Morning poems
/ page 178 of 310 /
Bel Canto
© Kenneth Koch
The sun is high, the seaside air is sharp,
And salty light reveals the Mayan School.
On The Way To Church
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
There is one I know. I see her sometimes pass
In the morning streets upon her way to Mass,
A calm sweet woman with unearthly eyes.
Men turn to look at her, but ever stop,
Reading in those blue depths the death of hope
And a wise chastisement for thoughts unwise.
The Philosopher To His Love
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
DEAREST, a look is but a ray
Reflected in a certain way;
A word, whatever tone it wear,
Is but a trembling wave of air;
A touch, obedience to a clause
In nature's pure material laws.
The Brown Dwarf of Rugen
© John Greenleaf Whittier
And when beneath his door-yard trees the father met his child,
The bells rung out their merriest peal, the folks with joy ran wild.
Days of '74
© Mark Jarman
What was the future then but affirmation,
The first yes between us
Followed by the first lingering dawn?
Waking below a window shaded by redwoods
(Waking? We hadn’t slept—),
We found time saved, like sunlight in a tree.
An Essay on Criticism: Part 2
© Alexander Pope
Thus critics, of less judgment than caprice,
Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts
(As most in manners) by a love to parts.
The Child's Funeral
© William Cullen Bryant
Fair is thy site, Sorrento, green thy shore,
Black crags behind thee pierce the clear blue skies;
The sea, whose borderers ruled the world of yore,
As clear and bluer still before thee lies.
The Man On The Dump
© Wallace Stevens
Day creeps down. The moon is creeping up.
The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche
Venus And Adonis
© William Shakespeare
TO THE
RIGHT HONORABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY,
EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, AND BARON OF TICHFIELD.
RIGHT HONORABLE,
Hymn To Energy
© Arthur Symons
God is; and because life omnipotent
Gives birth to life, or of itself must die,
Q & A
© Kenneth Fearing
Where analgesia may be found to ease the infinite, minute scars of the day;
What final interlude will result, picked bit by bit from the morning's hurry, the lunch-hour boredom, the fevers of the night;
Why this one is cherished by the gods, and that one not;
How to win, and win again, and again, staking wit alone against a sea of time;
Which man to trust and, once found, how far—
Paradise Lost: Book XI (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
He added not, for Adam at the newes
Heart-strook with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discover'd soon the place of her retire.
Paradise Lost: Book IX
© Patrick Kavanagh
So gloz'd the Tempter, and his proem tun'd.
Into the heart of Eve his words made way,
Though at the voice much marvelling; at length,
Not unamaz'd, she thus in answer spake:
Valeries Confession. To A Friend.
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
THEY declare that I'm gracefully pretty,
The very best waltzer that whirls;
They say I am sparkling and witty,
The pearl, the queen rose-bud of girls.
The Usurper
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
FOR weeks the languid southern wind had blown,
Fraught with Floridian balm; thro' winter skies
We seemed to catch the smile of April's eyes;
A queenly waif, from her far temperate zone
Travel Papers
© Carolyn Forche
Au silence de celle qui laisse rêveur.
—René Char
By boat to Seurasaari where
the small fish were called vendace.
A man blew a horn of birchwood
toward the nightless sea.
A Wood Song
© Ralph Hodgson
Now one and all, you Roses,
Wake up, you lie too long!
This very morning closes
The Nightingale his song;
Poems
© Anselm Hollo
i
thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger. I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter; I forgot that there abides the old in the new, and that there also thou abidest.
Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my endless life who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar. When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of the One in the play of the many.
ii
A little East of Jordan, (145)
© Emily Dickinson
A little East of Jordan,
Evangelists record,
A Gymnast and an Angel
Did wrestle long and hard
Early Sunday Morning
© Edward Hirsch
I used to mock my father and his chums
for getting up early on Sunday morning
and drinking coffee at a local spot
but now I’m one of those chumps.
