Life poems
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Frankincense and Myrrh
© Amy Lowell
My heart is tuned to sorrow, and the strings
Vibrate most readily to minor chords,
Searching and sad; my mind is stuffed with words
Which voice the passion and the ache of things:
Malmaison
© Amy Lowell
I
How the slates of the roof sparkle in the sun,
over there, over there,
beyond the high wall! How quietly the Seine runs in loops
The Boston Athenaeum
© Amy Lowell
Thou dear and well-loved haunt of happy hours,
How often in some distant gallery,
Gained by a little painful spiral stair,
Far from the halls and corridors where throng
Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window
© Amy Lowell
What charm is yours, you faded old-world tapestries,
Of outworn, childish mysteries,
Vague pageants woven on a web of dream!
And we, pushing and fighting in the turbid stream
The Basket
© Amy Lowell
Peter watches her, fluid with fatigue, floating, and drifting,
and undulant in the orange glow. His senses flow towards
her,
where she lies supine and dreaming. Seeming drowned in
a golden halo.
The pungent smell of the geraniums is hard to bear.
The Great Adventure of Max Breuck
© Amy Lowell
1
A yellow band of light upon the street
Pours from an open door, and makes a wide
Pathway of bright gold across a sheet
The Pleiades
© Amy Lowell
By day you cannot see the sky
For it is up so very high.
You look and look, but it's so blue
That you can never see right through.
Reaping
© Amy Lowell
You want to know what's the matter with me, do yer?
My! ain't men blinder'n moles?
It ain't nothin' new, be sure o' that.
Why, ef you'd had eyes you'd ha' seed
The Bombardment
© Amy Lowell
The child wakes again and screams at the yellow petalled flower
flickering at the window. The little red lips of flame
creep along
the ceiling beams.
A Ballad of Footmen
© Amy Lowell
Now what in the name of the sun and the stars
Is the meaning of this most unholy of wars?
Do men find life so full of humour and joy
That for want of excitement they smash up the toy?
A Fixed Idea
© Amy Lowell
What torture lurks within a single thought
When grown too constant, and however kind,
However welcome still, the weary mind
Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught
Aftermath
© Amy Lowell
I learnt to write to you in happier days,
And every letter was a piece I chipped
From off my heart, a fragment newly clipped
From the mosaic of life; its blues and grays,
Diya {original title is Greek, Delta-iota-psi-alpha}
© Amy Lowell
Look, Dear, how bright the moonlight is to-night!
See where it casts the shadow of that tree
Far out upon the grass. And every gust
Of light night wind comes laden with the scent
A Tale of Starvation
© Amy Lowell
There once was a man whom the gods didn't love,
And a disagreeable man was he.
He loathed his neighbours, and his neighbours hated him,
And he cursed eternally.
The Cremona Violin
© Amy Lowell
Part First
Frau Concert-Meister Altgelt shut the door.
A storm was rising, heavy gusts of wind
Swirled through the trees, and scattered leaves before
Number 3 on the Docket
© Amy Lowell
The lawyer, are you?
Well! I ain't got nothin' to say.
Nothin'!
I told the perlice I hadn't nothin'.
In a Castle
© Amy Lowell
I
Over the yawning chimney hangs the fog. Drip
-- hiss -- drip -- hiss --
fall the raindrops on the oaken log which burns, and steams,
and smokes the ceiling beams. Drip -- hiss -- the rain
never stops.
The Fruit Garden Path
© Amy Lowell
The path runs straight between the flowering rows,
A moonlit path, hemmed in by beds of bloom,
Where phlox and marigolds dispute for room
With tall, red dahlias and the briar rose.
The Fool Errant
© Amy Lowell
The Fool Errant sat by the highway of life
And his gaze wandered up and his gaze wandered down,
A vigorous youth, but with no wish to walk,
Yet his longing was great for the distant town.
