Good poems
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The Drowned Children
© Louise Gluck
And yet they hear the names they used
like lures slipping over the pond:
What are you waiting for
come home, come home, lost
in the waters, blue and permanent.
A Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar
© Robert Duncan
I
The light foot hears you and the brightness begins
god-step at the margins of thought,
quick adulterous tread at the heart.
The Envoy of Mr. Cogito
© Zbigniew Herbert
let your sister Scorn not leave you
for the informers executioners cowards—they will win
they will go to your funeral and with relief will throw a lump of earth
the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography
Freedom's Plow
© Langston Hughes
First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on the world,
On the great wooded world,
On the rich soil of the world,
On the rivers of the world.
Echoes Of Love's House
© William Morris
Love gives every gift whereby we long to live
Love takes every gift, and nothing back doth give.
The School Where I Studied
© Yehuda Amichai
I passed by the school where I studied as a boy
and said in my heart: here I learned certain things
The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn
© Andrew Marvell
I in a golden vial will
Keep these two crystal tears, and fill
It till it do o’erflow with mine,
Then place it in Diana’s shrine.
Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 3. Finale
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
These are the tales those merry guests
Told to each other, well or ill;
Like summer birds that lift their crests
Above the borders of their nests
And twitter, and again are still.
L'Envoi
© James Russell Lowell
Whether my heart hath wiser grown or not,
In these three years, since I to thee inscribed,
The Closet
© Bill Knott
(...after my Mother’s death)
Here not long enough after the hospital happened
I find her closet lying empty and stop my play
And go in and crane up at three blackwire hangers
Which quiver, airy, released. They appear to enjoy
Complaint of the Absence of Her Love Being Upon the Sea
© Henry Howard
O happy dames, that may embrace
The fruit of your delight,
Messiah (Christmas Portions)
© Mark Doty
A little heat caught
in gleaming rags,
in shrouds of veil,
torn and sun-shot swaddlings:
The Bushman
© Anonymous
When the merchant lies down, he can scarce go to sleep
For thinking of his merchandise upon the fatal deep;
His ships may be cast away or taken in a war,
So him alone we'll envy not, who true bushmen are.
Contrasted Songs: Song For The Night Of Christ's Resurrection
© Jean Ingelow
(A Humble Imitation)
And birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.
Scopolamine (English translation)
© Catherine Pozzi
This wine that flows within my vein
Has drowned my heart and will again
In the sky-with neither captain nor money-
My heart sails into a scene
Where Oblivion melts like honey
Epilogue to Schiller's Song of the Bell
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mingled the crowds from ev'ry region brought,
And on the stage, in festal pomp array'd
The HOMAGE OF THE ARTS we saw displayed.
