Home poems
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Misgivings
© William Matthews
"Perhaps you'll tire of me," muses
my love, although she's like a great city
to me, or a park that finds new
ways to wear each flounce of light
and investiture of weather.
Soil doesn't tire of rain, I think,
Dire Cure
© William Matthews
"First, do no harm," the Hippocratic
Oath begins, but before she might enjoy
such balm, the docs had to harm her tumor.
It was large, rare, and so anomalous
Homer's Seeing-Eye Dog
© William Matthews
Most of the time he worked, a sort of sleep
with a purpose, so far as I could tell.
How he got from the dark of sleep
to the dark of waking up I'll never know;
Sunday Chimes in the City
© Louise Imogen Guiney
Forbid not these! Tho' no man heed, they shower
A subtle beauty on the empty hour,
>From all their dark throats aching and outblown;
Aye in the prayerless places welcome most,
Like the last gull that up a naked coast
Deploys her white and steady wing, alone.
History of the Twentieth Century (A Roadshow)
© Joseph Brodsky
Ladies and gentlemen and the day!
All ye made of sweet human clay!
Let me tell you: you are o'kay.
To The Same (Charles Walker again)
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
CHARLEY Here I am at last
Quartered in my old position,
To The Right Honourable The Lady Penelope Dowager Of The Late Vis-Count Bayning
© William Strode
You know that Friends have Eares as well as Eyes,
We heare Hee's well and Living, that well dies.
Song Of The Redwood-Tree
© Walt Whitman
A prophecy and indirection-a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air;
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing-or hamadryads departing;
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.
The Christmas Box
© Edgar Albert Guest
Oh, we have shipped his Christmas box with ribbons red 'tis tied,
And he shall find the things he likes from them he loves inside,
But he must miss the kisses true and all the laughter gay
And he must miss the smiles of home upon his Christmas Day.
The Rowing Song
© Roald Dahl
Round the world and home again
That's the sailor's way
Faster faster, faster faster
Love Of Life
© Alfred Austin
Why love life more, the less of it be left,
And what is left be little but the lees,
The Haglets
© Herman Melville
There, peaked and gray, three haglets fly,
And follow, follow fast in wake
Where slides the cabin-lustre shy,
And sharks from man a glamour take,
Seething along the line of light
In lane that endless rules the war-ship's flight.
Full Moon and Little Frieda
© Ted Hughes
A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket -
And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.
On A Great Hollow Tree
© William Strode
Preethee stand still awhile, and view this tree
Renown'd and honour'd for antiquitie
By all the neighbour twiggs; for such are all
The trees adjoyning, bee they nere so tall,
On A Friends Absence
© William Strode
Come, come, I faint: thy heavy stay
Doubles each houre of the day:
The winged hast of nimble love
Makes aged Time not seeme to move:
The Swamp Fox
© William Gilmore Simms
What! 't is the signal! start so soon,
And through the Santee swamp so deep,
Without the aid of friendly moon,
And we, Heaven help us! half asleep!
Consolatorium, Ad Parentes
© William Strode
Lett her parents then confesse
That they beleeve her happinesse,
Which now they question. Thinke as you
Lent her the world, Heaven lent her you:
Moonlight
© John Kenyon
Not alway from the lessons of the schools,
Taught evermore by those who trust them not,
The End Of The Furrow
© William Wilfred Campbell
When we come to the end of the furrow,
When our last day's work is done,
We will drink of the long red shaft of light
That slants from the westering sun.
