Morning poems
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The Might Have Been
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
ONCE in the twilight hour there stole on me
A strange, sweet spirit! In her tender eyes
Shone a far beauty, like the morning skies,
And tranquil was she as a summer sea;
Daily Trials by a Sensitive Man
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
At morning's call
The small-voiced pug-dog welcomes in the sun,
And flea-bit mongrels, wakening one by one,
Give answer all.
The Iron Gate
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
WHERE is this patriarch you are kindly greeting?
Not unfamiliar to my ear his name,
Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meeting
In days long vanished,-- is he still the same,
Long Years Have Past Since Last I Stood
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
LONG years have past since last I stood
Alone amid this mountain scene,
Unlike the future which I dreamed,
How like my future it has been!
Bill and Joe
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
COME, dear old comrade, you and I
Will steal an hour from days gone by,
The shining days when life was new,
And all was bright with morning dew,
The lusty days of long ago,
When you were Bill and I was Joe.
Under the Violets
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
HER hands are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and go;
Her eyes are shut to life and light;--
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay her where the violets blow.
A Familiar Letter
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
YES, write, if you want to, there's nothing like trying;
Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold?
I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying,
If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold.
The Deacon's Masterpiece Or, The Wonderful "One-Hoss Shay": A Logical Story
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it -- ah, but stay,
The Old Man Dreams
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
OH for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I'd rather laugh, a bright-haired boy,
Than reign, a gray-beard king.
Summer Images
© John Clare
Now swarthy Summer, by rude health embrowned,
Precedence takes of rosy fingered Spring;
Sailing Barges off Southend
© Adrian Green
Drifting on a tide from long ago,
They swing at anchor silently
Wreathed in early morning mist,
Like ghosts grown mellow with antiquity.
August Morning by Albert Garcia: American Life in Poetry #71 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
William Carlos Williams, one of our country's most influential poets and a New Jersey physician, taught us to celebrate daily life. Here Albert Garcia offers us the simple pleasures and modest mysteries of a single summer day.
The Fury Of Earth
© Anne Sexton
The day of fire is coming, the thrush,
will fly ablaze like a little sky rocket,
the beetle will sink like a giant bulldozer,
and at the breaking of the morning the houses
The Missionary - Canto Eighth
© William Lisle Bowles
Oh, shout for Lautaro, the young and the brave!
The arm of whose strength was uplifted to save,
When the steeds of the strangers came rushing amain,
And the ghosts of our fathers looked down on the slain!
The Fury Of Guitars And Sopranos
© Anne Sexton
This singing
is a kind of dying,
a kind of birth,
a votive candle.
A Day In The Castle Of Envy
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
The castle walls are full of eyes,
And not a mouse may creep unseen.
All the window slits are spies;
And the towers stand sentinel
You, Doctor Martin
© Anne Sexton
You, Doctor Martin, walk
from breakfast to madness. Late August,
I speed through the antiseptic tunnel
where the moving dead still talk
Daydreams for Ginsberg
© Jack Kerouac
I lie on my back at midnight
hearing the marvelous strange chime
