Life poems
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A Prayer for My Daughter
© William Butler Yeats
Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
Psalm 55
© Mary Sidney Herbert
My God, most glad to look, most prone to hear,
An open ear, oh, let my prayer find,
Winter Dawn
© Kenneth Slessor
At five I wake, rise, rub on the smoking pane
A port to see—water breathing in the air,
Sad Wine (I)
© Cesare Pavese
It was beautiful how he cried as he told it,
the way a drunk cries, his whole body to it,
and he hung on my shoulder saying, Between us,
always respect, and there I was, shaking with cold,
wanting to leave, and helping him walk.
I Saw in Louisiana A Live-Oak Growing
© Walt Whitman
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Im thankful that my life doth not deceive
© Henry David Thoreau
Im thankful that my life doth not deceive
Itself with a low loftiness, half height,
Maud; A Monodrama (from Part I)
© Alfred Tennyson
Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the rose is blown.
For Christmas Day: Hark! the Herald Angels Sing
© Charles Wesley
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King,
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinner reconcild.
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.
Makeup on Empty Space
© Anne Waldman
I am putting makeup on empty space
all patinas convening on empty space
Le Maudit
© William Langland
He sits alone in the firelight
And on either side drifts by
Sleep, like a torrent whirling,
Profound, wrinkled and dumb.
She Was a Phantom of Delight
© André Breton
She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
Parable of the Hostages
© Louise Gluck
The Greeks are sitting on the beach
wondering what to do when the war ends. No one
The South
© Emma Lazarus
Night, and beneath star-blazoned summer skies
Behold the Spirit of the musky South,
A creole with still-burning, languid eyes,
Voluptuous limbs and incense-breathing mouth:
Swathed in spun gauze is she,
From fibres of her own anana tree.
pantoum: landing, 1976
© Evie Shockley
dreaming the lives of the ancestors,
you awake, justly terrified of this world:
The Evening Wind
© William Cullen Bryant
Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou
That coolst the twilight of the sultry day,
Amoretti I: Happy ye leaves when as those lilly hands
© Edmund Spenser
Happy ye leaves when as those lilly hands,
Which hold my life in their dead doing might
Sonnets from the Portuguese 1: I Thought how Theocritus
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished for years,
To His Mistress
© John Wilmot
Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? O why
Does that eclipsing hand of thine deny
The sunshine of the Suns enlivening eye?
