Life poems
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A Story At Dusk
© Ada Cambridge
An evening all aglow with summer light
And autumn colour-fairest of the year.
Vers De Société
© Philip Larkin
My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps
To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
You'd care to join us? In a pig's arse, friend.
Day comes to an end.
The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed.
And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I'm afraid--
Wants
© Philip Larkin
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone:
However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards
However we follow the printed directions of sex
However the family is photographed under the flag-staff -
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.
Goldilocks And Goldilocks
© William Morris
It was Goldilocks woke up in the morn
At the first of the shearing of the corn.
The Wounded
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
'Thou canst not wish to live,' the surgeon said.
He clutched him, as a soul thrust forth from bliss
On First Looking Into Bee Palmer's Shoulders
© Franklin Pierce Adams
Then felt I like some patient with a pain
When a new surgeon swims into his ken,
Or like stout Brodie, when, with reeling brain,
He jumped into the river. There and then
I swayed and took the morning train
To Norwalk, Naugatuck, and Darien.
To A Friend In Bereavement
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
No comfort, nay, no comfort. Yet would I
In Sorrow's cause with Sorrow intercede.
Westward Ho!
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
We should not sit us down and sigh,
My girl, whose brow a fane appears,
Whose steadfast eyes look royally
Backwards and forwards o'er the years--
Nothing To Be Said
© Philip Larkin
For nations vague as weed,
For nomads among stones,
Small-statured cross-faced tribes
And cobble-close families
In mill-towns on dark mornings
Life is slow dying.
The Escape
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Destiny drives a crooked plough
And sows a careless seed;
Now through a heart she cuts, and now
She helps a helpless need.
Faith Healing
© Philip Larkin
Slowly the women file to where he stands
Upright in rimless glasses, silver hair,
Dark suit, white collar. Stewards tirelessly
Persuade them onwards to his voice and hands,
Essential Beauty
© Philip Larkin
In frames as large as rooms that face all ways
And block the ends of streets with giant loaves,
Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise
Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon, shine
Solace
© Peter McArthur
WHEN friends forsake and fortune in despite
Of Thy rich bounty strips me to the wind,
His Lady Of The Sonnets X
© Robert Norwood
I looked on you and breathed upon your hair
Your hair of such soft, brown, translucent gold!
Nor did you know that I knelt down in prayer,
Clasped hands, and worshipped you for the untold
Magnificence of womanhood divine
God's miracle of Water turned to Wine!
Dockery And Son
© Philip Larkin
'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he?' said the Dean. 'His son's here now.'
Death-suited, visitant, I nod. 'And do
You keep in touch with-' Or remember how
Money
© Philip Larkin
Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me:
'Why do you let me lie here wastefully?
I am all you never had of goods and sex,
You could get them still by writing a few cheques.'
Sunny Prestatyn
© Philip Larkin
Come to Sunny Prestatyn
Laughed the girl on the poster,
Kneeling up on the sand
In tautened white satin.
I Have Started To Say
© Philip Larkin
I have started to say
"A quarter of a century"
Or "thirty years back"
About my own life.
Quinquagesima Sunday
© John Keble
Sweet Dove! the softest, steadiest plume,
In all the sunbright sky,
Brightening in ever-changeful bloom
As breezes change on high; -
