Peace poems
/ page 175 of 319 /
For a Student Sleeping in a Poetry Workshop
© David Wagoner
I've watched his eyelids sag, spring open
Vaguely and gradually go sliding
Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl
© John Greenleaf Whittier
To the Memory of the Household It Describes
This Poem is Dedicated by the Author
from Rites of Passage
© Robert Duncan
Irregular meters beat between your heart and mine.
Snuffling the air you take the heat and scan
the lines you take in going as if I were or were not there
and overtake me.
And where it seems but yesterday I spilld the wine,
you too grow beastly to become a man.
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
For Christmas Day: Hark! the Herald Angels Sing
© Charles Wesley
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King,
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinner reconcild.
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.
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.
Flowers by the Sea
© William Carlos Williams
When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s
edge, unseen, the salt ocean
Fifteen Epitaphs I
© Louise Imogen Guiney
I laid the strewings, darling, on thine urn;
I lowered the torch, I poured the cup to Dis.
Now hushaby, my little child, and learn
Long sleep how good it is.
Faustine
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Ave Faustina Imperatrix, morituri te salutant.
Lean back, and get some minutes' peace;
Let your head lean
Back to the shoulder with its fleece
Of locks, Faustine.
"Out of the rolling ocean the crowd"
© Walt Whitman
Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,
Whispering, I love you, before long I die,
I have travelld a long way merely to look on you to touch you,
For I could not die till I once lookd on you,
For I feard I might afterward lose you.
Smokers of Paper
© Cesare Pavese
He’s brought me to hear his band. He sits in a corner
mouthing his clarinet. A hellish racket begins.
Rivers and Mountains
© John Ashbery
On the secret map the assassins
Cloistered, the Moon River was marked
Funeral Music
© Geoffrey Hill
William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk: beheaded 1450
John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester: beheaded 1470
Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers: beheaded 1483
Bereavement
© William Lisle Bowles
Whose was that gentle voice, that, whispering sweet,
Promised methought long days of bliss sincere!
