Hope poems
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Felixstowe, or The Last of Her Order
© John Betjeman
With one consuming roar along the shingle
The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down
To where its backwash and the next wave mingle,
A mounting arch of water weedy-brown
Against the tide the off-shore breezes blow.
Oh wind and water, this is Felixstowe.
The Cottage Hospital
© John Betjeman
At the end of a long-walled garden in a red provincial town,
A brick path led to a mulberry- scanty grass at its feet.
I lay under blackening branches where the mulberry leaves hung down
Sheltering ruby fruit globes from a Sunday-tea-time heat.
Apple and plum espaliers basked upon bricks of brown;
The air was swimming with insects, and children played in the street.
Lenten Thoughts of a High Anglican
© John Betjeman
Isn't she lovely, "the Mistress"?
With her wide-apart grey-green eyes,
The droop of her lips and, when she smiles,
Her glance of amused surprise?
Devonshire Street W.1
© John Betjeman
The heavy mahogany door with its wrought-iron screen
Shuts. And the sound is rich, sympathetic, discreet.
The sun still shines on this eighteenth-century scene
With Edwardian faience adornment -- Devonshire Street.
Guilt
© John Betjeman
The clock is frozen in the tower,
The thickening fog with sooty smell
Has blanketed the motor power
Which turns the London streets to hell;
And footsteps with their lonely sound
Intensify the silence round.
Symptoms
© Sophie Hannah
Although you have given me a stomach upset,
Weak knees, a lurching heart, a fuzzy brain,
A high-pitched laugh, a monumental phone bill,
A feeling of unworthiness, sharp pain
Long For This World
© Sophie Hannah
I settle for less than snow,
try to go gracefully like seasons gowhich will regain their ground -
ditch, hill and field - when a new year comes round.Now I know everything:
how winter leaves without resenting spring,lives in a safe time frame,
Manteau Three
© Jorie Graham
must it tangles up into a weave,
tied up with votive offerings laws, electricity
what the speakers let loose from their tiny eternity,
what the empty streets held up as offering
when only a bit of wind
litigated in the sycamores,
The Guardian Angel Of The Private Life
© Jorie Graham
All this was written on the next day's list.
On which the busyness unfurled its cursive roots,
pale but effective,
and the long stem of the necessary, the sum of events,
Elegy VI
© John Donne
Oh, let me not serve so, as those men serve
Whom honour's smokes at once fatten and starve;
Poorly enrich't with great men's words or looks;
Nor so write my name in thy loving books
Elegy IV: The Perfume
© John Donne
Once, and but once found in thy company,
All thy supposed escapes are laid on me;
And as a thief at bar is questioned there
By all the men that have been robed that year,
A Hymn To Christ At The Author's Last Going Into Germany
© John Donne
In what torn ship soever I embark,
That ship shall be my emblem of thy Ark;
What sea soever swallow me, that flood
Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood;
The Token
© John Donne
Send me some token, that my hope may live,
Or that my easeless thoughts may sleep and rest;
Send me some honey to make sweet my hive,
That in my passions I may hope the best.
Elegy XVI: On His Mistress
© John Donne
By our first strange and fatal interview,
By all desires which thereof did ensue,
By our long starving hopes, by that remorse
Which my words' masculine persuasive force
The Dream
© John Donne
Dear love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dream;
It was a theme
For reason, much too strong for phantasy:
The Octopi Jars
© Michael Burch
Long-vacant eyes
now lodged in clear glass,
a-swim with pale arms
as delicate as angels ...
Rainbow (II)
© Michael Burch
You made us hopeful, LORD; where is your Hope
when every lovely Rainbow bright and chill
reflects your Will?
The Smile on the Face of a Kouros
© William Bronk
This boy, of course, was dead, whatever that
might mean. And nobly dead. I think we should feel
he was nobly dead. He fell in battle, perhaps,
and this carved stone remembers him
A Pastoral Dialogue (Melibæus, Alcippe, Asteria, Licida, Alcimedon, and Amira. )
© Anne Killigrew
Melibæus. WElcome fair Nymphs, most welcome to this shade,
Distemp'ring Heats do now the Plains invade:
But you may sit, from Sun securely here,
If you an old mans company not fear.
The Discontent.
© Anne Killigrew
I.
HEre take no Care, take here no Care, my Muse,
Nor ought of Art or Labour use:
But let thy Lines rude and unpolisht go,
