Hope poems
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Isle Of Wight--Spring, 1891
© Horace Smith
I know not what the cause may be,
Or whether there be one or many;
But this year's Spring has seemed to me
More exquisite than any.
jasper texas 1998
© Paul Celan
for j. byrd
i am a man's head hunched in the road.
i was chosen to speak by the members
of my body. the arm as it pulled away
pointed toward me, the hand opened once
and was gone.
1959
© Gregory Corso
Uncomprising yearI see no meaning to life.
Though this abled self is here nonetheless,
either in trade gold or grammaticness,
I drop the wheelwrights simple principle
Why weave the garland? Why ring the bell?
The Pillar Towers of Ireland
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
The pillar towers of Ireland, how wondrously they stand
By the lakes and rushing rivers through the valleys of our land;
In mystic file, through the isle, they lift their heads sublime,
These gray old pillar temples, these conquerors of time!
Among The Timothy
© Archibald Lampman
Long hours ago, while yet the morn was blithe,
Nor sharp athirst had drunk the beaded dew,
Tonight
© Agha Shahid Ali
Pale hands I loved beside the ShalimarPale . . . Shalimar The epigraph is from a 12-line poem entitled “Kashmiri Song.” There are allusions to “Kashmiri Song” throughout this poem. The Shalimar Garden, in Lahore, Pakistan, was built by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir in 1619 for his wife Nur Jahan.
—Laurence Hope
Returning of Issue
© Henry Reed
Tomorrow will be your last day here. Someone is speaking:
A familiar voice, speaking again at all of us.
And beyond the windows it is inside now, and autumn
On a wind growing daily harsher, small things to the earth
Are turning and whirling, small. Tomorrow will be
Your last day here,
Convict Once - Part First.
© James Brunton Stephens
I.
FREE again! Free again! eastward and westward, before me, behind me,
Wide lies Australia! and free are my feet, as my soul is, to roam!
Oh joy unwonted of space undetermined! No limit assigned me!
Freedom conditioned by nought save the need and desire of a home!
Hymn to the Comb-Over
© Wesley McNair
How the thickest of them erupt just
above the ear, cresting in waves so stiff
Song of Myself
© Walt Whitman
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
Hope, Like The Short-lived Ray That Gleams Awhile
© William Cowper
Hope, like the short-lived ray that gleams awhile
Through wintry skies, upon the frozen waste,
Cheers e'en the face of misery to a smile;
But soon the momentary pleasure's past.
Ghazal
© Agha Shahid Ali
Feel the patient’s heart
Pounding—oh please, this once—
—JAMES MERRILL
I’ll do what I must if I’m bold in real time.
A refugee, I’ll be paroled in real time.
The Principles of Concealment
© David Wagoner
If you’re caught in the open
In an exposed position, alone,
Hope Beyond The Grave
© James Beattie
'Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more;
I mourn, but, ye woodlands, I mourn not for you;
For morn is approaching, your charms to restore,
Perfumed with fresh fragrance, and glittering with dew:
Resurrection
© Alice Guerin Crist
All rank on rank the tall white lillies stood,
The graceful palms against the rose-flushed sky
Showed gemmed with dew-drops, and red poppies glowed
Through the rank grass near by.
Superstition
© Madison Julius Cawein
In the waste places, in the dreadful night,
When the wood whispers like a wandering mind,
