Good poems
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Belphegor Addressed To Miss De Chammelay
© Jean de La Fontaine
NO hope of gaining such a charming fair,
Too soon, perhaps, I ceded to despair;
Your friend, was all I ventured to be thought,
Though in your net I more than half was caught.
Most willingly your lover I'd have been;
But time it is our story should be seen.
An Imitation Of Anacreon
© Jean de La Fontaine
PAINTER in Paphos and Cythera famed
Depict, I pray, the absent Iris' face.
Thou hast not seen the lovely nymph I've named;
The better for thy peace.--Then will I trace
Let Me Die a Youngman's Death
© Roger McGough
Let me die a youngman's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death
Goodbat Nightman
© Roger McGough
God bless all policemen
and fighters of crime,
May thieves go to jail
for a very long time.
I'm A Fool To Love You
© Cornelius Eady
Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
Some type of supernatural creature.
My mother would tell you, if she could,
About her life with my father,
A Midnight Meditation
© George William Russell
HOW often have I said,
We may not grieve for the immortal dead.
And now, poor blenchèd heart,
Thy ruddy hues all tremulous depart.
When
© George William Russell
WHEN mine hour is come
Let no teardrop fall
And no darkness hover
Round me where I lie.
The Dream of the Children
© George William Russell
THE CHILDREN awoke in their dreaming
While earth lay dewy and still:
They followed the rill in its gleaming
To the heart-light of the hill.
The Dawn of Darkness
© George William Russell
COME earths little children pit-pat from their burrows on the hill;
Hangs within the gloom its weary head the shining daffodil.
In the valley underneath us through the fragrance flit along
Over fields and over hedgerows little quivering drops of song.
The Place of Rest
© George William Russell
UNTO the deep the deep heart goes,
It lays its sadness nigh the breast:
Only the Mighty Mother knows
The wounds that quiver unconfessed.
On a Portrait of a Deaf Man
© John Betjeman
The kind old face, the egg-shaped head,
The tie, discreetly loud,
The loosely fitting shooting clothes,
A closely fitting shroud.
Inexpensive Progress
© John Betjeman
Encase your legs in nylons,
Bestride your hills with pylons
O age without a soul;
Away with gentle willows
And all the elmy billows
That through your valleys roll.
Diary of a Church Mouse
© John Betjeman
Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
Manteau Three
© Jorie Graham
must it tangles up into a weave,
tied up with votive offerings laws, electricity
what the speakers let loose from their tiny eternity,
what the empty streets held up as offering
when only a bit of wind
litigated in the sycamores,
The Guardian Angel Of The Private Life
© Jorie Graham
All this was written on the next day's list.
On which the busyness unfurled its cursive roots,
pale but effective,
and the long stem of the necessary, the sum of events,
Salmon
© Jorie Graham
I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run,
in our motel room half-way through
Nebraska, quick, glittering, past beauty, past
the importance of beauty.,
To A Friend Going Blind
© Jorie Graham
Today, because I couldn't find the shortcut through,
I had to walk this town's entire inner
perimeter to find
where the medieval walls break open
Elegy VII
© John Donne
Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love,
And in that sophistry, Oh, thou dost prove
Too subtle: Foole, thou didst not understand
The mystic language of the eye nor hand:
Elegy II: The Anagram
© John Donne
Marry, and love thy Flavia, for she
Hath all things whereby others beautious be,
For, though her eyes be small, her mouth is great,
Though they be ivory, yet her teeth be jet,
