Music poems
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Melmillo
© Walter de la Mare
Three and thirty birds there stood
In an elder in a wood;
Called Melmillo -- flew off three,
Leaving thirty in the tree;
Good-bye
© Walter de la Mare
The last of last words spoken is, Good-bye -
The last dismantled flower in the weed-grown hedge,
The last thin rumour of a feeble bell far ringing,
The last blind rat to spurn the mildewed rye.
Arabia
© Walter de la Mare
Far are the shades of Arabia,
Where the Princes ride at noon,
'Mid the verdurous vales and thickets,
Under the ghost of the moon;
A Song of Enchantment
© Walter de la Mare
A song of Enchantment I sang me there,
In a green-green wood, by waters fair,
Just as the words came up to me
I sang it under the wild wood tree.
Deliciae Sapientiae de Amore
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Love, light for me
Thy ruddiest blazing torch,
That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch
Of the glad Palace of Virginity,
Refrain
© Helen Hunt Jackson
Of all the songs which poets sing
The ones which are most sweet
Are those which at close intervals
A low refrain repeat;
The House
© Philip Levine
This poem has a door, a locked door,
and curtains drawn against the day,
but at night the lights come on, one
in each room, and the neighbors swear
The Return
© Philip Levine
All afternoon my father drove the country roads
between Detroit and Lansing. What he was looking for
I never learned, no doubt because he never knew himself,
though he would grab any unfamiliar side road
Once
© Philip Levine
Hungry and cold, I stood in a doorway
on Delancey Street in 1946
as the rain came down. The worst part is this
is not from a bad movie. I'd read Dos Passos'
Call It Music
© Philip Levine
Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song
in my own breath. I'm alone here
in Brooklyn Heights, late morning, the sky
above the St. George Hotel clear, clear
An Ending
© Philip Levine
Early March.
The cold beach deserted. My kids
home in a bare house, bundled up
and listening to rock music
What Work Is
© Philip Levine
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is--if you're
old enough to read this you know what
Night Words
© Philip Levine
after Juan Ramon
A child wakens in a cold apartment.
The windows are frosted. Outside he hears
words rising from the streets, words he cannot
I Won, You Lost
© Philip Levine
The last of day gathers
in the yellow parlor
and drifts like fine dust
across the face of
Twas One of Those Dreams
© Thomas Moore
'TWAS one of those dreams, that by music are brought,
Like a bright summer haze, o'er the poet's warm thought --
When, lost in the future, his soul wanders on,
And all of this life, but its sweetness, is gone.
The Wandering Bard
© Thomas Moore
What life like that of the bard can be --
The wandering bard, who roams as free
As the mountain lark that o'er him sings,
And, like that lark a music brings,
The Night Dance
© Thomas Moore
Strike the gay harp! see the moon is on high,
And, as true to her beam as the tides of the ocean,
Young hearts, when they feel the soft light of her eye,
Obey the mute call, and heave into motion.
The Mountain Sprite
© Thomas Moore
In yonder valley there dwelt, alone,
A youth, whose moments had calmly flown,
'Till spells came o'er him, and, day and night,
He was haunted and watch'd by a Mountain Sprite.
The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls
© Thomas Moore
The harp that once through Tara's halls
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls,
As if that soul were fled. --
