Good poems
/ page 407 of 545 /
The Ring And The Book - Chapter VII - Pompilia
© Robert Browning
There,
Strength comes already with the utterance!
I will remember once more for his sake
The sorrow: for he lives and is belied.
Could he be here, how he would speak for me!
Dream Song 78: Op. posth. no. 1
© John Berryman
Darkened his eye, his wild smile disappeared,
inapprehensible his studies grew,
nourished he less & less
his subject body with good food & rest,
something bizarre about Henry, slowly sheared
off, unlike you & you,
A Wife Deplores The Absence Of Her Husband
© Confucius
Away the startled pheasant flies,
With lazy movement of his wings.
Borne was my heart's lord from my eyes;--
What pain the separation brings!
Argentile and Curan. - extracted from Albion's England
© William Warner
The Brutons thus departed hence, seaven kingdoms here begonne,
Where diversly in divers broyls the Saxons lost and wonne.
Dream Song 21: Some good people, daring & subtle voices
© John Berryman
Some good people, daring & subtle voices
and their tense faces, as I think of it
I see sank underground.
I see. My radar digs. I do not dig.
Cool their flushing blood, them eyes is shutâ
eyes?
Dream Song 79: Op. posth. no. 2
© John Berryman
Whence flew the litter whereon he was laid?
Of what heroic stuff was warlock Henry made?
and questions of that sort
perplexed the bulging cosmos, O in short
was sandalwood in good supply when he
flared out of history
For the restoration of my dear Husband from a burning Ague, June, 1661.
© Anne Bradstreet
When feares and sorrowes me besett,
Then did'st thou rid me out;
'Possum' A Lay of New Chumland
© Henry Lawson
SO YER travlin for yer pleasure while yer writin for the press?
An yer huntin arter copy?well, Ive heerd o that. I guess
Dream Song 46: I am, outside. Incredible
© John Berryman
I am, outside. Incredible panic rules.
People are blowing and beating each other without mercy.
Drinks are boiling. Iced
drinks are boiling. The worse anyone feels, the worse
treated he is. Fools elect fools.
A harmless man at an intersection said, under his breath, "Christ!"
Dream Song 48: He yelled at me in Greek
© John Berryman
He yelled at me in Greek,
my God!âIt's not his language
and I'm no good atâhis Aramaic,
wasâI am a monoglot of English
(American version) and, say pieces from
a baker's dozen others: where's the bread?
Dream Song 49: Blind
© John Berryman
Old Pussy-cat if he won't eat, he don't
feel good into his tum', old Pussy-cat.
He wants to have eaten.
Tremor, heaves, he sweaterings. He can't.
A dizzy swims of where is Henry at;
. . . somewhere streng verboten.
Luke
© Francis Bret Harte
Wot's that you're readin'?--a novel? A novel!--well, darn my skin!
You a man grown and bearded and histin' such stuff ez that in--
Stuff about gals and their sweethearts! No wonder you're thin ez a
knife.
Look at me--clar two hundred--and never read one in my life!
Dream Song 28: Snow Line
© John Berryman
It was wet & white & swift and where I am
we don't know. It was dark and then
it isn't.
I wish the barker would come. There seems to be eat
nothing. I am usually tired.
I'm alone too.
Lines Suggested By The Graves Of Two English Soldiers On The Concord Battle-Ground
© James Russell Lowell
The same good blood that now refills
The dotard Orient's shrunken veins,
You And Your Body
© Edgar Albert Guest
WHOM is your boy going to for advice?
Tough Johnny Jones at the end of the street,
Rough Billy Green or untaught Jimmy Price?
Who is now guiding his innocent feet?
Who takes him walking or swimming today,
You, or the stranger just over the way?
Dream Song 2: Big Buttons, Cornets: the advance
© John Berryman
The jane is zoned! no nightspot here, no bar
there, no sweet freeway, and no premises
for business purposes,
no loiterers or needers. Henry are
baffled. Have ev'ybody head for Maine,
utility-man take a train?
Dream Song 29: There sat down, once, a thing
© John Berryman
There sat down, once, a thing on Henry's heart
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry's ears
the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.
Dream Song 100: How this woman came by the courage
© John Berryman
How this woman came by the courage, how she got
the courage, Henry bemused himself in a frantic hot
night of the eight of July,
where it came from, did once the Lord frown down
upon her ancient cradle thinking 'This one
will do before she die
Dream Song 11: His mother goes. The mother comes & goes.
© John Berryman
His mother goes. The mother comes & goes.
Chen Lung's too came, came and crampt & then
that dragoner's mother was gone.
It seem we don't have no good bed to lie on,
forever. While he drawing his first breath,
while skinning his knees,
Dream Song 324: An Elegy for W.C.W., the lovely man
© John Berryman
Henry in Ireland to Bill underground:
Rest well, who worked so hard, who made a good sound
constantly, for so many years:
your high-jinks delighted the continents & our ears:
you had so many girls your life was a triumph
and you loved your one wife.
