Morning poems
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The Betrothed
© Rudyard Kipling
Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.
Banquet Night
© Rudyard Kipling
"ONCE in so often," King Solomon said,
Watching his quarrymen drill the stone,
"We will curb our garlic and wine and bread
And banquet together beneath my Throne,
And all Brethren shall come to that mess
As Fellow-Craftsmen-no more and no less."
The Ballad of the King's Mercy
© Rudyard Kipling
Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, of him is the story told.
His mercy fills the Khyber hills -- his grace is manifold;
He has taken toll of the North and the South -- his glory reacheth far,
And they tell the tale of his charity from Balkh to Kandahar.
The Ballad of the King's Jest
© Rudyard Kipling
When spring-time flushes the desert grass,
Our kafilas wind through the Khyber Pass.
Lean are the camels but fat the frails,
Light are the purses but heavy the bales,
The Ballad of East and West
© Rudyard Kipling
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!
Long Point Light
© Mark Doty
Long Pont's apparitional
this warm spring morning,
the strand a blur of sandy light,
Gull In An Aery Morrice
© William Ernest Henley
Gulls in an aery morrice
Gleam and vanish and gleam . . .
The full sea, sleepily basking,
Dreams under skies of dream.
Kerr's Ass
© Patrick Kavanagh
We borrowed the loan of Kerr's ass
To go to Dundalk with butter,
Brought him home the evening before the market
And exile that night in Mucker.
Fergus Falling
© Galway Kinnell
He climbed to the top
of one of those million white pines
set out across the emptying pastures
of the fifties - some program to enrich the rich
How Could You Not
© Galway Kinnell
-- for Jane kenyon
It is a day after many days of storms.
Having been washed and washed, the air glitters;
small heaped cumuli blow across the sky; a shower
Two Seasons
© Galway Kinnell
The stars were wild that summer evening
As on the low lake shore stood you and I
And every time I caught your flashing eye
Or heard your voice discourse on anything
It seemed a star went burning down the sky.
Oatmeal
© Galway Kinnell
I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Homesick In Heaven
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
THE DIVINE VOICE
Go seek thine earth-born sisters,--thus the Voice
That all obey,--the sad and silent three;
These only, while the hosts of Heaven rejoice,
Smile never; ask them what their sorrows be;
The Chimney - Sweeper
© William Blake
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry "Weep! weep! weep! weep!"
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.
A Loafer
© John Davidson
I hang about the streets all day,
At night I hang about;
I sleep a little when I may,
But rise betimes the morning's scout;
For through the year I always hear
Afar, aloft, a ghostly shout.
The Rhyme of the Three Greybeards
© Henry Lawson
He'd been for years in Sydney "a-acting of the goat",
His name was Joseph Swallow, "the Great Australian Pote",
In spite of all the stories and sketches that he wrote.
