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Emergency Haying
© Hayden Carruth
Coming home with the last load I ride standing
on the wagon tongue, behind the tractor
in hot exhaust, lank with sweat,
Up And Down Old Brandywine
© James Whitcomb Riley
Up and down old Brandywine,
In the days 'at's past and gone--
Vobiscum Est Iope
© Thomas Campion
When thou must home to shades of underground,
And there arrived, a new admirèd guest,
The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round,
White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest,
To hear the stories of thy finished love
From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move;
The Concentration Of Athens
© Richard Monckton Milnes
Why should we wonder that from such small space
Of Earth so much of human strength upgrew,
When thus were woven bonds that tighter drew
Round the Athenian heart than faith or race?
Madmen
© Billy Collins
They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.
The Cottager
© John Clare
True as the church clock hand the hour pursues
He plods about his toils and reads the news,
Intimations Of The Beautiful
© Madison Julius Cawein
The hills are full of prophecies
And ancient voices of the dead;
Of hidden shapes that no man sees,
Pale, visionary presences,
That speak the things no tongue hath said,
No mind hath thought, no eye hath read.
Writing
© Howard Nemerov
The cursive crawl, the squared-off characters
these by themselves delight, even without
Becoming Anne Bradstreet
© Eavan Boland
It happens again
As soon as I take down her book and open it.
Avalon
© Simon Armitage
To the Metropolitan Police Force, London:
the asylum gates are locked and chained, but undone
by wandering thoughts and the close study of maps.
So from San Francisco, patron city of tramps,
I scribble this note, having overshot Gloucester
by several million strides, having walked on water.
To Margaret W------
© Charles Lamb
Margaret, in happy hour
Christen'd from that humble flower
Which we a daisy call!
May thy pretty name-sake be
In all things a type of thee,
And image thee in all.
Thou Art My Lute
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Thou art my lute, by thee I sing,—
My being is attuned to thee.
Golden State
© Frank Bidart
I
To see my father
lying in pink velvet, a rosary
twined around his hands, rouged,
