Peace poems
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1914 II. Safety
© Rupert Brooke
Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest
He who has found our hid security,
Lines to Accompany Flowers for Eve
© John Betjeman
who took heroin, then sleeping pills, and who lies in a New York hospital
The florist was told, cyclamen or azalea;
Portrait of a Lady
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune
Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:
"I am always sure that you understand
My feelings, always sure that you feel,
Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.
North
© Seamus Justin Heaney
I returned to a long strand,
the hammered curve of a bay,
and found only the secular
powers of the Atlantic thundering.
“Any fool can get into an ocean . . .”
© Jack Spicer
Any fool can get into an ocean
But it takes a Goddess
from The Prelude: Book 1: Childhood and School-time
© André Breton
Not uselessly employ'd,
I might pursue this theme through every change
Of exercise and play, to which the year
Did summon us in its delightful round.
Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle II: To a Lady on the Characters of Women
© Alexander Pope
Nothing so true as what you once let fall,
"Most Women have no Characters at all."
Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
And best distinguish'd by black, brown, or fair.
At the Executed Murderer’s Grave
© James Wright
6
Staring politely, they will not mark my face
From any murderer’s, buried in this place.
Why should they? We are nothing but a man.
from An Explanation of America: A Love of Death
© Robert Pinsky
The child’s heart lightens, tending like a bubble
Towards the currents of the grass and sky,
The pure potential of the clear blank spaces.
The Missionary - Canto Second
© William Lisle Bowles
The night was still and clear, when, o'er the snows,
Andes! thy melancholy Spirit rose,--
A shadow stern and sad: he stood alone,
Upon the topmost mountain's burning cone;
And whilst his eyes shone dim, through surging smoke,
Thus to the spirits of the fire he spoke:--
Chinese Whispers
© John Ashbery
And in a little while we broke under the strain:
suppurations ad nauseam, the wanting to be taller,
The Columbiad: Book VIII
© Joel Barlow
On fame's high pinnacle their names shall shine,
Unending ages greet the group divine,
Whose holy hands our banners first unfurl'd,
And conquer'd freedom for the grateful world.
In Jerusalem
© Mahmoud Darwish
In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
From Whose Beauty the Depths Are Lit
© Pierre Reverdy
When one stands before the throne of glory, he begins reciting
The Sorcerer: Act I
© William Schwenck Gilbert
For to-day young Alexis-young Alexis Pointdextre
Is betrothed to Aline-to Aline Sangazure,
And that pride of his sex is-of his sex is to be next her
At the feast on the green-on the green, oh, be sure!
