Life poems
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Orlie Wilde
© James Whitcomb Riley
A goddess, with a siren's grace,-
A sun-haired girl on a craggy place
Above a bay where fish-boats lay
Drifting about like birds of prey.
Anchored
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
If thro' the sea of night
which here summons me,
I could swim out beyond
the farthest star,
To Failure
© Philip Larkin
It is these sunless afternoons, I find
Install you at my elbow like a bore
The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I'm
Aware the days pass quicker than before,
Smell staler too. And once they fall behind
They look like ruin. You have been here some time.
House-Hunting
© Edgar Albert Guest
Time was when spring returned we went
To find another home to rent;
We wanted fresher, cleaner walls,
And bigger rooms and wider halls,
And open plumbing and the dome
That made the fashionable home.
The Minstrel; Or, The Progress Of Genius : Book I.
© James Beattie
I.
Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar!
Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime
When First We Faced, And Touching Showed
© Philip Larkin
When first we faced, and touching showed
How well we knew the early moves,
Behind the moonlight and the frost,
The excitement and the gratitude,
There stood how much our meeting owed
To other meetings, other loves.
The Explosion
© Philip Larkin
On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the pithead.
In the sun the slagheap slept.
The Song Of Honour
© Ralph Hodgson
I heard no more of bird or bell,
The mastiff in a slumber fell,
I stared into the sky,
As wondering men have always done
Since beauty and the stars were one,
Though none so hard as I.
Maturity
© Philip Larkin
A stationary sense... as, I suppose,
I shall have, till my single body grows
Inaccurate, tired;
Then I shall start to feel the backward pull
Take over, sickening and masterful -
Some say, desired.
At 14 by Don Welch: American Life in Poetry #201 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Don Welch lives in Nebraska and is one of those many talented American poets who have never received as much attention as they deserve. His poems are distinguished by the meticulous care he puts into writing them, and by their deep intelligence. Here is Welch's picture of a 14-year-old, captured at that awkward and painfully vulnerable step on the way to adulthood.
At 14
To be shy,
to lower your eyes
after making a greeting.
Poetry Of Departures
© Philip Larkin
Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
Toads
© Philip Larkin
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Sonnet To Fanny Alexander
© James Russell Lowell
Unconscious as the sunshine, simply sweet
And generous as that, thou dost not close
The Grog-an'Grumble Steeplechase
© Henry Lawson
'Twixt the coastline and the border lay the town of Grog-an'-Grumble
In the days before the bushman was a dull 'n' heartless drudge,
In the Hour of Trial
© James Montgomery
In the hour of trial, Jesus, plead for me,
Lest by base denial I depart from Thee.
When Thou seest me waver, with a look recall,
Nor for fear or favor suffer me to fall.
Annus Mirabilis
© Philip Larkin
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
A Moral Vindicator
© Francis Bret Harte
If Mr. Jones, Lycurgus B.,
Had one peculiar quality,
'Twas his severe advocacy
Of conjugal fidelity.
High Windows
© Philip Larkin
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise
Truth in advertising
© Yahia Lababidi
morning epiphany
applicable to love and life
in haiku-like purity:
The Empty Nest
© William Watson
I saunter all about the pleasant place
You made thrice pleasant, O my friends, to me;
