Life poems
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Hannah
© Thomas Parnell
Then Seek ye Subject & its song be mine
Whose numbers next in Sacred story shine;
Go brightly-working thought, prepard to fly
Above ye page on hov'ring pinnions ly,
& beat with stronger force to make thee rise
Where beautious Hannah meets ye searching eyes.
"I cry your mercy-pity-love! -aye, love!"
© John Keats
I cry your mercypitylove!aye, love!
Merciful love that tantalizes not,
Ode Read At The One Hundreth Anniversary Of The Fight At Concord Bridge
© James Russell Lowell
I
Who cometh over the hills,
Coole Park 1929
© William Butler Yeats
I MEDITATE upon a swallow's flight,
Upon a aged woman and her house,
A Summer Garden
© Louise Gluck
1
Several weeks ago I discovered a photograph of my mother
sitting in the sun, her face flushed as with achievement or triumph.
The sun was shining. The dogs
were sleeping at her feet where time was also sleeping,
calm and unmoving as in all photographs.
Poem 1 From Pierce Penilesse
© Thomas Nashe
Why ist damnation to dispaire and die,
When life is my true happinesse disease?
My soule, my soule, thy safetye makes me flie
The faultie meanes, that might my paine appease.
from The Vanity of Human Wishes
© Henry James Pye
Yet still one genral cry the skies assails,
And gain and grandeur load the tainted gales,
Few know the toiling statesmans fear or care,
Th insidious rival and the gaping heir.
From 'Love And The Universe'
© Albert Durrant Watson
THE voiceless symphony of moor and highland,
The rainbow on the mist,
Sea Fever
© John Brooks Wheelwright
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
Venus of the Louvre
© Emma Lazarus
Down the long hall she glistens like a star,
The foam-born mother of Love, transfixed to stone,
Two Robbers
© Francis William Bourdillon
When Death from some fair face
Is stealing life away,
All weep, save she, the grace
That earth shall lose today.
The Bounty
© Derek Walcott
Between the vision of the Tourist Board and the true
Paradise lies the desert where Isaiah’s elations
force a rose from the sand. The thirty-third canto
Song (“The world is full of loss ... ”)
© Katha Pollitt
The world is full of loss; bring, wind, my love,
my home is where we make our meeting-place,
and love whatever I shall touch and read
within that face.
Glory To God; To Men Good Will!
© Joseph Furphy
Opposed to Jewish Temple-rites,
Strange to the lore of Greece,
That message comes from starry heights,
A key to lasting Peace.
What-e'er our creed, we own its thrill
"Glory to God; to men good will!"
Humidifier
© Louise Gluck
—After Robert Pinsky
Defier of closed space, such as the head, opener
Of the sealed passageways, so that
Sunlight entering the nose can once again
The Vacuum
© Howard Nemerov
The house is so quiet now
The vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet,
Its bag limp as a stopped lung, its mouth
Grinning into the floor, maybe at my
Slovenly life, my dog-dead youth.
The Elements of San Joaquin
© Gary Soto
The wind sprays pale dirt into my mouth
The small, almost invisible scars
On my hands.
Mother and Child, Body and Soul
© Jean Valentine
Mother
It was autumn
I couldn't hear the students
only the music coming in the window,
Se tu m’ami
If you love me
