Life poems

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A Mothers Song

© Robert Laurence Binyon

Over fast--closed baby eyes
In the garden's golden air
Blossom--white the butterflies
Hover, hurry, part and pair,
Sudden shinings, flown nowhere!
Blue, above, the unbounded skies!

A Womans Apology

© Alfred Austin

In the green darkness of a summer wood,
Wherethro' ran winding ways, a lady stood,
Carved from the air in curving womanhood.

The Rock Of The Betrayed

© Caroline Norton

IT was a Highland chieftain's son
Gazed sadly from the hill:
And they saw him shrink from the autumn wind,
As its blast came keen and chill.
II.

To One In A Garden

© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

If I were other than, alas, I am,
A soul in strife, whom banded foemen vex,
If toil were folly and good deeds a sham,
And hydra wrong had shed its serpent necks,

Silent Music by Floyd Skloot: American Life in Poetry #94 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006

While many of the poems we feature in this column are written in open forms, that's not to say I don't respect good writing done in traditional meter and rhyme. But a number of contemporary poets, knowing how a rigid attachment to form can take charge of the writing and drag the poet along behind, will choose, say, the traditional villanelle form, then relax its restraints through the use of broken rhythm and inexact rhymes. I'd guess that if I weren't talking about it, you might not notice, reading this poem by Floyd Skloot, that you were reading a sonnet.

Silent Music

Homeward Going

© Roderic Quinn

GRAY smoke in the green leaves,
Someone homeward going,
No sound in the lone hills . . .
Only cattle lowing.

Stella Maris

© Arthur Symons

Why is it I remember yet

You, of all women one has met

Rubaiyat 22

© Shams al-Din Hafiz

I needed to hang on to her curly ring,
Help me please, let my affairs take wing.
Said, release my hair, instead take my lips,
Let go of long life, with good times swing.

Andromeda

© Charles Kingsley

Over the sea, past Crete, on the Syrian shore to the southward,

Dwells in the well-tilled lowland a dark-haired AEthiop people,

Les Noyades

WHATEVER a man of the sons of men
Shall say to his heart of the lords above,
They have shown man verily, once and again,
Marvellous mercies and infinite love.

On the Death of a Young Gentleman

And thy full joys into their bosoms pour;
The raging tempest of their grief control,
And spread the dawn of glory through the soul,
To eye the path the saint departed trod,
And trace him to the bosom of his God.

Medical History by Carrie Shipers: American Life in Poetry #152 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-

© Ted Kooser

A child with a sense of the dramatic, well, many of us have been that child. Here's Carrie Shipers of Missouri reminiscing about how she once wished for a dramatic rescue by screaming ambulance, only to find she was really longing for the comfort of her mother's hands.

Medical History