Good poems
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A Meeting With Despair
© Thomas Hardy
AS evening shaped I found me on a moor
Which sight could scarce sustain:
The black lean land, of featureless contour,
Was like a tract in pain.
The Contretemps
© Thomas Hardy
A forward rush by the lamp in the gloom,
And we clasped, and almost kissed;
But she was not the woman whom
I had promised to meet in the thawing brume
On that harbour-bridge; nor was I he of her tryst.
The Fire At Tranter Sweatley's
© 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 peäir
As fitting one flesh to be made.
God-Forgotten
© Thomas Hardy
I towered far, and lo! I stood within
The presence of the Lord Most High,
Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win
Some answer to their cry.
Her Death And After
© Thomas Hardy
'TWAS a death-bed summons, and forth I went
By the way of the Western Wall, so drear
On that winter night, and sought a gate--
The home, by Fate,
Of one I had long held dear.
The Dance At The Phoenix
© Thomas Hardy
To Jenny came a gentle youth
From inland leazes lone;
His love was fresh as apple-blooth
By Parrett, Yeo, or Tone.
In The Moonlight
© Thomas Hardy
"O lonely workman, standing there
In a dream, why do you stare and stare
At her grave, as no other grave where there?"
The Levelled Churchyard
© Thomas Hardy
"O passenger, pray list and catch
Our sighs and piteous groans,
Half stifled in this jumbled patch
Of wrenched memorial stones!
Nature's Questioning
© Thomas Hardy
WHEN I look forth at dawning, pool,
Field, flock, and lonely tree,
All seem to look at me
Like chastened children sitting silent in a school;
At The Railway Station, Upways
© Thomas Hardy
'There is not much that I can do,
For I've no money that's quite my own!'
Spoke up the pitying child--
A little boy with a violin
The To-Be-Forgotten
© Thomas Hardy
I
I heard a small sad sound,
And stood awhile among the tombs around:
"Wherefore, old friends," said I, "are you distrest,
Now, screened from life's unrest?"
Friends Beyond
© Thomas Hardy
WILLIAM Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!
The Church-Builder
© Thomas Hardy
The church flings forth a battled shade
Over the moon-blanched sward:
The church; my gift; whereto I paid
My all in hand and hoard;
God's Funeral
© Thomas Hardy
I
I saw a slowly-stepping train --
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar --
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.
The Going
© Thomas Hardy
Why did you give no hint that night
That quickly after the morrow's dawn,
And calmly, as if indifferent quite,
You would close your term here, up and be gone
The Darkling Thrush
© Thomas Hardy
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave?
© Thomas Hardy
"Ah, are you digging on my grave,
My loved one? -- planting rue?"
-- "No: yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,
'That I should not be true.'"
Prosody 101
© Linda Pastan
When they taught me that what mattered most
was not the strict iambic line goose-stepping
over the page but the variations
in that line and the tension produced
To A Daughter Leaving Home
© Linda Pastan
When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
Kinderhymne (Children's Hymn)
© Bertolt Brecht
Anmut sparet nicht noch M?he
Leidenschaft nicht noch Verstand
Da? ein gutes Deutschland bl?he
Wie ein andres gutes Land
