Music poems
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A Muse of Water
© John Betjeman
We who must act as handmaidens
To our own goddess, turn too fast,
Trip on our hems, to glimpse the muse
Gliding below her lake or sea,
Are left, long-staring after her,
Narcissists by necessity;
The Secular Masque
© John Dryden
JANUS
Since Momus comes to laugh below,
Old Time begin the show,
That he may see, in every scene,
What changes in this age have been,
Ellen West
© Frank Bidart
I love sweets,—
heaven
would be dying on a bed of vanilla ice cream ...
But my true self
On the Departure of the Nightingale
© Charlotte Turner Smith
Sweet poet of the woods, a long adieu!
Farewell soft mistrel of the early year!
The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith
© Gwendolyn Brooks
He wakes, unwinds, elaborately: a cat
Tawny, reluctant, royal. He is fat
And fine this morning. Definite. Reimbursed.
Perspectives
© Ronald Stuart Thomas
They were bearded
like the sea they came
from; rang stone bells
for their stone hearers.
Mingus in Diaspora
© William Matthews
You could say, I suppose, that he ate his way out,
like the prisoner who starts a tunnel with a spoon,
or you could say he was one in whom nothing was lost,
who took it all in, or that he was big as a bus.
Music when Soft Voices Die (To --)
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Nest
© Jeffrey Harrison
It wasn’t until we got the Christmas tree
into the house and up on the stand
that our daughter discovered a small bird’s nest
tucked among its needled branches.
Maud; A Monodrama (from Part I)
© Alfred Tennyson
Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the rose is blown.
Far Company
© William Stanley Merwin
At times now from some margin of the day
I can hear birds of another country
Parable of the Hostages
© Louise Gluck
The Greeks are sitting on the beach
wondering what to do when the war ends. No one
The Long Shadow of Lincoln: A Litany
© Carl Sandburg
(We can succeed only by concert. . . . The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves. . . . December 1, 1862. The President’s Message to Congress.)
Be sad, be cool, be kind,
remembering those now dreamdust
hallowed in the ruts and gullies,
solemn bones under the smooth blue sea,
faces warblown in a falling rain.
Early in the Morning
© Li-Young Lee
She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.
On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born
© Charles Lamb
I saw where in the shroud did lurk
A curious frame of Nature's work.
A Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687
© John Dryden
Stanza 4
The soft complaining flute
In dying notes discovers
The woes of hopeless lovers,
Whose dirge is whisper'd by the warbling lute.
Montale’s Grave
© Jonathan Galassi
Now that the ticket to eternity
has your name on it, we are here to pay
the awkward tribute post-modernity
allows to those who think they think your way
