Good poems
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It is not Always May
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The sun is bright,--the air is clear,
The darting swallows soar and sing.
And from the stately elms I hear
The bluebird prophesying Spring.
God's-Acre
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
The burial-ground God's-Acre! It is just;
It consecrates each grave within its walls,
And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust.
Author's Prologue
© Dylan Thomas
This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
Incarnate Devil
© Dylan Thomas
Incarnate devil in a talking snake,
The central plains of Asia in his garden,
In shaping-time the circle stung awake,
In shapes of sin forked out the bearded apple,
And God walked there who was a fiddling warden
And played down pardon from the heavens' hill.
Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait
© Dylan Thomas
The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.
This Side Of The Truth
© Dylan Thomas
(for Llewelyn)This side of the truth,
You may not see, my son,
King of your blue eyes
In the blinding country of youth,
Lament
© Dylan Thomas
When I was a windy boy and a bit
And the black spit of the chapel fold,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women),
I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood,
Poem On His Birthday
© Dylan Thomas
In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
A Letter To My Aunt
© Dylan Thomas
A final word: before you start
The convulsions of your art,
Remove your brains, take out your heart;
Minus these curses, you can be
A genius like David G.
A Child's Christmas In Wales
© Dylan Thomas
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound
except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember
whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve
nights when I was six.
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
© Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
National Trust
© Tony Harrison
Bottomless pits. There's on in Castleton,
and stout upholders of our law and order
one day thought its depth worth wagering on
and borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder
and winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb.
V
© Tony Harrison
Next millennium you'll have to search quite hard
to find my slab behind the family dead,
butcher, publican, and baker, now me, bard
adding poetry to their beef, beer and bread.
Turns
© Tony Harrison
I thought it made me look more 'working class'
(as if a bit of chequered cloth could bridge that gap!)
I did a turn in it before the glass.
My mother said: It suits you, your dad's cap.
(She preferred me to wear suits and part my hair:
You're every bit as good as that lot are!)
Book Ends
© Tony Harrison
Back in our silences and sullen looks,
for all the Scotch we drink, what's still between 's
not the thirty or so years, but books, books, books.
You're right -- "the way is narrow"
© Emily Dickinson
You're right -- "the way is narrow" --
And "difficult the Gate" --
And "few there be" -- Correct again --
That "enter in -- thereat" --
Within thy Grave!
© Emily Dickinson
Within thy Grave!
Oh no, but on some other flight --
Thou only camest to mankind
To rend it with Good night --
Winter is good -- his Hoar Delights
© Emily Dickinson
Winter is good -- his Hoar Delights
Italic flavor yield
To Intellects inebriate
With Summer, or the World --
When I hoped, I recollect
© Emily Dickinson
When I hoped, I recollect
Just the place I stood --
At a Window facing West --
Roughest Air -- was good --
What shall I do when the Summer troubles --
© Emily Dickinson
What shall I do when the Summer troubles --
What, when the Rose is ripe --
What when the Eggs fly off in Music
From the Maple Keep?
