Future poems
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Of Uprightness and Sincerity
© John Bunyan
Wouldst thou be very upright and sincere?
Wouldst thou be that within thou dost appear,
Singing School
© Seamus Justin Heaney
Ulster was British, but with no rights on
The English lyric: all around us, though
We hadn’t named it, the ministry of fear.
Days of '74
© Mark Jarman
What was the future then but affirmation,
The first yes between us
Followed by the first lingering dawn?
Waking below a window shaded by redwoods
(Waking? We hadn’t slept—),
We found time saved, like sunlight in a tree.
The Pleasures of Imagination: Book The Fourth
© Mark Akenside
One effort more, one cheerful sally more,
Our destin'd course will finish. and in peace
The Pleasures of Hope: Part 1
© Thomas Campbell
At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering bills below,
Rotting Symbols
© Eileen Myles
Soon I shall take more
I will get more light
and I'll know what I think
about that
Paradise Lost: Book XI (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
He added not, for Adam at the newes
Heart-strook with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discover'd soon the place of her retire.
One Year Old
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Is it we that are wise, is it we,
Who have bought with a price of grief
A wisdom seldom free
From scorn or disbelief,
Aside
© Ishmael Reed
Mail-day, and over the world in a thousand drag-nets
The bundles of letters are dumped on the docks and beaches,
And all that is dear to the personal conscious reaches
Around us again like filings around iron magnets,
And war stands aside for an hour and looks at our faces
Of total absorption that seem to have lost their places.
El Dorado
© John Ashbery
We have a friend in common, the retired sophomore.
His concern: that I shall get it like that,
George Moore
© Marianne Clarke Moore
So far as the future is concerned,
Shall not one say, with the Russian philosopher,
How is one to know what one doesnt know?
So far as the present is concerned,
Hymns to the Night : 5
© Novalis
In ancient times, over the widespread families of men an iron Fate ruled with dumb force. A gloomy oppression swathed their heavy souls - the earth was boundless - the abode of the gods and their home. From eternal ages stood its mysterious structure. Beyond the red hills of the morning, in the sacred bosom of the sea, dwelt the sun, the all-enkindling, living Light. An aged giant upbore the blissful world. Fast beneath mountains lay the first-born sons of mother Earth. Helpless in their destroying fury against the new, glorious race of gods, and their kindred, glad-hearted men. The ocean's dark green abyss was the lap of a goddess. In crystal grottos revelled a luxuriant folk. Rivers, trees, flowers, and beasts had human wits. Sweeter tasted the wine - poured out by Youth-abundance - a god in the grape-clusters - a loving, motherly goddess upgrew in the full golden sheaves - love's sacred inebriation was a sweet worship of the fairest of the god-ladies - Life rustled through the centuries like one spring-time, an ever-variegated festival of heaven-children and earth-dwellers. All races childlike adored the ethereal, thousand-fold flame as the one sublimest thing in the world. There was but one notion, a horrible dream-shape -
That fearsome to the merry tables strode,
Declining Days
© Henry Francis Lyte
Why do I sigh to find
Life's evening shadows gathering round my way?
The keen eye dimming, and the buoyant mind
Unhinging day by day?
The Rhyme of Joyous Garde
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
Through the lattice rushes the south wind, dense
With fumes of the flowery frankincense
From hawthorn blossoming thickly;
And gold is shower'd on grass unshorn,
The American Way
© Gregory Corso
I am a great American
I am almost nationalistic about it!
I love America like a madness!
But I am afraid to return to America
I’m even afraid to go into the American Express—
Little Father
© Li-Young Lee
I buried my father
in the sky.
Since then, the birds
clean and comb him every morning
and pull the blanket up to his chin
every night.
