Life poems
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To My Old Oak Table
© Robert Bloomfield
Friend of my peaceful days! substantial friend,
Whom wealth can never change, nor int'rest bend,
Wolf And Hound
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
You'll take my tale with a little salt;
But it needs none, nevertheless!
I was foiled completely - fair at fault -
Disheartened, too, I confess!
Bread, Hashish And Moon
© Nizar Qabbani
When the moon is born in the east,
And the white rooftops drift asleep
Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.
Little Nell
© Louisa May Alcott
GLEAMING through the silent church-yard,
Winter sunlight seemed to shed
Ave Atque Vale
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
In Memory of Charles Baudelaire
Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs;
Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs,
Et quand Octobre souffle, émondeur des vieux arbres,
Love
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
We cannot live, except thus mutually
We alternate, aware or unaware,
And Thus In Nineveh
© Ezra Pound
Aye! I am a poet and upon my tomb
Shall maidens scatter rose leaves
And men myrtles, ere the night
Slays day with her dark sword.
The Glories Of The Present
© Edgar Albert Guest
WHAT of the glories after death,
When this frail form gives up its breath?
Bahaman
© Bliss William Carman
To T. B. M.
IN the crowd that thronged the pierhead, come to see their friends take ship
America
© Allen Ginsberg
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
Marry Me by Veronica Patterson: American Life in Poetry #172 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
I don't often talk about poetic forms in this column, thinking that most of my readers aren't interested in how the clock works and would rather be given the time. But the following poem by Veronica Patterson of Colorado has a subtitle referring to a form, the senryu, and I thought it might be helpful to mention that the senryu is a Japanese form similar to haiku but dealing with people rather than nature. There; enough said. Now you can forget the form and enjoy the poem, which is a beautiful sketch of a marriage.
Marry Me
when I come late to bed
I move your leg flung over my sideâ
that warm gate
Not Understood
© George MacDonald
Tumultuous rushing o'er the outstretched plains;
A wildered maze of comets and of suns;
For Christmas Day, Hark! the Herald Angels Sing
© Martin Madan
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.
The Supper
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Blind Roger
Set the glass in my hand. I'm blind and old,
But still I shun to be left in the cold.
A Promise. "By the pure spring, whose haunted waters flow"
© Frances Anne Kemble
By the pure spring, whose haunted waters flow
Through thy sequestered dell unto the sea,
