Music poems
/ page 199 of 253 /
To-- Music, when soft voices die
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory -
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Godminister Chimes
© James Russell Lowell
Written In Aid Of A Chime Of Bells For Christ Church, Cambridge
Godminster? Is it Fancy's play?
To Miss --,
© Samuel Johnson
{On her playing upon the harpsichord in
a room hung with flower-pieces of her own painting}.
The Bees and the Flies
© Rudyard Kipling
The egregious rustic put to death
A bull by stopping of its breath,
Disposed the carcass in a shed
With fragrant herbs and branches spread,
And, having well performed the charm,
Sat down to wait the promised swarm.
Army Headquarters
© Rudyard Kipling
Ahasuerus Jenkins of the "Operatic Own,"
Was dowered with a tenor voice of super-Santley tone.
His views on equitation were, perhaps, a trifle queer.
He had no seat worth mentioning, but oh! he had an ear.
Visitation
© Mark Doty
When I heard he had entered the harbor,
and circled the wharf for days,
I expected the worst: shallow water,
To Jane: The Invitation
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
Best and brightest, come away!
Fairer far than this fair Day,
Which, like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
In the Next Street
© Ken Smith
theres only ever one argument: his,
bawling out whoever punctuates
the brief intervals his cussing
| interrupts, something unheard, reason perhaps.
No Music
© John Montague
I'll tell you a sore truth, little understood
It's harder to leave, than to be left:
To stay, to leave, both sting wrong.
Tom Taylor
© Robert Graves
On pay-day nights, neck-full with beer,
Old soldiers stumbling homeward here,
A Parody On Euripides's Lyric Verse
© Aristophanes
Halcyons ye by the flowing sea
Waves that warble twitteringly,
The Cellist
© Galway Kinnell
At intermission I find her backstage
still practicing the piece coming up next.
She calls it the "solo in high dreary."
Her bow niggles at the string like a hand
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;
Wait
© Galway Kinnell
Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Robinson At Home
© Weldon Kees
Curtains drawn back, the door ajar.
All winter long, it seemed, a darkening
Began. But now the moonlight and the odors of the street
Conspire and combine toward one community.
Ode To Walt Whitman
© Stephen Vincent Benet
"Let me taste all, my flesh and my fat are sweet,
My body hardy as lilac, the strong flower.
I have tasted the calamus; I can taste the nightbane."
After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
© Galway Kinnell
In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across his little, startling muscled body -
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.
