Life poems
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Retirement
© Henry Timrod
My gentle friend! I hold no creed so false
As that which dares to teach that we are born
An Elegie on Henry, fourth Erle of Northumberlande
© John Skelton
The noblenes of the north, this valiant lord and knight,
As man that was innocent of trechery or traine,
Pressed forth boldly to withstand the myght,
And, lyke marciall Hector, he faught them agayne,
Trustyng in noble men that were with him there;
Bot al they fled from hym for falshode or fere.
The Bird at Dawn
© Harold Monro
What I saw was just one eye
In the dawn as I was going :
A bird can carry all the sky
In that little button glowing.
Fragmentary Scenes From The Road To Avernus
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
Scene I
"Discontent"
LAURENCE RABY.
The Friends Burial
© John Greenleaf Whittier
My thoughts are all in yonder town,
Where, wept by many tears,
To-day my mother's friend lays down
The burden of her years.
Earth Odours--After Rain
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
Life-yielding fragrance of our Mother Earth!
Benignant breath exhaled from summer showers!-
Elegy II
© Henry James Pye
Now the brown woods their leafy load resign
And rage the tempests with resistless force?
O Intelligence Moving The Third Heaven
© Dante Alighieri
O Intelligences moving the third heaven,
the reasons heed that from my heart come forth,
so new, it seems, that no one else should know.
The heaven set in motion by your worth,
Prayer for the Dead by Stuart Kestenbaum: American Life in Poetry #181 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureat
© Ted Kooser
Stuart Kestenbaum, the author of this week's poem, lost his brother Howard in the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. We thought it appropriate to commemorate the events of September 11, 2001, by sharing this poem. The poet is the director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on Deer Isle, Maine.
Prayer for the Dead
Amends To Nature
© Arthur Symons
I have loved colours, and not flowers;
Their motion, not the swallows wings;
And wasted more than half my hours
Without the comradeship of things.
Orinda To Lucasia Parting October 1661 At London
© Katherine Philips
Adieu dear object of my Loves excess,
And with thee all my hopes of happiness,
With the same fervent and unchanged heart
Which did its whole self once to thee impart,
Elegy On A Young Thrush,
© Helen Maria Williams
Is there no foresight in a Thrush's breast,
That thou down yonder gulph from me wouldst go?
That gloomy area lurking cats infest,
And there the dog may rove, alike thy foe.
Sonnet LXXXIII: Barren Spring
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Once more the changed year's turning wheel returns:
And as a girl sails balanced in the wind,
A Man's Repentance
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
To-night when I came from the club at eleven,
Under the gaslight I saw a face-
A woman's face! and I swear to heaven
It looked like the ghastly ghost of-Grace!
Wild Flowers by Matthew Vetter: American Life in Poetry #206 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
Ah, yes, the mid-life crisis. And there's a lot of mid-life in which it can happen. Jerry Lee Lewis sang of it so well in 'He's thirty-nine and holding, holding everything he can.' And here's a fine poem by Matthew Vetter, portraying just such a man.
Wild Flowers
Give Me A Day
© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
GIVE me a day, beloved, that I may set
A jewel in my heart--I'll brave regret,
If, on the morrow, you shall say "forget"!
Flower And Voice
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Tremulous out of that long darkness, how
Wast thou, O blossom, made
Upon the wintry bough?
What drew thee to appear,
