Life poems
/ page 652 of 844 /
If
© Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
Visitation
© Mark Doty
When I heard he had entered the harbor,
and circled the wharf for days,
I expected the worst: shallow water,
To The Recluse, Wei Pa
© Du Fu
Often in this life of ours we resemble, in our failure to meet, the Shen and
Shang constellations, one of which rises as the other one sets. What lucky
chance is it, then, that brings us together this evening under the light of
this same lamp? Youth and vigor last but a little time. -- Each of us now has
The Christian Slave
© John Greenleaf Whittier
A CHRISTIAN! going, gone!
Who bids for God's own image? for his grace,
Which that poor victim of the market-place
Hath in her suffering won?
A Display Of Mackeral
© Mark Doty
They lie in parallel rows,
on ice, head to tail,
each a foot of luminosity
barred with black bands,
which divide the scales'
radiant sections
My Love, Oh, She Is My Love
© Douglas Hyde
SHE casts a spell, oh, casts a spell!
Which haunts me more than I can tell.
The Raft
© Vachel Lindsay
A banjo and a hymn are heard afar.
No solace on the lazy shore excels
The Duke's blue castle with its steamer-bells.
The floor is running water, and the roof
The stars' brocade with cloudy warp and woof.
Forgive Me
© Judith Skillman
Poem by Anne-Marie Derése, translated by Judith Skillman.Forgive me if I have laughed
in your chapels,
forgive me if I have slammed
the hospital door,
I'm Out Of The Army Now
© Franklin Pierce Adams
When first I doffed my olive drab,
I thought, delightfully though mutely,
"Henceforth I shall have pleasure ab-
Solutely."
The Dead Feast of the Kol-Folk
© John Greenleaf Whittier
We have opened the door,
Once, twice, thrice!
Kerr's Ass
© Patrick Kavanagh
We borrowed the loan of Kerr's ass
To go to Dundalk with butter,
Brought him home the evening before the market
And exile that night in Mucker.
Womanly Qualms
© Ellis Parker Butler
When I go rowing on the lake,
I long to be a man;
Ill give my Sunday frock to have
A callous heart like Dan.
Woolworth's
© Mark Hillringhouse
for Greg FallonA kid yells "Mother Fucker" out the school bus window.
I don't think anyone notices the afternoon clouds turning pink along the horizon,
sunlight dripping down the stone facades,
the ancient names of old stores fading like the last century
A Dedication
© Robert Burns
The Poet, some guid angel help him,
Or else, I fear, some ill ane skelp him!
He may do weel for a' he's done yet,
But only-he's no just begun yet.
Madness
© Henry James Pye
Here some grave Man whose head with prudence fraught
Was ne'er disturb'd by one eccentric thought,
Who without meaning rolls his leaden eyes,
And being stupid, fancies he is wise,
May with sagacious sneers my case deplore,
And urge the use of rest, and Hellebore.
The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye To His Poetry Students
© Galway Kinnell
Goodbye,
you who are, for me, the postmarks again
of shattered towns-Xenia, Burnt Cabins, Hornell-
their loneliness
given away in poems, only their solitude kept.
Fragment At Tunbridge-Wells
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
FOR He, that made, must new create us,
Ere Seneca, or Epictetus,
