Life poems
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Baudelaire
© Delmore Schwartz
When I fall asleep, and even during sleep,
I hear, quite distinctly, voices speaking
Whole phrases, commonplace and trivial,
Having no relation to my affairs.
Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day
© Delmore Schwartz
Calmly we walk through this April’s day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
The House of Time
© Stephen Edgar
And fleetingly it seemed to him
That in between one eye blink and the next
Vandergast and the Girl
© Louis Simpson
Vandergast to his neighbors—
the grinding of a garage door
and hiss of gravel in the driveway.
Close Of Our Summer At Frascati
© Frances Anne Kemble
The end is come: in thunder and wild rain
Autumn has stormed the golden house of Summer.
To a Marsh Hawk in Spring
© Henry David Thoreau
There is health in thy gray wing,
Health of natures furnishing.
The Wound-Dresser
© Walt Whitman
But in silence, in dreams’ projections,
While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,
So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand,
With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for you up there,
Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.)
Christmas Away from Home
© Jane Kenyon
Her sickness brought me to Connecticut.
Mornings I walk the dog: that part of life
is intact. Who's painted, who's insulated
or put siding on, who's burned the lawn
with lime—that's the news on Ardmore Street.
Dean Stanley
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
DEAD! dead! in sooth his marbled brow is cold,
And prostrate lies that brave, majestic head;
True! his stilled features own death's arctic mould,
Yet, by Christ's blood, I know he is not dead!
“Actuarial File”
© Jean Valentine
Orange peels, burned letters, the car lights shining on the grass,
everything goes somewhere—and everything we do—nothing
ever disappears. But changes. The roar of the sun in photographs.
Inching shorelines. Ice lines. The cells of our skin; our meetings,
our solitudes. Our eyes.
Little Air
© Stéphane Mallarme
Any solitude
Without a swan or quai
Mirrors its disuse
In the look I abdicate
from “An Attempt at Jealousy”
© Marina Tsvetaeva
How is your life with that other one?
Simpler, is it? A stroke of the oars
and a long coastline—
and the memory of me
Address to Venus
© Lucretius
Delight of Human kind, and Gods above;
Parent of Rome; Propitious Queen of Love;
Acon and Rhodope; or, Inconstancy
© Heather Fuller
First of those
Who visited upon this solemn day
The Hamadryad’s oak, were Rhodope
And Acon; of one age, one hope, one trust.
Graceful was she as was the nymph whose fate
She sorrowed for: he slender, pale, and first
My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun
© Emily Dickinson
My Life had stood-a Loaded Gun-
In Corners-till a Day
The Owner passed-identified-
And carried Me away-
A Broken Prayer
© George MacDonald
I am a denseness 'twixt me and the light;
1 cannot round myself; my purest thought,
Ere it is thought, hath caught the taint of earth,
And mocked me with hard thoughts beyond my will.
The Magic Shoes
© Charles Godfrey Leland
IT was stiller, dimmer twilight - amber toornin' into gold,
Like young maidens' hairs get yellow und more dark as dey crow old;
Und dere shtood a high ruine vhere de Donau rooshed along,
All lofely, yet neclected - like an oldt und silent song.
A Song Of Roses
© Virna Sheard
'Tis time to sing of roses: of roses all ablow,
To every vagrant passing breeze they dip a courtesy low,
'Tis time to sing of roses! for June is here, you know.
