Morning poems
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Dead In Sight Of Fame
© James Whitcomb Riley
DIED--Early morning of September 5, 1876, and
in the gleaming dawn of "name and fame,"
Hamilton J. Dunbar.
A Historical Breakfast
© Russell Edson
A man is bringing a cup of coffee to his face,
tilting it to his mouth. It's historical, he thinks.
He scratches his head: another historical event.
He really ought to rest, he's making an awful lot of
Waking in the Blue
© Robert Lowell
In between the limits of day,
hours and hours go by under the crew haircuts
and slightly too little nonsensical bachelor twinkle
of the Roman Catholic attendants.
(There are no Mayflower
screwballs in the Catholic Church.)
The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket
© Robert Lowell
(For Warren Winslow, Dead At Sea)
Let man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and
the fowls of the air and the beasts and the whole earth,
and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.
Man And Wife
© Robert Lowell
Now twelve years later, you turn your back.
Sleepless, you hold
your pillow to your hollows like a child;
your old-fashioned tirade--
loving, rapid, merciless--
breaks like the Atlantic Ocean on my head.
For the Union Dead
© Robert Lowell
The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Water
© Robert Lowell
It was a Maine lobster town
each morning boatloads of hands
pushed off for granite
quarries on the islands,
False Poets And True (To Wordsworth)
© Thomas Hood
Look how the lark soars upward and is gone,
Turning a spirit as he nears the sky!
His voice is heard, but body there is none
To fix the vague excursions of the eye.
My Mother
© Claude McKay
I Reg wished me to go with him to the field,
I paused because I did not want to go;
But in her quiet way she made me yield
Reluctantly, for she was breathing low.
Morning Joy
© Claude McKay
At night the wide and level stretch of wold,
Which at high noon had basked in quiet gold,
Far as the eye could see was ghostly white;
Dark was the night save for the snow's weird light.
French Leave
© Claude McKay
No servile little fear shall daunt my will
This morning. I have courage steeled to say
I will be lazy, conqueringly still,
I will not lose the hours in toil this day.
Noonday Grace
© John Crowe Ransom
MY good old father tucked his head,
(His face the color of gingerbread)
Over the table my mother had spread,
And folded his leathery hands and said:
After the Winter
© Claude McKay
Some day, when trees have shed their leaves
And against the morning's white
The shivering birds beneath the eaves
Have sheltered for the night,
The Blackbird Of Derrycairn
© Austin Clarke
Stop, stop and listen for the bough top
Is whistling and the sun is brighter
Than God's own shadow in the cup now!
Forget the hour-bell. Mournful matins
Will sound, Patric, as well at nightfall.
Ode To Cheerfulness
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Guide me to thy fav'rite bow'rs,
To deck thy rural shrine with flow'rs.
In thy lowly, sylvan cell,
Peace and virtue love to dwell;
Ever let me own thy sway,
Still to thee my tribute pay.
Yesterday
© Edgar Albert Guest
I've trod the links with many a man,
And played him club for club;
'Tis scarce a year since I began
And I am still a dub.
The Little Orphan
© Edgar Albert Guest
Then through the hot and sultry day he plays at "make-pretend,"
The alley is a sandy beach where all the rich folks send
Their little boys and girls to play, a barrel is his boat,
But, oh, the air is tifling and the dust fills up his throat;
And though he tries so very hard to play, somehow it seems
He never gets such wondrous joys as angels bring in dreams.
