Life poems
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Somebody Else's Baby by Mary Jo Salter: American Life in Poetry #97 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2
© Ted Kooser
Though parents know that their children will grow up and away from them, will love and be loved by others, it's a difficult thing to accept. Massachusetts poet Mary Jo Salter emphasizes the poignancy of the parent/child relationship in this perceptive and compelling poem.
Somebody Else's Baby
From now on they always are, for years now
they always have been, but from now on you know
they are, they always will be,
Cutty Sark
© Hart Crane
in the nickel-in-the-slot piano jogged
Stamboul Nightsweaving somebodys nickelsang
Lines: That time is dead for ever, child!
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
I.
That time is dead for ever, child!
Drowned, frozen, dead for ever!
We look on the past
A Priest
© Norman Rowland Gale
NATURE and he went ever hand in hand
Across the hills and down the lonely lane;
The Queen's Rival
© Sarojini Naidu
"Radiant of feature and regal of mien,
Seven handmaids meet for the Persian Queen."
. . . . .
If Death Be Good
© Bliss William Carman
(Sappho LXXIV)
If death be good,
Why do the gods not die?
If life be ill,
The Stable Of Bethlehem
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
Twas not a palace proud and fair
He chose for His first home;
Ironing After Midnight by Marsha Truman Cooper: American Life in Poetry #69 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet La
© Ted Kooser
This marvelous poem by the California poet Marsha Truman Cooper perfectly captures the world of ironing, complete with its intimacy. At the end, doing a job to perfection, pressing the perfect edge, establishes a reassuring order to an otherwise mundane and slightly tawdry world.
Ironing After Midnight
The Wanderer: A Vision: Canto IV
© Richard Savage
Still o'er my mind wild Fancy holds her sway,
Still on strange visionary land I stray.
Now scenes crowd thick! now indistinct appear!
Swift glide the months, and turn the varying year!
A Common Thought
© Henry Timrod
Somewhere on this earthly planet
In the dust of flowers to be,
In the dewdrop, in the sunshine,
Sleeps a solemn day for me.
The Burden of Nineveh
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
In our Museum galleries
To-day I lingered o'er the prize
The Giaour: A Fragment Of A Turkish Tale
© George Gordon Byron
No breath of air to break the wave
That rolls below the Athenian's grave,
That tomb which, gleaming o'er the cliff
First greets the homeward-veering skiff
High o'er the land he saved in vain;
When shall such Hero live again?
To The Countess Of Bedford I
© John Donne
Therefore I study you first in your saints,
Those friends whom your election glorifies ;
Then in your deeds, accesses and restraints,
And what you read, and what yourself devise.
The Farmer's Ingle
© Robert Fergusson
Et multo in primis hilarans conviuia Baccho
Ante focum, si frigus erit, (si messis, in umbra,
Vina novum fundam calathis Ariusia nectar)
A Ballad Of The Heather
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
We spent a day together,
One day of all our lives,
Of love in cloudless weather--
Such only youth contrives--
One day in the red heather,
Alone with our two lives.
A Word To Two Young Ladies
© Robert Bloomfield
WHEN tender Rose-trees first receive
On half-expanded Leaves, the Shower;
Hope's gayest pictures we believe,
And anxious watch each coining flower.
Compensation
© Giordano Bruno
The moth beholds not death as forth he flies
Into the splendor of the living flame;
The Brothers (For Arnold and Donald Fletcher)
© Katharine Tynan
One called from Salonika and his call
Rang to his brother;
Forded wide rivers, climbed the mountain wall,
Seeking the other.
