Life poems
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The Revelation
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
An idle poet, here and there,
Looks around him; but, for all the rest,
The world, unfathomably fair,
Is duller than a witling's jest.
The Foreign Land
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
A woman is a foreign land,
Of which, though there he settle young,
A man will ne'er quite understand
The customs, politics, and tongue.
Magna Est Veritas
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Here, in this little Bay,
Full of tumultuous life and great repose,
Where, twice a day,
The purposeless, gay ocean comes and goes,
Faint Yet Pursuing
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Heroic Good, target for which the young
Dream in their dreams that every bow is strung,
And, missing, sigh
Unfruitful, or as disbelievers die,
Deliciae Sapientiae de Amore
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Love, light for me
Thy ruddiest blazing torch,
That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch
Of the glad Palace of Virginity,
The Fir-Tree and the Brook
© Helen Hunt Jackson
The Fir-Tree looked on stars, but loved the Brook!
"O silver-voiced! if thou wouldst wait,
My love can bravely woo." All smiles forsook
The brook's white face. "Too late!
Songs of Battle
© Helen Hunt Jackson
Old as the world--no other things so old;
Nay, older than the world, else, how had sprung
Such lusty strength in them when earth was young?--
Stand valor and its passion hot and bold,
Refrain
© Helen Hunt Jackson
Of all the songs which poets sing
The ones which are most sweet
Are those which at close intervals
A low refrain repeat;
New Year's Morning
© Helen Hunt Jackson
Only a night from old to new!
Never a night such changes brought.
The Old Year had its work to do;
No New Year miracles are wrought.
Death
© Helen Hunt Jackson
My body, eh? Friend Death, how now?
Why all this tedious pomp of writ?
Thou hast reclaimed it sure and slow
For half a century bit by bit.
A Calendar of Sonnets: February
© Helen Hunt Jackson
Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white;
And reigns the winter's pregnant silence still;
No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill,
And willow stems grow daily red and bright.
The Distant Winter
© Philip Levine
The sour daylight cracks through my sleep-caked lids.
"Stephan! Stephan!" The rattling orderly
Comes on a trot, the cold tray in his hands:
Toast whitening with oleo, brown tea,
Green Thumb
© Philip Levine
Shake out my pockets! Harken to the call
Of that calm voice that makes no sound at all!
Take of me all you can; my average weight
May make amends for this, my low estate.
Then
© Philip Levine
A solitary apartment house, the last one
before the boulevard ends and a dusty road
winds its slow way out of town. On the third floor
through the dusty windows Karen beholds
The Turning
© Philip Levine
Unknown faces in the street
And winter coming on. I
Stand in the last moments of
The city, no more a child,
Magpiety
© Philip Levine
You pull over to the shoulder
of the two-lane
road and sit for a moment wondering
where you were going
The Drunkard
© Philip Levine
He fears the tiger standing in his way.
The tiger takes its time, it smiles and growls.
Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his bowels.
"God help me now," is all that he can say.
The Water's Chant
© Philip Levine
Seven years ago I went into
the High Sierras stunned by the desire
to die. For hours I stared into a clear
mountain stream that fell down
