Good poems
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The Wounded Bird
© Katherine Mansfield
In the wide bed
Under the freen embroidered quilt
With flowers and leaves always in soft motion
She is like a wounded bird resting on a pool.
The Black Monkey
© Katherine Mansfield
My Babbles has a nasty knack
Of keeping monkeys on her back.
A great big black one comes and swings
Right on her sash or pinny strings.
It is a horrid thing and wild
And makes her such a naughty child.
Deaf House Agent
© Katherine Mansfield
That deaf old man
With his hand to his ear--
His hand to hi head stood out like a shell,
Horny and hollow. He said, "I can't hear,"
He muttered, "Don't shout,
I can hear very well!"
The Independent Man
© Gwendolyn Brooks
Now who could take you off to tiny life
In one room or in two rooms or in three
And cork you smartly, like the flask of wine
You are? Not any woman. Not a wife.
The Good Man
© Gwendolyn Brooks
The good man.
He is still enhancer, renouncer.
In the time of detachment,
in the time of the vivid heather and affectionate evil,
The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
© Gwendolyn Brooks
Rudolph Reed was oaken.
His wife was oaken too.
And his two good girls and his good little man
Oakened as they grew.
One Wants A Teller In A Time Like This
© Gwendolyn Brooks
One cannot walk this winding street with pride
Straight-shouldered, tranquil-eyed,
Knowing one knows for sure the way back home.
One wonders if one has a home.
The Inconsistent
© Thomas Hardy
I say, "She was as good as fair,"
When standing by her mound;
"Such passing sweetness," I declare,
"No longer treads the ground."
She, To Him III
© Thomas Hardy
I WILL be faithful to thee; aye, I will!
And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye
That he did not discern and domicile
One his by right ever since that last Good-bye!
The Dame of Athelhall
© Thomas Hardy
"Soul! Shall I see thy face," she said,
"In one brief hour?
And away with thee from a loveless bed
To a far-off sun, to a vine-wrapt bower,
And be thine own unseparated,
And challenge the world's white glower?
Valenciennes
© Thomas Hardy
WE trenched, we trumpeted and drummed,
And from our mortars tons of iron hummed
Ath'art the ditch, the month we bombed
The Town o' Valencie?n.
Additions
© Thomas Hardy
She cried, "O pray pity me!" Nought would he hear;
Then with wild rainy eyes she obeyed,
She chid when her Love was for clinking off wi' her.
The pa'son was told, as the season drew near
To throw over pu'pit the names of the pe?ir
As fitting one flesh to be made.
The Mother Mourns
© Thomas Hardy
When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time,
And sedges were horny,
And summer's green wonderwork faltered
On leaze and in lane,
The Temporary The All
© Thomas Hardy
CHANGE and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime,
Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen;
Wrought us fellowly, and despite divergence,
Friends interblent us.
The Slow Nature
© Thomas Hardy
"THY husband--poor, poor Heart!--is dead--
Dead, out by Moreford Rise;
A bull escaped the barton-shed,
Gored him, and there he lies!"
The Alarm
© Thomas Hardy
In a ferny byway
Near the great South-Wessex Highway,
A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;
The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no sky-way,
And twilight cloaked the croft.
Lines
© Thomas Hardy
BEFORE we part to alien thoughts and aims,
Permit the one brief word the occasion claims;
--When mumming and grave projects are allied,
Perhaps an Epilogue is justified.
A Sign-Seeker
© Thomas Hardy
I MARK the months in liveries dank and dry,
The day-tides many-shaped and hued;
I see the nightfall shades subtrude,
And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.
The Peasant's Confession
© Thomas Hardy
Good Father!
Twas an eve in middle June,
And war was waged anew
By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn
Mens bones all Europe through.
