Great poems
/ page 281 of 549 /
Late March
© Edward Hirsch
Saturday morning in late March.
I was alone and took a long walk,
though I also carried a book
of the Alone, which companioned me.
In Piam Memoriam
© Geoffrey Hill
Created purely from glass the saint stands,
Exposing his gifted quite empty hands
Like a conjurer about to begin,
A righteous man begging of righteous men.
A Lesson in Geography
© Kenneth Rexroth
In the Japanese quarter
A phonograph playing
“Moonlight on ruined castles”
Kojo n'suki
The True Born Englishman
© Daniel Defoe
Which medly cantond in a heptarchy,
A rhapsody of nations to supply,
Among themselves maintaind eternal wars,
And still the ladies lovd the conquerors.
from First Book of Odes: 13. Fearful Symmetry
© Ted Hughes
Muzzle and jowl and beastly brow,
bilious glaring eyes, tufted ears,
recidivous criminality in the slouch,
—This is not the latest absconding bankrupt
but a ‘beautiful’ tiger imported at great expense from
Kuala Lumpur.
[The Doleful Lay of Clorinda]
© Mary Sidney Herbert
Ay me, to whom shall I my case complain,
That may compassion my impatient grief?
When Thou Must Home to Shades of Underground
© Thomas Campion
When thou must home to shades of underground,
And there arriv'd, a new admired guest,
The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round,
White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest,
To hear the stories of thy finish'd love
From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move;
The Dead
© Don Paterson
Our business is with fruit and leaf and bloom;
though they speak with more than just the season's tongue—
Becune Point
© Derek Walcott
Stunned heat of noon. In shade, tan, silken cows
hide in the thorned acacias. A butterfly staggers.
Stamping their hooves from thirst, small horses drowse
or whinny for water. On parched, ochre headlands, daggers
In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 11
© Alfred Tennyson
Calm is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
And only thro' the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground:
Paradise Lost: Book I
© Patrick Kavanagh
So spake th' apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but rack'd with deep despair.
And him thus answer'd soon his bold compeer:
Paradise Lost: Book VII (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
DEscend from Heav'n Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art call'd, whose Voice divine
The Amen Stone
© John Wesley
On my desk there is a stone with the word “Amen” on it,
a triangular fragment of stone from a Jewish graveyard destroyed
The Asians Dying
© William Stanley Merwin
Rain falls into the open eyes of the dead
Again again with its pointless sound
When the moon finds them they are the color of everything
