Great poems
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Love And War
© Arthur Patchett Martin
THE CHANCELLOR mused as he nibbled his pen
(Sure no Minister ever looked wiser),
Dream Song 44: Tell it to the forest fire, tell it to the moon
© John Berryman
Tell it to the forest fire, tell it to the moon,
mention it in general to the moon
on the way down,
he's about to have his lady, permanent;
and this is the worst of all came ever sent
writhing Henry's way.
The Veil Of Maya
© Edith Nesbit
SWEET, I have loved before. I know
This longing that invades my days;
This shape that haunts life's busy ways
I know since long and long ago.
Dream Song 100: How this woman came by the courage
© John Berryman
How this woman came by the courage, how she got
the courage, Henry bemused himself in a frantic hot
night of the eight of July,
where it came from, did once the Lord frown down
upon her ancient cradle thinking 'This one
will do before she die
Dream Song 11: His mother goes. The mother comes & goes.
© John Berryman
His mother goes. The mother comes & goes.
Chen Lung's too came, came and crampt & then
that dragoner's mother was gone.
It seem we don't have no good bed to lie on,
forever. While he drawing his first breath,
while skinning his knees,
Dream Song 324: An Elegy for W.C.W., the lovely man
© John Berryman
Henry in Ireland to Bill underground:
Rest well, who worked so hard, who made a good sound
constantly, for so many years:
your high-jinks delighted the continents & our ears:
you had so many girls your life was a triumph
and you loved your one wife.
Roan Stallion
© Robinson Jeffers
She rose at length, she unknotted the halter; she walked and led
the stallion; two figures, woman and stallion,
Came down the silent emptiness of the dome of the hill, under
the cataract of the moonlight.
Dream Song 24: Oh servant Henry lectured till
© John Berryman
Oh servant Henry lectured till
the crows commenced and then
he bulbed his voice & lectured on some more.
This happened again & again, like war,â
the Indian p.a.'s, such as they were,
a weapon on his side, for the birds.
The Legend of King Arthur
© Thomas Percy
Of Brutus' blood, in Brittaine borne,
King Arthur I am to name;
Through Christendome and Heathynesse
Well knowne is my worthy fame.
Genesis BK XIII
© Caedmon
The sleep of death and fiends' seduction; death and hell and
exile and damnation - these were the fatal fruit whereon they
feasted. And when the apple worked within him and touched his
heart, then laughed aloud the evilhearted fiend, capered about,
and gave thanks to his lord for both:
Jim the Splitter
© Henry Kendall
The bard who is singing of Wollombi Jim
Is hardly just now in the requisite trim
To sit on his Pegasus fairly;
Besides, he is bluntly informed by the Muse
That Jim is a subject no singer should choose;
For Jim is poetical rarely.
In The Hill At New Grange
© Robinson Jeffers
Great upright stones higher than the height of a man are our walls,
Huge overlapping stones are the summer clouds in our sky.
The hill of boulders is heaped over all. Each hundred years
One of the enormous stones will move an inch in the dark.
Each double century one of the oaks on the crown of the mound
Above us breaks in a wind, an oak or an ash grows.
Dream Song 14: Life, friends, is boring
© John Berryman
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatedly) 'Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no
The Cloud's Swan-Song
© Francis Thompson
There is a parable in the pathless cloud,
There's prophecy in heaven,--they did not lie,
The Chaldee shepherds; seal-ed from the proud,
To cheer the weighted heart that mates the seeing eye.
At the Top of My voice
© Vladimir Mayakovsky
Professor,
take off your bicycle glasses!
I myself will expound
those times
and myself.
The Ashes by Karin Gottshall: American Life in Poetry #21 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
How many of us, alone at a grave or coming upon the site of some remembered event, find ourselves speaking to a friend or loved one who has died? In this poem by Karin Gottshall the speaker addresses someone's ashes as she casts them from a bridge. I like the way the ashes take on new life as they merge with the wind.
The Ashes
You were carried here by hands
and now the wind has you, gritty
as incense, dark sparkles borne
To All and Everything
© Vladimir Mayakovsky
Above the capitals madness
I raised my face,
stern as the faces of ancient icons.
Sorrow-rent,
on your body as on a death-bed, its days
my heart ended.
Spring - The First Pastoral ; or Damon
© Alexander Pope
Daphnis.
O Love! for Sylvia let me gain the prize,
And make my tongue victorious as her eyes;
No lambs or sheep for victims I'll impart,
Thy victim, Love, shall be the shepherd's heart.
