that face.
A Name for All
© Hart Crane
Moonmoth and grasshopper that flee our page
And still wing on, untarnished of the name
We pinion to your bodies to assuage
Our envy of your freedomwe must maim
[as freedom is a breakfastfood]
© Edward Estlin Cummings
as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong
The Pool
© Robert Creeley
My embarrassment at his nakedness,
at the pool’s edge,
and my wife, with his,
standing, watching—
His Shield
© Marianne Clarke Moore
The pin-swin or spine-swine
(the edgehog miscalled hedgehog) with all his edges out,
echidna and echinoderm in distressed-
pin-cushion thorn-fur coats, the spiny pig or porcupine,
the rhino with horned snout
everything is battle-dressed.
Scots Wha Hae
© Robert Burns
Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victory!
On Scratchbury Camp
© Siegfried Sassoon
Along the grave green downs, this idle afternoon,
Shadows of loitering silver clouds, becalmed in blue,
Bring, like unfoldment of a flower, the best of June.
The Coast-Road
© Robinson Jeffers
A horseman high-alone as an eagle on the spur of the mountain over Mirmas Canyon draws rein, looks down
At the bridge-builders, men, trucks, the power-shovels, the teeming end of the new coast-road at the mountain’s base.
England CXVII
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Yet, though treason and fierce unreason should league and lie and defame
and smite,
We that know thee, how far below thee the hatred burns of the sons of
night,
We that love thee, behold above thee the witness written of life in
light.
On a Piece of Tapestry
© George Santayana
Hold high the woof, dear friends, that we may see
The cunning mixture of its colours rare.
The Banks Of Wye - Book III
© Robert Bloomfield
PEACE to your white-wall'd cots, ye vales,
Untainted fly your summer gales;
Paradise Regain'd: Book I (1671)
© Patrick Kavanagh
I Who e're while the happy Garden sung,
By one mans disobedience lost, now sing
On The Downs
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
A faint sea without wind or sun;
A sky like flameless vapour dun;
A valley like an unsealed grave
That no man cares to weep upon,
Bare, without boon to crave,
Or flower to save.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
She told the story, and the whole world wept
At wrongs and cruelties it had not known
A Ballad of Baseball Burdens
© Edwin Morgan
Ah, Fans, let not the Quarry but the Chase
Be that to which most fondly we aspire!
For us not Stake, but Game; not Goal, but Race—
THIS is the end of every fan’s desire.
Ode, Inscribed to William H. Channing
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though loath to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My honied thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.
The Unknown Dead
© Henry Timrod
The rain is plashing on my sill,
But all the winds of Heaven are still;
The Unknown Eros. Book I.
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Well dost thou, Love, thy solemn Feast to hold
In vestal February;
Not rather choosing out some rosy day
From the rich coronet of the coming May,
When all things meet to marry!
