Life poems
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Stanzas To Jessy
© George Gordon Byron
There is a mystic thread of life
So dearly wreath'd with mine alone,
That Destiny's relentless knife
At once must sever both, or none.
The Legend of King Arthur
© Thomas Percy
Of Brutus' blood, in Brittaine borne,
King Arthur I am to name;
Through Christendome and Heathynesse
Well knowne is my worthy fame.
The Glimpse
© William Watson
Just for a day you crossed my life's dull track,
Put my ignobler dreams to sudden shame,
Went your bright way, and left me to fall back
On my own world of poorer deed and aim;
In The Hill At New Grange
© Robinson Jeffers
Great upright stones higher than the height of a man are our walls,
Huge overlapping stones are the summer clouds in our sky.
The hill of boulders is heaped over all. Each hundred years
One of the enormous stones will move an inch in the dark.
Each double century one of the oaks on the crown of the mound
Above us breaks in a wind, an oak or an ash grows.
Dream Song 14: Life, friends, is boring
© John Berryman
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatedly) 'Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no
The Cloud's Swan-Song
© Francis Thompson
There is a parable in the pathless cloud,
There's prophecy in heaven,--they did not lie,
The Chaldee shepherds; seal-ed from the proud,
To cheer the weighted heart that mates the seeing eye.
At the Top of My voice
© Vladimir Mayakovsky
Professor,
take off your bicycle glasses!
I myself will expound
those times
and myself.
The Virgin Martyr
© Ada Cambridge
Every wild she-bird has nest and mate in the warm April weather,
But a captive woman, made for love - no mate, no nest has she.
In the spring of young desire, young men and maids are wed together,
And the happy mothers flaunt their bliss for all the world to see:
Nature's sacramental feast for these - an empty board for me.
The Ashes by Karin Gottshall: American Life in Poetry #21 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
How many of us, alone at a grave or coming upon the site of some remembered event, find ourselves speaking to a friend or loved one who has died? In this poem by Karin Gottshall the speaker addresses someone's ashes as she casts them from a bridge. I like the way the ashes take on new life as they merge with the wind.
The Ashes
You were carried here by hands
and now the wind has you, gritty
as incense, dark sparkles borne
Summum Bonum
© Peter McArthur
HOW blest is he that can but love and do
And has no skill of speech nor trick of art
Call To Account!
© Vladimir Mayakovsky
The drum of war thunders and thunders.
It calls: thrust iron into the living.
From every country
slave after slave
The First Part: Sonnet 3 - Ye who so curiously do paint your thoughts,
© William Henry Drummond
Ye who so curiously do paint your thoughts,
Enlight'ning ev'ry line in such a guise,
Notes To Be Left In A Cornerstone
© Stephen Vincent Benet
So, always, there were the streets and the high, clear light
And it was a crowded island and a great city;
They built high up in the air.
Advice To The Ladies At Bath. Written By A Lady.
© Mary Barber
Ye heedless Fair, who trifle Life away,
Let either Brownlow set your Notions right:
Be, like the Daughter, innocently gay;
Or, like the Mother, prudent and polite.
Home's Kid (For Glenn)
© Dale Harcombe
This time I know
I will never see him again.
For a time he played the game,
like a child experimenting with blocks,
Quest for Thee
© Vanessa Perkins
pain used to hurt
the words cut me life a knife
shame filled my head at night
I used to think there was no place to go
i searched for a place
to hide and bury my thoughts
XIII: Epistle: To Katherine, Lady Aubigny
© Benjamin Jonson
'Tis growne almost a danger to speake true
Of any good minde, now: There are so few.
Two Centuries
© Katharine Lee Bates
Above the tall elms' green-plumed tops, etched against low-hung, gray-hued skies,
Straight as the heaven-kissing pine, the home-bound mariner descries
The goodly spire of the old first church, reverend, serene, with old-time grace,
Symbol and sign of an inner life deep-sealed by time's slow carven trace.
The Bride of Frankenstein
© Edward Field
The Baron has decided to mate the monster,
to breed him perhaps,
in the interests of pure science, his only god.
Curse of the Cat Woman
© Edward Field
It sometimes happens
that the woman you meet and fall in love with
is of that strange Transylvanian people
with an affinity for cats.
