Life poems
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4th July, 1882, Malines. Midnight.
© James Kenneth Stephen
Belgian, with cumbrous tread and iron boots,
Who in the murky middle of the night,
Designing to renew the foul pursuits
In which thy life is passed, ill-favoured wight,
Angkor
© Robert Laurence Binyon
I
Out of the Forest into a terrible splendour
Of noon, the pinnacles of the temple--portals,
Stone Faces, immense in carven ruin
Above the trembling of giant trees emerge.
Thissledown
© William Barnes
The thissledown by wind's a-roll'd
In Fall along the zunny plaïn,
Did catch the grass, but lose its hold,
Or cling to bennets, but in vaïn.
Yellowjackets by Yusef Komunyakaa: American Life in Poetry #154 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-
© Ted Kooser
Here, poet Yusef Komunyakaa, who teaches at New York University, shows us a fine portrait of the hard life of a workerâin this case, a horseâand, through metaphor, the terrible, clumsy beauty of his final moments.
Yellowjackets
Peter Bell The Third
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
Is it a party in a parlour,
Crammed just as they on earth were crammed,
Some sipping punch-some sipping tea;
But, as you by their faces see,
All silent, and all-damned!
Peter Bell, by W. Wordsworth.
The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part IV: Vita Nova: CXIII
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
TO ONE WITH HIS SONNETS
This is the book. For evil and for good,
What my life was in it is written plain.
These are no dreams, but things of flesh and blood,
Hymn to the Dairymaids on Beacon Street
© Christopher Morley
Sweetly solemn see them stand,
Spinning churns on either hand,
The Careless Word
© Caroline Norton
A WORD is ringing thro' my brain,
It was not meant to give me pain;
It had no tone to bid it stay,
When other things had past away;
The Minds Diet
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
No life worth naming ever comes to good
If always nourished on the selfsame food;
The creeping mite may live so if he please,
And feed on Stilton till he turns to cheese,
But cool Magendie proves beyond a doubt,
If mammals try it, that their eyes drop out.
The Dream Called Life (From the Spanish of Pedro Calderon de la Barca)
© Edward Fitzgerald
From the Spanish of Pedro Calderon de la Barca
A dream it was in which I found myself.
The White Doe Of Rylstone, Or, The Fate Of The Nortons - Canto Fifth
© William Wordsworth
HIGH on a point of rugged ground
Among the wastes of Rylstone Fell
Above the loftiest ridge or mound
Where foresters or shepherds dwell,
Communion
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
In the silence of my heart,
I will spend an hour with thee,
When my love shall rend apart
All the veil of mystery:
Bushwick: Latex Flat by D. Nurkse: American Life in Poetry #179 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-
© Ted Kooser
I've always loved shop talk, with its wonderful language of tools and techniques. This poem by D. Nurkse of Brooklyn, New York, is a perfect example. I especially like the use of the verb, lap, in line seven, because that's exactly the sound a four-inch wall brush makes.
Bushwick: Latex Flat
Queen Marys Letter To Bothwell
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Pitiful gods! Have pity on my passion.
Teach me the road how I a certain proving
Shall make to him I love of my great loving,
My faith unchanged, nor plead it in fool's fashion.
The Peace Convention At Brussels
© John Greenleaf Whittier
STILL in thy streets, O Paris! doth the stain
Of blood defy the cleansing autumn rain;
Still breaks the smoke Messina's ruins through,
And Naples mourns that new Bartholomew,
A Child Screening A Dove From A Hawk. By Stewardson
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
AY, screen thy favourite dove, fair child,
Ay, screen it if you may,--
Yet I misdoubt thy trembling hand
Will scare the hawk away.
Immutable
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
AUTUMN to winter, winter into spring,
Spring into summer, summer into fall,--
So rolls the changing year, and so we change;
Motion so swift, we know not that we move.
One Day
© Archibald Lampman
The trees rustle; the wind blows
Merrily out of the town;
The shadows creep, the sun goes
Steadily over and down.
