Morning poems
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Balbus
© Marriott Edgar
I'll tell you the story of Balbus,
You know, him as builded a wall;
I'll tell you the reason he built it,
And the place where it happened an' all.
Asparagus
© Marriott Edgar
Mr. Ramsbottom went to the races,
A thing as he'd ne'er done before,
And as luck always follers beginners,
Won five pounds, no-less and no-more.
Albert Down Under
© Marriott Edgar
Albert were what you'd call thwarted.
He had long had an ambition, which...
Were to save up and go to Australia,
The saving up that were the hitch.
The Far Field
© Theodore Roethke
I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
The wheel turning away from itself,
The sprawl of the wave,
The on-coming water.
The Czar's Last Christmas Letter: A Barn in the Urals
© Norman Dubie
You were never told, Mother, how old Illyawas drunk
That last holiday, for five days and nightsHe stumbled through Petersburg forming
A choir of mutes, he dressed them in pink ascension gownsAnd, then, sold Father's Tirietz stallion so to rent
A hall for his Christmas recital: the audienceWas rowdy but Illya in his black robes turned on them
The Chronicle Of The Drum
© William Makepeace Thackeray
"'Though Europe against me was arm'd,
Your chiefs and my people are true;
I still might have struggled with fortune,
And baffled all Europe with you.
The Song of the Borderguard
© Robert Duncan
The man with his lion under the shed of wars
sheds his belief as if he shed tears.
The sound of words waits -
a barbarian host at the borderline of sense.
The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence
© William Stanley Merwin
Moored to the same ring:
The hour, the darkness and I,
Our compasses hooded like falcons.
Vehicles
© William Stanley Merwin
This is a place on the way after the distances
can no longer be kept straight here in this dark corner
of the barn a mound of wheels has convened along
raveling courses to stop in a single moment
The Source
© William Stanley Merwin
There in the fringe of trees between
the upper field and the edge of the one
below it that runs above the valley
one time I heard in the early
Green Fields
© William Stanley Merwin
By this part of the century few are left who believe
in the animals for they are not there in the carved parts
of them served on plates and the pleas from the slatted trucks
are sounds of shadows that possess no future
The Speed Of Light
© William Stanley Merwin
So gradual in those summers was the going
of the age it seemed that the long days setting out
when the stars faded over the mountains were not
leaving us even as the birds woke in full song and the dew
Phoebus with Admetus
© George Meredith
NOW the North wind ceases,
The warm South-west awakes;
Swift fly the fleeces,
Thick the blossom-flakes.
Modern Love XLIII: Mark Where the Pressing Wind
© George Meredith
Mark where the pressing wind shoots javelin-like,
Its skeleton shadow on the broad-backed wave!
Here is a fitting spot to dig Love's grave;
Here where the ponderous breakers plunge and strike,
Love's Grave
© George Meredith
MARK where the pressing wind shoots javelin-like,
Its skeleton shadow on the broad-back'd wave!
Here is a fitting spot to dig Love's grave;
Here where the ponderous breakers plunge and strike,
Love in the Valley
© George Meredith
Under yonder beech-tree single on the green-sward,
Couched with her arms behind her golden head,
Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly,
Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.
Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphical Saint Teresa
© Richard Crashaw
O THOU undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dower of lights and fires;
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
By all thy lives and deaths of love;
Wishes To His (Supposed) Mistress
© Richard Crashaw
Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me;
On Mr. G. Herbert's Book, Entitled the Temple of Sacred Poe
© Richard Crashaw
Know you fair, on what you look;
Divinest love lies in this book,
Expecting fire from your eyes,
To kindle this his sacrifice.
The Flaming Heart
© Richard Crashaw
O heart, the equal poise of love's both parts,
Big alike with wounds and darts,
Live in these conquering leaves; live all the same,
And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame;
