Great poems
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The Robe of Christ
© Joyce Kilmer
(For Cecil Chesterton)At the foot of the Cross on Calvary
Three soldiers sat and diced,
And one of them was the Devil
And he won the Robe of Christ.
Gates and Doors
© Joyce Kilmer
(For Richardson Little Wright)There was a gentle hostler
(And blessed be his name!)
He opened up the stable
The night Our Lady came.
The Voyage Of St. Brendan A.D. 545 - The Vocation
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
O Ita, mother of my heart and mind--
My nourisher, my fosterer, my friend,
Who taught me first to God's great will resigned,
Before his shining altar-steps to bend;
Old Poets
© Joyce Kilmer
(For Robert Cortez Holliday)If I should live in a forest
And sleep underneath a tree,
No grove of impudent saplings
Would make a home for me.
Stars
© Joyce Kilmer
(For the Rev. James J. Daly, S. J.)Bright stars, yellow stars, flashing through the air,
Are you errant strands of Lady Mary's hair?
As she slits the cloudy veil and bends down through,
Do you fall across her cheeks and over heaven too?
Apology
© Joyce Kilmer
(For Eleanor Rogers Cox)For blows on the fort of evil
That never shows a breach,
For terrible life-long races
To a goal no foot can reach,
The Bonnie Earl Moray
© Andrew Lang
Ye Highlands, and ye Lawlands
Oh where have you been?
They have slain the Earl of Murray,
And they layd him on the green.
Roses
© Joyce Kilmer
(For Katherine Bregy)I went to gather roses and twine them in a ring,
For I would make a posy, a posy for the King.
I got an hundred roses, the loveliest there be,
From the white rose vine and the pink rose bush and from the red
Wildpeace
© Yehuda Amichai
Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.
Memorial Day For The War Dead
© Yehuda Amichai
Memorial day for the war dead. Add now
the grief of all your losses to their grief,
even of a woman that has left you. Mix
sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history,
which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning
on one day for easy, convenient memory.
Sonnet 117: "Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all,..."
© William Shakespeare
Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all,
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,
Quick And Bitter
© Yehuda Amichai
The end was quick and bitter.
Slow and sweet was the time between us,
slow and sweet were the nights
when my hands did not touch one another in despair but in the love
of your body which came
between them.
William Forster
© John Greenleaf Whittier
The years are many since his hand
Was laid upon my head,
Too weak and young to understand
The serious words he said.
Infirmity
© Theodore Roethke
In purest song one plays the constant fool
As changes shimmer in the inner eye.
I stare and stare into a deepening pool
And tell myself my image cannot die.
I love myself: thats my one constancy.
Oh, to be something else, yet still to be!
Three Souls
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Then clothed like Angels, fitting their estate,
Three Souls went singing, singing through God's Gate.
Once A Great Love
© Yehuda Amichai
Once a great love cut my life in two.
The first part goes on twisting
at some other place like a snake cut in two.
The Tree
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
Fair tree! for thy delightful shade
'Tis just that some return be made;
Sure some return is due from me
To thy cool shadows, and to thee.
The Spleen
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
What art thou, SPLEEN, which ev'ry thing dost ape?
Thou Proteus to abus'd Mankind,
Who never yet thy real Cause cou'd find,
Or fix thee to remain in one continued Shape.
The Poor Man's Lamb
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
Where art thou Nathan? where's that Spirit now,
Giv'n to brave Vice, tho' on a Prince's Brow?
In what low Cave, or on what Desert Coast,
Now Virtue wants it, is thy Presence lost?
