Life poems
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Godmother
© Dorothy Parker
The day that I was christened-
It's a hundred years, and more!-
A hag came and listened
At the white church door,
Charles Dickens
© Dorothy Parker
Who call him spurious and shoddy
Shall do it o'er my lifeless body.
I heartily invite such birds
To come outside and say those words!
The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam Of Naishapur
© Edward Fitzgerald
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.
The Dream Called Life
© Edward Fitzgerald
From the Spanish of Pedro Calderon de la Barca
A dream it was in which I found myself.
And you that hail me now, then hailed me king,
In a brave palace that was all my own,
A Letter from Artemesia in the Town to Chloe in the Country
© John Wilmot
Chloe,In verse by your command I write.
Shortly you'll bid me ride astride, and fight:
These talents better with our sex agree
Than lofty flights of dangerous poetry.
Tunbridge Wells
© John Wilmot
At five this morn, when Phoebus raised his head
From Thetis' lap, I raised myself from bed,
And mounting steed, I trotted to the waters
The rendesvous of fools, buffoons, and praters,
Cuckolds, whores, citizens, their wives and daughters.
A Fragment of Seneca Translated
© John Wilmot
After Death nothing is, and nothing, death,
The utmost limit of a gasp of breath.
Let the ambitious zealot lay aside
His hopes of heaven, whose faith is but his pride;
The Platonic Lady
© John Wilmot
I could love thee till I die,
Would'st thou love me modestly,
And ne'er press, whilst I live,
For more than willingly I would give:
Which should sufficient be to prove
I'd understand the art of love.
Satyr
© John Wilmot
Were I (who to my cost already am
One of those strange prodigious Creatures Man)
A Spirit free, to choose for my own share,
What Case of Flesh, and Blood, I pleas'd to weare,
A Satyre on Charles II
© John Wilmot
[Rochester had to flee the court for several months
after handing this to the King by mistake.]
In th' isle of Britain, long since famous grown
For breeding the best cunts in Christendom,
The Mistress
© John Wilmot
An age in her embraces passed
Would seem a winter's day;
When life and light, with envious haste,
Are torn and snatched away.
A Satyre Against Mankind
© John Wilmot
Thus sir, you see what human nature craves,
Most men are cowards, all men should be knaves;
The difference lies, as far as I can see.
Not in the thing itself, but the degree;
And all the subject matter of debate
Is only, who's a knave of the first rate
All My Past Life...
© John Wilmot
All my past life is mine no more,
The flying hours are gone,
Like transitory dreams given o'er,
Whose images are kept in store
By memory alone.
Love and Life
© John Wilmot
All my past life is mine no more,
The flying hours are gone,
Like transitory dreams giv'n o'er,
Whose images are kept in store
By memory alone.
Poems to Mulgrave and Scroope
© John Wilmot
Deare Friend. I heare this Towne does soe abound,
With sawcy Censurers, that faults are found,
With what of late wee (in Poetique Rage)
Bestowing, threw away on the dull Age;
Tears
© Lizette Woodworth Reese
When I consider Life and its few years --
A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun;
A call to battle, and the battle done
Ere the last echo dies within our ears;
Comete
© Les Murray
Uphill in Melbourne on a beautiful day
a woman is walking ahead of her hair.
Like teak oiled soft to fracture and sway
it hung to her heels and seconded her
Flowering Eucalypt In Autumn
© Les Murray
That slim creek out of the sky
the dried-blood western gum tree
is all stir in its high reaches:
Music To Me Is Like Days
© Les Murray
Once played to attentive faces
music has broken its frame
its bodice of always-weak laces
the entirely promiscuous art
Travels With John Hunter
© Les Murray
We who travel between worlds
lose our muscle and bone.
I was wheeling a barrow of earth
when agony bayoneted me.
