Great poems
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Serenade
© James Russell Lowell
From the close-shut windows gleams no spark,
The night is chilly, the night is dark,
The poplars shiver, the pine-trees moan,
My hair by the autumn breeze is blown,
Under thy window I sing alone,
Alone, alone, ah woe! alone!
Great Lament Of My Obscurity Three
© Tristan Tzara
where we live the flowers of the clocks catch fire and the plumes encircle the brightness in the distant sulphur morning the cows lick the salt lilies
my son
Lincoln Is Dead
© George Moses Horton
He is gone, the strong base of the nation,
The dove to his covet has fled;
Yesterdays
© Robert Creeley
Sixty-two, sixty-three, I most remember
As time W. C. Williams dies and we are
Mates
© Ada Cambridge
What brains these fragile webs enmesh!
What soaring thought they tie!
What energies of soul and flesh
Maud XVIII: I have led her Home, my love, my only friend
© Alfred Tennyson
I have led her home, my love, my only friend,
There is none like her, none.
And never yet so warmly ran my blood
And sweetly, on and on
Calming itself to the long-wished-for end,
Full to the banks, close on the promised good.
from Omeros
© Derek Walcott
In hill-towns, from San Fernando to Mayagüez,
the same sunrise stirred the feathered lances of cane
down the archipelago’s highways. The first breeze
San Biagio, at Montepulciano
© Raymond Carver
Columns, arches, vaults: how he knew
The ways you promise what you lack;
And that your bodies, like your souls,
Always slip from our grasping hands.
Up at a Villa—Down in the City
© Robert Browning
(As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality)
Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!
After Reading Trollope's History Of Florence
© Eugene Field
My books are on their shelves again
And clouds lie low with mist and rain.
Afar the Arno murmurs low
The tale of fields of melting snow.
List to the bells of times agone
The while I wait me for the dawn.
Psalm 84
© Mary Sidney Herbert
How lovely is thy dwelling,
Great god, to whom all greatness is belonging!
First Name Friends
© Edgar Albert Guest
Though some may yearn for titles great, and seek the frills of fame,
I do not care to have an extra handle to my name.
I am not hungry for the pomp of life's high dignities,
I do not sigh to sit among the honored LL. D.'s.
I shall be satisfied if I can be unto the end,
To those I know and live with here, a simple, first-name friend.
The Bath
© Gary Snyder
Fire inside and boiling water on the stove
We sigh and slide ourselves down from the benches
wrap the babies, step outside,
From “Odi Barbare”
© Geoffrey Hill
xxiv
What is far hence led to the den of making:
Moves unlike wildfire | not so simple-happy
Ploughman hammers ploughshare his durum dentem
Digging the Georgics
All The Little Hoofprints
© Robinson Jeffers
Farther up the gorge the sea's voice fainted and ceased.
We heard a new noise far away ahead of us, vague and metallic,
To Penshurst
© Benjamin Jonson
Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show,
Of touch or marble; nor canst boast a row
