Life poems
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The Princess (part 2)
© Alfred Tennyson
At break of day the College Portress came:
She brought us Academic silks, in hue
Spring And All
© William Carlos Williams
By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeasta cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
To the Myrtle
© Mary Darby Robinson
UNFADING branch of verdant hue,
In modest sweetness drest,
Shake off thy pearly tears of dew,
And decorate my breast.
The Prisoner: Pt 1
© Emily Jane Brontë
In the dungeon crypts idly did I stray,
Reckless of the lives wasting there away;
"Draw the ponderous bars; open, Warder stern!"
He dare not say me naythe hinges harshly turn.
The World as It is by Carolyn Miller : American Life in Poetry #269 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2
© Ted Kooser
It is enough for me as a reader that a poem take from life a single moment and hold it up for me to look at. There need not be anything sensational or unusual or peculiar about that moment, but somehow, by directing my attention to it, our attention to it, the poet bathes it in the light of the remarkable. Here is a poem like this by Carolyn Miller, who lives in San Francisco.
The Mistletoe (A Christmas Tale)
© Mary Darby Robinson
This Farmer, as the tale is told--
Was somewhat cross, and somewhat old!
His, was the wintry hour of life,
While summer smiled before his wife;
A contrast, rather form'd to cloy
The zest of matrimonial joy!
The Lascar
© Mary Darby Robinson
I. "Another day, Ah! me, a day
"Of dreary Sorrow is begun!
"And still I loath the temper'd ray,
"And still I hate the sickly Sun!
Soothsay
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Let no man ask thee of anything
Not yearborn between Spring and Spring.
The Hermit of Mont-Blanc
© Mary Darby Robinson
High, on the Solitude of Alpine Hills,
O'er-topping the grand imag'ry of Nature,
Where one eternal winter seem'd to reign;
An HERMIT'S threshold, carpetted with moss,
To A Dead Lover
© Louise Bogan
The dark is thrown
Back from the brightness, like hair
Cast over a shoulder.
I am alone,
The Haunted Beach
© Mary Darby Robinson
Upon a lonely desart Beach
Where the white foam was scatter'd,
A little shed uprear'd its head
Though lofty Barks were shatter'd.
The Granny Grey, a Love Tale
© Mary Darby Robinson
The DAME was silent; for the Lover
Would, when she spoke,
She fear'd, discover
Her envious joke:
And she was too much charm'd to be
In haste,--to end the Comedy!
The Deserted Cottage
© Mary Darby Robinson
Who dwelt in yonder lonely Cot,
Why is it thus forsaken?
It seems, by all the world forgot,
Above its path the high grass grows,
And through its thatch the northwind blows
--Its thatch, by tempests shaken.
The Heddybee Spectre
© George Borrow
I clomb in haste my dappled steed,
And gallop'd far o'er mount and mead;
And when the day drew nigh its close,
I laid me down to take repose.
The Confessor, a Sanctified Tale
© Mary Darby Robinson
Tho' fraud is ever sure to find
Its scorpion in the guilty mind:
Yet, PIOUS FRAUD, the DEVIL'S treasure,
Is always paid, in TENFOLD MEASURE.
The Bee and the Butterfly
© Mary Darby Robinson
UPON a garden's perfum'd bed
With various gaudy colours spread,
Beneath the shelter of a ROSE
A BUTTERFLY had sought repose;
Faint, with the sultry beams of day,
Supine the beauteous insect lay.
The Adieu to Love
© Mary Darby Robinson
Nor do I dread thy vengeful wiles,
Thy soothing voice, thy winning smiles,
Thy trick'ling tear, thy mien forlorn,
Thy pray'r, thy sighs, thy oaths I scorn;
No more on ME thy arrows show'r,
Capricious Love! I BRAVE THY POW'R.
Stanzas Written under an Oak in Windsor Forest
© Mary Darby Robinson
"HERE POPE FIRST SUNG!" O, hallow'd Tree !
Such is the boast thy bark displays;
Thy branches, like thy Patron's lays,
Shall ever, ever, sacred be;
Nor with'ring storm, nor woodman's stroke,
Shall harm the POET'S favourite Oak.
A New Pilgrimage: Sonnet XX
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Enough, dear Paris! We have laughed together,
'Tis time that we should part, lest tears should come.
I must fare on from winter and rough weather
And the dark tempests chained within Time's womb.
Stanzas to Time
© Mary Darby Robinson
CAPRICIOUS foe to human joy,
Still varying with the fleeting day;
With thee the purest raptures cloy,
The fairest prospects fade away;
