Life poems
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Who Understands Me but Me
© James Russell Lowell
They turn the water off, so I live without water,
they build walls higher, so I live without treetops,
A Rector's Memory
© Rudyard Kipling
The, Gods that are wiser than Learning
But kinder than Life have made sure
Immigrants in Our Own Land
© James Russell Lowell
We are born with dreams in our hearts,
looking for better days ahead.
The Snowmass Cycle
© Stephen Dunn
If the rich are casually cruel
perhaps its because
they can stare at the sky
and never see an indictment
in the shape of clouds.
Insomnia and the Seven Steps to Grace
© Joy Harjo
At dawn the panther of the heavens peers over the edge of the world.
She hears the stars gossip with the sun, sees the moon washing her lean
darkness with water electrified by prayers. All over the world there are those
who can't sleep, those who never awaken.
The Dream
© Caroline Norton
Ah! bless'd are they for whom 'mid all their pains
That faithful and unalter'd love remains;
Who, Life wreck'd round them,--hunted from their rest,--
And, by all else forsaken or distress'd,--
Claim, in one heart, their sanctuary and shrine--
As I, my Mother, claim'd my place in thine!
Little Elsie
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
An, don't come a-wooing with your long, long face,
And your longer purse behind:
Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg
© André Breton
When first, descending from the moorlands,
I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide
Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.
Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher
© Heather Fuller
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:
I warmd both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.
Snip Your Hair by Regina DeSalva: American Life in Poetry #128 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
Our poet this week is 16-year-old Devon Regina DeSalva of Los Angeles, California, who says she wrote this poem to get back at her mother, only to find that her mother loved the poem.
Snip Your Hair
The Dream of Freedom
© Owen Suffolk
'Twas night, and the moonbeams palely fell
On the gloomy walls of a cheerless cell,
Torment
© Daisy Fried
“I fucked up bad”: Justin cracks his neck,
talking to nobody. Fifteen responsible children,
Homage To Sextus Propertius - XII
© Ezra Pound
Upon the Actian marshes Virgil is Phoebus' chief of police,
He can tabulate Caesar's great ships.
He thrills to Ilian arms,
He shakes the Trojan weapons of Aeneas,
And casts stores on Lavinian beaches.
from The Prelude: Book 2: School-time (Continued)
© André Breton
Fare Thee well!
Health, and the quiet of a healthful mind
Attend thee! seeking oft the haunts of men,
And yet more often living with Thyself,
And for Thyself, so haply shall thy days
Be many, and a blessing to mankind.
The Winding Stair
© William Butler Yeats
My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
from The Faerie Queene: Book I, Canto I
© Edmund Spenser
Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Mild is the Parting Year
© Heather Fuller
Mild is the parting year, and sweet
The odour of the falling spray;
Life passes on more rudely fleet,
And balmless is its closing day.
Elegy X
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Yet the dead youth must go on alone.
In silence the elder Lament brings him
as far as the gorge where it shimmers in the moonlight:
The Foutainhead of Joy. With reverance she names it,
saying: "In the world of mankind it is a life-bearing stream."
Lycidas
© Patrick Kavanagh
Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
Tristram And Iseult
© Matthew Arnold
Tristram. Is she not come? The messenger was sure
Prop me upon the pillows once again
Raise me, my page! this cannot long endure.
Christ, what a night! how the sleet whips the pane!
What lights will those out to the northward be?
