Life poems
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London - in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal
© Samuel Johnson
'--Quis ineptae
Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus ut teneat se?' ~ Juv.
Time
© George Herbert
Meeting with Time, slack thing, said I,
Thy sithe is dull; whet it for shame.
No marvell Sir, he did replie,
If it at length deserve some blame:
But where one man would have me grinde it,
Twentie for one too sharp do finde it.
Helping My Daughter Move into Her First Apartment by Sue Ellen Thompson : American Life in Poetry #2
© Ted Kooser
This column originates on the campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and at the beginning of each semester, we see parents helping their children move into their dorm rooms and apartments and looking a little shaken by the process. This wonderful poem by Sue Ellen Thompson of Maryland captures not only a moment like that, but a mother’s feelings as well.
Helping My Daughter Move into Her First Apartment
The Advice Of Treachery
© Leon Gellert
This well-feigned trance, this still and
stupored sleep
is aptly timed, and nobly fits the scheme.
The cloud-encircled Sword with Night may creep
Flight To Nature
© William Gilmore Simms
SICK of the crowd, the toil, the strife,
Sweet Nature, how I turn to thee,
Seeking for renovated life,
By brawling brook and shady tree!
The Death Of President Lincoln
© Joseph Furphy
Now let the howling tempest roar
For Booth can feel its force no more;
Now let the captors bend their steel
Against the form that cannot feel
Their tyranny has spent its hour
And Booth is far beyond their power.
The Night-Walk
© George Meredith
Awakes for me and leaps from shroud
All radiantly the moon's own night
Of folded showers in streamer cloud;
Our shadows down the highway white
Or deep in woodland woven-boughed,
With yon and yon a stem alight.
In Memory Of Douglas Vernon Cow
© Muriel Stuart
To twilight heads comes Death as comes a friend.
As with the gentle fading of the year
Fades rose, folds leaf, falls fruit, and to their end
Unquestioning draw near,
Their flowering over, and their fruiting done,
Fulfilled and finished and going down with the sun.
Thoughts In Separation
© Alice Meynell
We never meet; yet we meet day by day
Upon those hills of life, dim and immense:
The good we love, and sleep--our innocence.
O hills of life, high hills! And higher than they,
Common Janthina by Tatiana Ziglar: American Life in Poetry #93 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
Newborns begin life as natural poets, loving the sound of their own gurgles and coos. And, with the encouragement of parents and teachers, children can continue to write and enjoy poetry into their high school years and beyond. A group of elementary students in Detroit, Michigan, wrote poetry on the subject of what seashells might say if they could speak to us. I was especially charmed by Tatiana Ziglar's short poem, which alludes to the way in which poets learn to be attentive to the world. The inhabitants of the Poetry Palace pay attention, and by that earn the stories they receive.
Common Janthina
My shell said she likes the king and queen
of the Poetry Palace because they listen to her.
She tells them all the secrets of the ocean.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted by permission from âShimmering Stars,â? Vol. IV, Spring, 2006, published by the InsideOut Literary Arts Project. Copyright © 2006 by the InsideOut Literary Arts Project. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
The Paralytic
© Robert Laurence Binyon
He stands where the young faces pass and throng;
His blank eyes tremble in the noonday sun:
He sees all life, the lovely and the strong,
Before him run.
The Woodpecker Keeps Returning by Jane Hirshfield: American Life in Poetry #20 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet
© Ted Kooser
In this fascinating poem by the California poet, Jane Hirshfield, the speaker discovers that through paying attention to an event she has become part of it, has indeed become inseparable from the event and its implications. This is more than an act of empathy. It speaks, in my reading of it, to the perception of an order into which all creatures and events are fitted, and are essential.
The Woodpecker Keeps Returning
The woodpecker keeps returning
to drill the house wall.
Put a pie plate over one place, he chooses another.
The Haunted Chamber
© Robert Fuller Murray
Life is a house where many chambers be,
And all the doors will yield to him who tries,
Save one, whereof men say, behind it lies
The haunting secret. He who keeps the key,
The Wail in the Native Oak
© Henry Kendall
Where the lone creek, chafing nightly in the cold and sad moonshine,
Beats beneath the twisted fern-roots and the drenched and dripping vine;
Thoughts Of Christmas-Day In India
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
IT is Christmas, and the sunshine
Lies golden on the fields,
And flowers of white and purple
Yonder fragrant creeper yields.
The Dance Of The Seven Sins
© Arthur Symons
THE STAGE-MANAGER
It is. Each morning that decays
To midnight ends the world as well,
For the world's day, as that farewell
When, at the ultimate judgment-Stroke,
Heaven too shall vanish in pale smoke.
Businesse
© George Herbert
Rivers run, and springs each one
Know their home, and get them gone:
Hast thou tears, or hast thou none?
Sense And Spirit
© George Meredith
The senses loving Earth or well or ill
Ravel yet more the riddle of our lot.
