Life poems
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Riders in the Stand
© Andrew Barton Paterson
They'll say Chevalley lost his nerve, and Regan lost his head;
They'll tell how one was "livened up" and something else was "dead" --
In fact, the race was never run on sea, or sky, or land,
But what you'd get it better done by riders in the Stand.
The Man from Iron Bark
© Andrew Barton Paterson
There were some gilded youths that sat along the barber's wall.
Their eyes were dull, their heads were flat, they had no brains at all;
To them the barber passed the wink his dexter eyelid shut,
"I'll make this bloomin' yokel think his bloomin' throat is cut."
And as he soaped and rubbed it in he made a rude remark:
"I s'pose the flats is pretty green up there in Ironbark."
Ambition and Art
© Andrew Barton Paterson
Ambition
I am the maid of the lustrous eyes
Of great fruition,
Whom the sons of men that are over-wise
Have called Ambition.
Clancy Of The Overflow
© Andrew Barton Paterson
I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just on spec, addressed as follows, "Clancy, of The Overflow".
Old Schooldays
© Andrew Barton Paterson
The journey down to town -- 'twere long to tell
The storm and riot of the rabble rout;
The wild Walpurgis revel in and out
That made the ferry boat a floating hell.
A Bunch of Roses
© Andrew Barton Paterson
Visions arise of a scent of mirth,
And a ball-room belle who superbly poses --
A queenly woman of queenly worth,
And I am the happiest man on earth
With a single flower from a bunch of roses.
The Angel's Kiss
© Andrew Barton Paterson
An angel stood beside the bed
Where lay the living and the dead.
He gave the mother -- her who died --
A kiss that Christ the Crucified
Vienna, December 1999
© Jonathan Bohrn
I watched
the winter light die from the bridge,
the sky a sinking empire's battleship,
ice floes' jagged edges
clink their cold toast
to a stilled Danube.
thought for Thursday
© Jonathan Bohrn
Tomorrow's Thursday again,
swept with the days' meandering flow:
this, that, and the week goes,
hearing time splash through cracks.
Gardening
© Jonathan Bohrn
Pruning the rosebush
the ache of the summer heat
on my shoulders,
the feel of the living stalk
A poem, on the rising glory of America
© Hugh Henry Brackenridge
LEANDER.
Or Roanoke's and James's limpid waves
The sound of musick murmurs in the gale;
Another Denham celebrates their flow,
In gliding numbers and harmonious lays.
A poem on divine revelation
© Hugh Henry Brackenridge
This is a day of happiness, sweet peace,
And heavenly sunshine; upon which conven'd
In full assembly fair, once more we view,
And hail with voice expressive of the heart,
The Great Western Plains
© Hart Crane
The little voices of the prairie dogs
Are tireless . . .
They will give three hurrahs
Alike to stage, equestrian, and pullman,
And all unstingingly as to the moon.
Earliest Spring
© William Dean Howells
TOSSING his mane of snows in wildest eddies and tangles,
Lion-like March cometh in, hoarse, with tempestuous breath,
Through all the moaning chimneys, and 'thwart all the hollows and
angles
Round the shuddering house, threating of winter and death.
Round
© Weldon Kees
"Wondrous life!" cried Marvell at Appleton House.
Renan admired Jesus Christ "wholeheartedly."
But here dried ferns keep falling to the floor,
And something inside my head
La Vita Nuova
© Weldon Kees
--Thus in the losing autumn,
Over the streets, I now lurch
Legless to your side and speak your name
Under a gray sky ripped apart
By thunder and the changing wind.
The Furies
© Weldon Kees
Not a third that walks beside me,
But five or six or more.
Whether at dusk or daybreak
Or at blinding noon, a retinue
The Upstairs Room
© Weldon Kees
It must have been in March the rug wore through.
Now the day passes and I stare
At warped pine boards my father's father nailed,
At the twisted grain. Exposed, where emptiness allows,
A Distance From The Sea
© Weldon Kees
"And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was
about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto
me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and
write them not." --REVELATIONS, x, 4.
New Territory
© Geraldine Connolly
Sent off to boarding school
at twelve, with a pair of oxfords,
a pair of patents, my sterling
silver christening rosary
