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It Is A Spring Afternoon
© Anne Sexton
Everything here is yellow and green.
Listen to its throat, its earthskin,
the bone dry voices of the peepers
as they throb like advertisements.
Festina Lente
© James Russell Lowell
But vain was all their hoarsest bass,
Their old experience out of place,
And spite of croaking and entreating,
The vote was carried in marsh-meeting.
Poor Kitty Popcorn
© Henry Clay Work
Did you ever hear the story of the loyal cat? Meyow!
Who was faithful to the flag, and ever follow'd that? Meyow!
Oh, she had a happy home beneath a southern sky,
But she pack'd her goods and left it when our troups came nigh,
And she fell into the collumn with a low glad cry, Meyow!
The Break Away
© Anne Sexton
I pray it will know truth,
if truth catches in its cup
and yet I pray, as a child would,
that the surgery take.
The Double Image
© Anne Sexton
They sent me letters with news
of you and I made moccasins that I would never use.
When I grew well enough to tolerate
myself, I lived with my mother, the witches said.
But I didn't leave. I had my portrait
done instead.
Amarantha. A Pastorall
© Richard Lovelace
Up with the jolly bird of light
Who sounds his third retreat to night;
Faire Amarantha from her bed
Ashamed starts, and rises red
The Children
© Anne Sexton
The children are all crying in their pens
and the surf carries their cries away.
They are old men who have seen too much,
their mouths are full of dirty clothes,
A Story For Rose On The Midnight Flight To Boston
© Anne Sexton
Until tonight they were separate specialties,
different stories, the best of their own worst.
Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy's
laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first
Dreaming The Breasts
© Anne Sexton
I have put a padlock
on you, Mother, dear dead human,
so that your great bells,
those dear white ponies,
can go galloping, galloping,
wherever you are.
And One For My Dame
© Anne Sexton
A born salesman,
my father made all his dough
by selling wool to Fieldcrest, Woolrich and Faribo.
Doors, Doors, Doors
© Anne Sexton
Old man, it's four flights up and for what?
Your room is hardly bigger than your bed.
Puffing as you climb, you are a brown woodcut
stooped over the thin tail and the wornout tread.
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
© Anne Sexton
The paralytic's wife
who takes her love to town,
sitting on the bar stool,
downing stingers and peanuts,
singing "That ole Ace down in the hole,"
would understand.
The Shepherd's Calendar - August
© John Clare
Harvest approaches with its bustling day
The wheat tans brown and barley bleaches grey
The Fury Of Cocks
© Anne Sexton
There they are
drooping over the breakfast plates,
angel-like,
folding in their sad wing,
Jerusalem Delivered - Book 02 - part 06
© Torquato Tasso
LXVI
"True labour in the vineyard of thy Lord,
Oh! Mr. Malthus!
© Stephen Leacock
Turn back to Malthus as he walked o'er English Fields and Downs
And walked at night the crooked Streets of crooked English Towns,
Lifeless, undying, Shade or Man, as one that could not die
A hundred years his Shadow fell, a hundred Years to lie,
The Shadow on the Window Pane when Malthus' Ghost went by.
Lullaby
© Anne Sexton
It is a summer evening.
The yellow moths sag
against the locked screens
and the faded curtains
The Knitters
© Padraic Colum
WATER, I did not seek you,
Water of hollow stone;
I crossed no one's acre to find you
You were where my geese lie down.
Psalm LXXXIV. (84)
© John Milton
How lovely are thy dwellings fair!
O Lord of Hoasts, how dear
The pleasant Tabernacles are!
Where thou do'st dwell so near.
