Life poems
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The Scholar-Gipsy
© Matthew Arnold
Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill;
Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes!
Walking Parker Home
© Bob Kaufman
Sweet beats of jazz impaled on slivers of wind
Kansas Black Morning/ First Horn Eyes/
In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 55
© Alfred Tennyson
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?
The Picture, Or The Lover's Resolution
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Through weeds and thorns, and matted underwood
I force my way; now climb, and now descend
O'er rocks, or bare or mossy, with wild foot
Crushing the purple whorts; while oft unseen,
Urban Renewal
© Yusef Komunyakaa
The sun slides down behind brick dust,
today’s angle of life. Everything
Imaginary Suicides
© Kostas Karyotakis
They turn the key in the door, take out
their old, well-hidden letters,
read them quietly, then drag
their feet a final time.
The Motorcyclists
© James Tate
but I still can’t eat eggplant. He says I’ll be the first
woman President, it’d be a waste since I talk so much.
Which do you think the fixtures are in the bathroom
at the White House, gold or brass? It’d be okay with me
if they were just brass. Honey, can we stop soon?
I really hate to say it but I need a lady’s room.
Hour-Glass And Bible
© William Lisle Bowles
Look, Christian, on thy Bible, and that glass
That sheds its sand through minutes, hours, and days,
A Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night
© Henry Timrod
Oh! dost thou flatter falsely, Hope?
The day hath scarcely passed that saw thy birth,
VIII. To the River Itchin, near Winton.
© William Lisle Bowles
ITCHIN, when I behold thy banks again,
Thy crumbling margin, and thy silver breast,
An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician
© Robert Browning
Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,
The not-incurious in God's handiwork
A Woman on the Dump
© Debora Greger
Is it peace,
Is it a philosopher’s honeymoon, one finds
On the dump?
—Wallace Stevens
Out of the cracks of cups and their handles, missing,
the leaves unceremoniously tossed, unread,
from a stubble of coffee ground ever more finely
into these hollowed grounds,
H. S. Mauberley (Life and Contacts) [Part I]
© Ezra Pound
E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start i
Olney Hymn 2: Jehovah-Jireh: The Lord Will Provide
© William Cowper
The saints should never be dismay'd,
Nor sink in hopeless fear;
For when they least expect His aid,
The Saviour will appear.
Original Sin
© Robinson Jeffers
Meanwhile the intense color and nobility of sunrise,
Rose and gold and amber, flowed up the sky. Wet rocks were shining, a little wind
Stirred the leaves of the forest and the marsh flag-flowers; the soft valley between the low hills
Became as beautiful as the sky; while in its midst, hour after hour, the happy hunters
Roasted their living meat slowly to death.
Design
© Billy Collins
I pour a coating of salt on the table
and make a circle in it with my finger.
Invocation To Misery
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
I.
Come, be happy!sit near me,
Shadow-vested Misery:
Coy, unwilling, silent bride,
Mourning in thy robe of pride,
Desolationdeified!
America Politica Historia, in Spontaneity
© Gregory Corso
O this political air so heavy with the bells
and motors of a slow night, and no place to rest
