Life poems
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Extreme Unction
© Ernest Christopher Dowson
Upon the eyes, the lips, the feet,
On all the passages of sense,
The atoning oil is spread with sweet
Renewal of lost innocence.
From 'The Hills Of Life'
© Albert Durrant Watson
ERE yet the dawn
Pushed rosy fingers up the arch of day
And smiled its promise to the voiceless prime,
Love sat and patterns wove at life's great loom.
The Shadows On The Wall
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
WHAT mournful influence chills my soul to-night?
I watch the expiring flames that fade and fall,
From which outleap vague shafts of arrowy light,
Pursued by spectral shadows on the wall.
A Congratulatory Poem
© Aphra Behn
All that is Wit, all that is Eloquence.
The Births of finest Thought and Noblest Sense,
Easie and Natural from your Language break,
Second Sunday After Christmas
© John Keble
And wilt thou hear the fevered heart
To Thee in silence cry?
A Question
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
I.
SOUL, spirit, genius--which thou art--that whence
I know not, rose upon this mortal frame
Like the sun o'er the mountains, all aflame,
Mother Earth
© Henry Van Dyke
Mother of all the high-strung poets and singers departed,
Mother of all the grass that weaves over their graves the glory of the field,
The Sky-Blue Smiles Above The Roof
© Paul Verlaine
The sky-blue smiles above the roof
Its tenderest;
A green tree rears above the roof
Its waving crest.
Ode On The Death Of A Lady, Who Lived One Hundred Years, And Died On Her Birthday, 1728 (Translation
© William Cowper
Ancient dame, how wide and vast
To a race like ours appears,
Rounded to an orb at last,
All thy multitude of years!
Why, When Our Sun Shines Clearest
© James Clerk Maxwell
Why, when our sun shines clearest,
Why, when our hopes seen nearest,
Doctor Hilaire
© William Henry Drummond
A stranger might say if he see heem drink till he almos' fall,
"Doctor lak dat for sick folk, hes never no use at all,"
But wait till you hear de story dey 're tellin' about heem yet,
An' see if you don't hear somet'ing, mebbe you won't forget.
Ghosts of Dreams
© William Herbert Carruth
We are all of us dreamers of dreams,
On visions our childhood is fed;
And the heart of a child is unhaunted, it seems,
By ghosts of dreams that are dead.
First Grade by Ron Koertge : American Life in Poetry #230 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
It’s been sixty-odd years since I was in the elementary grades, but I clearly remember those first school days in early autumn, when summer was suddenly over and we were all perched in our little desks facing into the future. Here Ron Koertge of California gives us a glimpse of a day like that.
First Grade
Aubade by Dore Kiesselbach : American Life in Poetry #237 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
An aubade is a poem about separation at dawn, but as you’ll see, this one by Dore Kiesselbach, who lives in Minnesota, is about the complex relationship between a son and his mother.
Aubade
The Wanderer From The Fold
© Emily Jane Brontë
How few, of all the hearts that loved,
Are grieving for thee now;
And why should mine to-night be moved
With such a sense of woe?
"Love is not love . . . "
© Lesbia Harford
When I was still a child
I thought my love would be
Noble, truthful, brave,
And very kind to me.
Peripeteia
© Anthony Evan Hecht
Of course, the familiar rustling of programs,
My hair mussed from behind by a grand gesture
A Song Of Derivations
© Alice Meynell
I come from nothing; but from where
Come the undying thoughts I bear?
Down, through the long links of death and birth,
From the past poets of the earth,
My immortality is there.
