Morning poems
/ page 184 of 310 /
Epitaph
© Katherine Philips
On her Son H.P. at St. Syths Church where her body also lies interred
What on Earth deserves our trust?
OEnone
© Alfred Tennyson
"Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.
He smiled, and opening out his milk-white palm
Disclosed a fruit of pure Hesperian gold,
That smelt ambrosially, and while I look'd
And listen'd, the full-flowing river of speech
Came down upon my heart.
Stray Pleasures
© William Wordsworth
BY their floating mill,
That lies dead and still,
Behold yon Prisoners three,
The Miller with two Dames, on the breast of the Thames!
The platform is small, but gives room for them all;
And they're dancing merrily.
From The Iron Gate
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
AS on the gauzy wings of fancy flying
From some far orb I track our watery sphere,
Home of the struggling, suffering, doubting, dying,
The silvered globule seems a glistening tear.
December 30
© Jack Gilbert
At 1:03 in the morning a fart
smells like a marriage between
an avocado and a fish head.
The Troubadour. Canto 1
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
There is a light step passing by
Like the distant sound of music's sigh;
It is that fair and gentle child,
Whose sweetness has so oft beguiled,
Like sunlight on a stormy day,
His almost sullenness away.
Falling Asleep over the Aeneid
© Robert Lowell
An old man in Concord forgets to go to morning service. He falls asleep, while reading Vergil, and dreams that he is Aeneas at the funeral of Pallas, an Italian prince.
The sun is blue and scarlet on my page,
Stanzas
© Sir Henry Parkes
Up go the beautiful and world-watch'd stars,
Lifting the glory of America,
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
Grace
© Joy Harjo
Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned our way through a season of false midnights. We had to swallow that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey. And one morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us with coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway 80, we found grace.
I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance. We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring was lean and hungry with the hope of children and corn.
I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw. We didn’t; the next season was worse. You went home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and I went south. And, Wind, I am still crazy. I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.
Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy
© Thomas Lux
For some semitropical reason
when the rains fall
relentlessly they fall
In the Green Morning, Now, Once More
© Delmore Schwartz
In the green morning, before
Love was destiny,
The sun was king,
And God was famous.
On The Mountain
© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
THE top of the world and an empty morning,
Mist sweeping in from the dim Outside,
The door of day just a little bit open--
The wind's great laugh as he flings it wide!
Michael: A Pastoral Poem
© William Wordsworth
Thus in his Father's sight the Boy grew up:
And now, when he had reached his eighteenth year,
He was his comfort and his daily hope.
Thanksgiving
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
When first in ancient time, from Jubal's tongue
The tuneful anthem filled the morning air,
When I Heard At The Close Of The Day
© Walt Whitman
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in
the cool night,
In the stillness, in the autumn moonbeams, his face was inclined
toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast-and that night I was happy.
Caelica 29: [The nurse-life wheat within his green husk growing]
© Fulke Greville
The nurse-life wheat within his green husk growing,
Flatters our hope, and tickles our desire,
Nature’s true riches in sweet beauties showing,
Which sets all hearts, with labor’s love, on fire.
