Life poems
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A Lay Of St. Gengulphus
© Richard Harris Barham
Gengulphus comes from the Holy Land,
With his scrip, and his bottle, and sandal shoon;
Full many a day has he been away,
Yet his Lady deems him return'd full soon.
In Black
© Joyce Sutphen
The image that haunts me is not beautiful.
I do not think it will open into a field
of wildflowers; I doubt that it will take
wing suddenly, startling us into admiration.
Venus And Adonis
© William Shakespeare
TO THE
RIGHT HONORABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY,
EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, AND BARON OF TICHFIELD.
RIGHT HONORABLE,
Faint Music
© Robert Hass
Maybe you need to write a poem about grace.
When everything broken is broken,
In Memoriam W.M & E.B.J.
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Mad are we all, maids, men, young fools alike and old,
All we that wander blind and want the with to dare.
Dark through the world we go, dazed sheep, across life's wold,
Edged from the flowers we loved by our herd's crook of care.
Bowery Afternoon
© Lola Ridge
Drab discoloration
Of faces, façades, pawn-shops,
Second-hand clothing,
Smoky and fly-blown glass of lunch-rooms,
Odors of rancid life…
Hymn To Energy
© Arthur Symons
God is; and because life omnipotent
Gives birth to life, or of itself must die,
The Choosing Of Valentines
© Thomas Nashe
It was the merie moneth of Februarie,
When yong men, in their iollie roguerie,
Rose earelie in the morne fore breake of daie,
To seeke them valentines soe trimme and gaie;
The Pleasures of Hope: Part 1
© Thomas Campbell
At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering bills below,
After The Accident
© Francis Bret Harte
What I want is my husband, sir,--
And if you're a man, sir,
You'll give me an answer,--
Where is my Joe?
How to Continue
© John Ashbery
Oh there once was a woman
and she kept a shop
selling trinkets to tourists
not far from a dock
who came to see what life could be
far back on the island.
All through eternity
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
They have together
since the beginning of time-
Side by side, step by step.
Marlburyes Fate
© Benjamin Tompson
When London's fatal bills were blown abroad
And few but Specters travel'd on the road,
Recollections of the Arabian Nights
© Alfred Tennyson
When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free
In the silken sail of infancy,
Spinning by Kevin Griffith : American Life in Poetry #217 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
American literature is rich with poems about the passage of time, and the inevitability of change, and how these affect us. Here is a poem by Kevin Griffith, who lives in Ohio, in which the years accelerate by their passing.
Spinning
Paradise Lost: Book XI (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
He added not, for Adam at the newes
Heart-strook with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discover'd soon the place of her retire.
Paradise Lost: Book IX
© Patrick Kavanagh
So gloz'd the Tempter, and his proem tun'd.
Into the heart of Eve his words made way,
Though at the voice much marvelling; at length,
Not unamaz'd, she thus in answer spake:
One Year Old
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Is it we that are wise, is it we,
Who have bought with a price of grief
A wisdom seldom free
From scorn or disbelief,
Fundamentalism
© Naomi Shihab Nye
The boy with the broken pencil
scrapes his little knife against the lead
turning and turning it as a point
emerges from the wood again
