Men poems
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Prologue
© Anne Bradstreet
1 To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings,
2 Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun,
3 For my mean Pen are too superior things;
4 Or how they all, or each their dates have run,
5 Let Poets and Historians set these forth.
6 My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth.
The Moon
© David Berman
Inside the car a young lady wears a corsage of bullet-sized rodents.
Her date, the handsome cornerback, stretches his talons over the
molded steering wheel.
Not To The Staring Day
© William Ernest Henley
Not to the staring Day,
For all the importunate questionings he pursues
Imagining Defeat
© David Berman
She woke me up at dawn,
her suitcase like a little brown dog at her heels.I sat up and looked out the window
at the snow falling in the stand of blackjack trees.A bus ticket in her hand.Then she brought something black up to her mouth,
a plum I thought, but it was an asthma inhaler.I reached under the bed for my menthols
In The City Of Slaughter (excerpt)
© Hayyim Nahman Bialik
Proceed thence to the ruins, the split walls reach,
Where wider grows the hollow, and greater grows the breach;
Pass over the shattered hearth, attain the broken wall
Whose burnt and barren brick, whose charred stones reveal
The open mouths of such wounds, that no mending
Shall ever mend, nor healing ever heal
Lizards And Snakes
© Anthony Evan Hecht
On the summer road that ran by our front porch
Lizards and snakes came out to sun.
It was hot as a stove out there, enough to scorch
A buzzard's foot. Still, it was fun
Elegy IV. Anno Aet. 18. To My Tutor, Thomas Young, Chaplain Of The English Merchants Resident At Ham
© William Cowper
Hence, my epistle--skim the Deep--fly o'er
Yon smooth expanse to the Teutonic shore!
A Storm In Summer
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Nature that day a woman was in weakness,
A woman in her impotent high wrath.
At the dawn we watched it, a low cloud half seen
Under the sun; an innocent child's face
Tales Of A Wayside Inn : The Theologian's Tale; The Legend Beautiful
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Straightway to his feet he started,
And with longing look intent
On the Blessed Vision bent,
Slowly from his cell departed,
Slowly on his errand went.
To-day
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
I rake no coffined clay, nor publish wide
The resurrection of departed pride.
To A Golden Heart That He Wore Round His Neck.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[Addressed, during the Swiss tour already mentioned,
to a present Lily had given him, during the time of their happy
connection, which was then about to be terminated for ever.]
Original Preface.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In addition to those portions of Goethe's poetical works which
are given in this complete form, specimens of the different other
classes of them, such as the Epigrams, Elegies, &c., are added,
as well as a collection of the various Songs found in his Plays,
making a total number of about 400 Poems, embraced in the present
volume.
Ode to Marbles by Max Mendelsohn: American Life in Poetry #163 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
I have always enjoyed poems that celebrate the small pleasures of life. Here Max Mendelsohn, age 12, of Weston, Massachusetts, tells us of the joy he finds in playing with marbles.
Ode to Marbles
Lily's Menagerie.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[Goethe describes this much-admired Poem, which
he wrote in honour of his love Lily, as being "designed to change
his surrender of her into despair, by drolly-fretful images."]
To Belinda.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[This song was also written for Lily. Goethe
mentions, at the end of his Autobiography, that he overheard her
singing it one evening after he had taken his last farewell of her.]
Preface To The Second Edition.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I need scarcely add that I have availed myself of this opportunity
to make whatever improvements have suggested themselves to me in
my original version of these Poems.
Mahomet's Song.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[This song was intended to be introduced in
a dramatic poem entitled Mahomet, the plan of which was not carried
out by Goethe. He mentions that it was to have been sung by Ali
towards the end of the piece, in honor of his master, Mahomet, shortly
before his death, and when at the height of his glory, of which
it is typical.]
Starting From Paumanok
© Walt Whitman
Of earth, rocks, Fifth-month flowers, experienced-stars, rain, snow,
my amaze;
Having studied the mocking-bird's tones, and the mountainhawk's,
And heard at dusk the unrival'd one, the hermit thrush from the
swamp-cedars,
Solitary, singing in the West, I strike up for a New World.
The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal, Imitated by Samuel Johnson
© Samuel Johnson
Yet still the gen'ral Cry the Skies assails
And Gain and Grandeur load the tainted Gales;
Few know the toiling Statesman's Fear or Care,
Th' insidious Rival and the gaping Heir.
