Poems begining by O
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One Year
© Sharon Olds
When I got to his marker, I sat on it,
like sitting on the edge of someone's bed
and I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite.
I took some tears from my jaw and neck
On Turning Ten
© Billy Collins
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
Ode On The Pleasure Arising From Vicissitude
© Thomas Gray
Now the golden Morn aloft
Waves her dew-bespangled wing,
With vermeil cheek and whisper soft
She wooes the tardy Spring:
On The Death Of A Favourite Cat, Drowned In A Tub Of Gold Fishes
© Thomas Gray
'Twas on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow,
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.
O Gather Me the Rose
© William Ernest Henley
O gather me the rose, the rose,
While yet in flower we find it,
For summer smiles, but summer goes,
And winter waits behind it.
Old Age Gets Up
© Ted Hughes
An eye powdered over, half melted and solid again
Ponders
Ideas that collapse
At the first touch of attention
On The Skeleton Of A Hound
© James Wright
Nightfall, that saw the morning-glories float
Tendril and string against the crumbling wall,
Nurses him now, his skeleton for grief,
His locks for comfort curled among the leaf.
One Sweeps By.
© Walt Whitman
ONE sweeps by, attended by an immense train,
All emblematic of peacenot a soldier or menial among them.
One sweeps by, old, with black eyes, and profuse white hair,
Others may Praise what They Like.
© Walt Whitman
OTHERS may praise what they like;
But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, praise nothing, in art, or aught else,
Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere of this riveralso the western prairie-scent,
And fully exudes it again.
Of the Visage of Things.
© Walt Whitman
OF the visages of thingsAnd of piercing through to the accepted hells beneath;
Of uglinessTo me there is just as much in it as there is in beautyAnd now the
ugliness of human beings is acceptable to me;
Of detected personsTo me, detected persons are not, in any respect, worse than
Ox Tamer, The.
© Walt Whitman
IN a faraway northern county, in the placid, pastoral region,
Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous Tamer of Oxen:
There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds, to break them;
He will take the wildest steer in the world, and break him and tame him;
Or from that Sea of Time.
© Walt Whitman
1
OR, from that Sea of Time,
Spray, blown by the winda double winrow-drift of weeds and shells;
(O little shells, so curious-convolute! so limpid-cold and voiceless!
O Sun of Real Peace.
© Walt Whitman
O SUN of real peace! O hastening light!
O free and extatic! O what I here, preparing, warble for!
O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his heightand you too, O my
Ideal,
Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances.
© Walt Whitman
OF the terrible doubt of appearances,
Of the uncertainty after allthat we may be deluded,
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,
Out from Behind this Mask.
© Walt Whitman
1
OUT from behind this bending, rough-cut Mask,
(All straighter, liker Masks rejectedthis preferrd,)
This common curtain of the face, containd in me for me, in you for you, in each for
Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City.
© Walt Whitman
ONCE I pass'd through a populous city, imprinting my brain, for future use, with its
shows, architecture, customs, and traditions;
Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman I casually met there, who detain'd me
for love of me;
O You Whom I Often and Silently Come.
© Walt Whitman
O YOU whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you;
As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,
Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.
Offerings.
© Walt Whitman
A THOUSAND perfect men and women appear,
Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths, with offerings.
One Hour to Madness and Joy.
© Walt Whitman
ONE hour to madness and joy!
O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)
