Life poems
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Satire II:The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse
© Sir Thomas Wyatt
MY mother's maids, when they did sew and spin,
They sang sometime a song of the field mouse,
That for because her livelood was but thin [livelihood]
Would needs go seek her townish sister's house.
Of the Mean and Sure Estate
© Sir Thomas Wyatt
My mother's maids, when they did sew and spin,
They sang sometime a song of the field mouse,
That, for because her livelood was but thin,
Lord May I Come?
© Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal
Life and night are falling from me,
Death and day are opening on me,
Wherever my footsteps come and go,
Life is a stony way of woe.
Lord, have I long to go?
Mine Own John Poynz
© Sir Thomas Wyatt
Mine own John Poynz, since ye delight to know
The cause why that homeward I me draw,
And flee the press of courts, whereso they go,
Rather than to live thrall under the awe
Ballad of Autumn
© Marie E J Pitt
DOWN harvest headlands the fairy host
Of the poppy banners have flashed and fled,
I Find No Peace
© Sir Thomas Wyatt
I find no peace, and all my war is done.
I fear and hope. I burn and freeze like ice.
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise;
And nought I have, and all the world I season.
Perhaps not to be is to be without your being.
© Pablo Neruda
Perhaps not to be is to be without your being,
without your going, that cuts noon light
like a blue flower, without your passing
later through fog and stones,
Forget Not Yet
© Sir Thomas Wyatt
Forget not yet the tried intent
Of such a truth as I have meant
My great travail so gladly spent
Forget not yet.
Twenty-Third Sunday After Trinity
© John Keble
Red o'er the forest peers the setting sun,
The line of yellow light dies fast away
That crowned the eastern copse: and chill and dun
Falls on the moor the brief November day.
The Sisters
© Judith Wright
In the vine-shadows on the veranda;
under the yellow leaves, in the cooling sun,
sit two sisters. Their slow voices run
like little winter creeks, dwindled by frost and wind,
and the square of sunlight moves on the veranda.
Alas Madam for Stealing of a Kiss
© Sir Thomas Wyatt
Alas, madam, for stealing of a kiss
Have I so much your mind there offended?
Have I then done so grievously amiss
That by no means it may be amended?
To Stella Visiting Me in My Sickness
© Jonathan Swift
Pallas, observing Stella's wit
Was more than for her sex was fit,
And that her beauty, soon or late,
Might breed confusion in the state,
To Mother
© Marina Tsvetaeva
In the old Strauss waltz for the first time
We had listened to your quiet call,
Since then all the living things are alien
And the knocking of the clock consoles.
The After-Glow
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Suspicion's playful counterfeit
Begot your question strange:
The Demon In Me
© Marina Tsvetaeva
The demon in me's not dead,
He's living, and well.
In the body as in a hold,
In the self as in a cell.
The Northern Spring
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
WHEN the soft breath of Spring goes forth
Far o'er the mountains of the North,
How soon those wastes of dazzling snow
With life, and bloom, and beauty glow.
In My Youth I Was a Tireless Dancer
© Edward Dorn
But now I pass
graveyards in a car.
The dead lie,
unsuperstitiously,
The Passing Of The Primroses
© Alfred Austin
Primroses
Nay, rather, why should we longer stay?
We are not needed, now stooping showers
Have sandalled the feet of May with flowers.
