Happiness poems
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A Riddle Song.
© Walt Whitman
THAT which eludes this verse and any verse,
Unheard by sharpest ear, unformd in clearest eye or cunningest mind,
Nor lore nor fame, nor happiness nor wealth,
And yet the pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly,
Poem of Joys.
© Walt Whitman
1
O TO make the most jubilant poem!
Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.
O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Walt Whitman.
© Walt Whitman
1
I CELEBRATE myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.
The Two Kings
© William Butler Yeats
King Eochaid came at sundown to a wood
Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen
He had outridden his war-wasted men
That with empounded cattle trod the mire,
Baile And Aillinn
© William Butler Yeats
ARGUMENT. Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the
Master of Love, wishing them to he happy in his own land
among the dead, told to each a story of the other's death, so
that their hearts were broken and they died.
A Man Young And Old: III. The Mermaid
© William Butler Yeats
A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.
Under The Moon
© William Butler Yeats
Because of something told under the famished horn
Of the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day,
To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dis may,
Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.
Vacillation
© William Butler Yeats
Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.
Somebody's Song
© Dorothy Parker
This is what I vow;
He shall have my heart to keep,
Sweetly will we stir and sleep,
All the years, as now.
Plea
© Dorothy Parker
Secrets, you said, would hold us two apart;
You'd have me know of you your least transgression,
And so the intimate places of your heart,
Kneeling, you bared to me, as in confession.
Satyr
© John Wilmot
Were I (who to my cost already am
One of those strange prodigious Creatures Man)
A Spirit free, to choose for my own share,
What Case of Flesh, and Blood, I pleas'd to weare,
A Satyre Against Mankind
© John Wilmot
Thus sir, you see what human nature craves,
Most men are cowards, all men should be knaves;
The difference lies, as far as I can see.
Not in the thing itself, but the degree;
And all the subject matter of debate
Is only, who's a knave of the first rate
Happiness
© Stevie Smith
Happiness is silent, or speaks equivocally for friends,
Grief is explicit and her song never ends,
Happiness is like England, and will not state a case,
Grief, like Guilt, rushes in and talks apace.
The Truro Bear
© Mary Oliver
Theres a bear in the Truro woods.
People have seen it - three or four,
or two, or one. I think
of the thickness of the serious woods
Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York,1957
© Mary Oliver
Once, in summer
in the blueberries,
I fell asleep, and woke
when a deer stumbled against me.
Hummingbird Pauses at the Trumpet Vine
© Mary Oliver
Who doesnt love
roses, and who
doesnt love the lilies
of the black ponds
Happiness
© Mary Oliver
In the afternoon I watched
the she-bear; she was looking
for the secret bin of sweetness -
honey, that the bees store
The Kingfisher
© Mary Oliver
The kingfisher rises out of the black wave
like a blue flower, in his beak
he carries a silver leaf. I think this is
the prettiest world--so long as you don't mind
