Love poems
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The Whistle by Kathy Mangan : American Life in Poetry #242 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
There are lots of poems in which a poet expresses belated appreciation for a parent, and if you don’t know Robert Hayden’s poem, “Those Winter Sundays,” you ought to look it up sometime. In this lovely sonnet, Kathy Mangan, of Maryland, contributes to that respected tradition.
The Whistle
Hymn To Colour
© George Meredith
With Life and Death I walked when Love appeared,
And made them on each side a shadow seem.
Through wooded vales the land of dawn we neared,
Where down smooth rapids whirls the helmless dream
To fall on daylight; and night puts away
Her darker veil for grey.
To Richard Wagner.
© Sidney Lanier
"I saw a sky of stars that rolled in grime.
All glory twinkled through some sweat of fight,
The Woodman And The Nightingale
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good)
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,
To J.R.
© Robert Fuller Murray
Last Sunday night I read the saddening story
Of the unanswered love of fair Elaine,
The `faith unfaithful' and the joyless glory
Of Lancelot, `groaning in remorseful pain.'
Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
© Vachel Lindsay
IT is portentious, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house, pacing up and down.
The Eagle That is Forgotten
© Vachel Lindsay
"We have buried him now," thought your foes, and in secret rejoiced.
They made a brave show of their mourning, their hatred unvoiced.
They had snarled at you, barked at you, foamed at you, day after day.
Now you were ended. They praised you ... and laid you away.
Daimon
© Aline Murray Kilmer
I SAW her after many years.
The blue-black hair that had swept to her knees
Was dull and grey. No one would turn
To look at her thin face worn with tears.
I felt my own wet eyelids burn,
For she had been queen of my memories.
Love and Law
© Vachel Lindsay
TRUE Love is founded in rocks of Remembrance
In stones of Forbearance and mortar of pain.
The workman lays wearily granite on granite,
And bleeds for his castle, 'mid sunshine and rain.
The Young British Soldier
© Rudyard Kipling
When the 'arf-made recruity goes out to the East
'E acts like a babe an' 'e drinks like a beast,
An' 'e wonders because 'e is frequent deceased
Ere 'e's fit for to serve as a soldier.
With Scindia to Delphi
© Rudyard Kipling
More than a hundred years ago, in a great battle fought near Delhi,
an Indian Prince rode fifty miles after the day was lost
with a beggar-girl, who had loved him and followed him in all his camps,
on his saddle-bow. He lost the girl when almost within sight of safety.
Brave Boys Are They!
© Henry Clay Work
Brave boys are they!
Gone at their country's call;
And yet, and yet we cannot forget
That many brave boys must fall.
Wilful Missing
© Rudyard Kipling
(Deserters)
There is a world outside the one you know,
To which for curiousness 'Ell can't compare--
It is the place where "wilful-missings" go,
As we can testify, for we are there.
Lines Written Beneath An Elm In The Churchyard Of Harrow On The Hill, Sept. 2, 1807
© George Gordon Byron
Spot of my youth! whose hoary branches sigh,
Swept by the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky;
Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod,
With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod;
The White Man's Burden
© Rudyard Kipling
Take up the White man's burden --
Send forth the best ye breed --
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
White Horses
© Rudyard Kipling
Where run your colts at pasture?
Where hide your mares to breed?
'Mid bergs about the Ice-cap
Or wove Sargasso weed;
The Wild Knight
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
_A dark manor-house shuttered and unlighted, outlined against a pale
sunset: in front a large, but neglected, garden. To the right, in the
foreground, the porch of a chapel, with coloured windows lighted. Hymns
within._
The Widower
© Rudyard Kipling
For a season there must be pain--
For a little, little space
I shall lose the sight of her face,
Take back the old life again
While She is at rest in her place.
