Morning poems
/ page 146 of 310 /
Dear Reader
© Billy Collins
Baudelaire considers you his brother,
and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs
as if to make sure you have not closed the book,
and now I am summoning you up again,
attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing
in the doorway of these words.
Shoveling Snow With Buddha
© Billy Collins
In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.
Consolation
© Billy Collins
How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.
The Best Cigarette
© Billy Collins
There are many that I miss
having sent my last one out a car window
sparking along the road one night, years ago.
The First Dream
© Billy Collins
The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight
and as I lean against the door of sleep
I begin to think about the first person to dream,
how quiet he must have seemed the next morning
Nightclub
© Billy Collins
You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
Litany
© Billy Collins
You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon
Sonnet On The Death Of Mr Richard West
© Thomas Gray
In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And redd'ning Phoebus lifts his golden fire:
The birds in vain their amorous descant join;
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire:
The Reeve's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. "With blearing of a proude miller's eye": dimming his eye;
playing off a joke on him.
The Miller's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Pilate, an unpopular personage in the mystery-plays of the
middle ages, was probably represented as having a gruff, harsh
voice.
The Wife of Bath's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
7. "But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and
silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and
some to dishonour." -- 2 Tim. ii 20.
The General Prologue
© Geoffrey Chaucer
There was also a Reeve, and a Millere,
A Sompnour, and a Pardoner also,
A Manciple, and myself, there were no mo'.
The Knight's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
Upon that other side, Palamon,
When that he wist Arcita was agone,
Much sorrow maketh, that the greate tower
Resounded of his yelling and clamour
The pure* fetters on his shinnes great *very
Were of his bitter salte teares wet.
The Round
© Stanley Kunitz
I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.
Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation
© Stanley Kunitz
Since that first morning when I crawled
into the world, a naked grubby thing,
and found the world unkind,
my dearest faith has been that this
The Science Of The Night
© Stanley Kunitz
I touch you in the night, whose gift was you,
My careless sprawler,
And I touch you cold, unstirring, star-bemused,
That have become the land of your self-strangeness.
On The Skeleton Of A Hound
© James Wright
Nightfall, that saw the morning-glories float
Tendril and string against the crumbling wall,
Nurses him now, his skeleton for grief,
His locks for comfort curled among the leaf.
May Morning
© James Wright
Deep into spring, winter is hanging on. Bitter and skillful in his
hopelessness, he stays alive in every shady place, starving along the
Mediterranean: angry to see the glittering sea-pale boulder alive
with lizards green as Judas leaves. Winter is hanging on. He still
The Resignation
© Thomas Chatterton
O God, whose thunder shakes the sky,
Whose eye this atom globe surveys,
To thee, my only rock, I fly,
Thy mercy in thy justice praise.
The Death of Nicou
© Thomas Chatterton
On Tiber's banks, Tiber, whose waters glide
In slow meanders down to Gaigra's side;
And circling all the horrid mountain round,
Rushes impetuous to the deep profound;
