Peace poems
/ page 298 of 319 /
The Right to Grief
© Carl Sandburg
TAKE your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow,
Over the dead child of a millionaire,
And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank
Which the millionaire might order his secretary to
scratch off
And get cashed.
The Four Brothers
© Carl Sandburg
MAKE war songs out of these;
Make chants that repeat and weave.
Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns;
Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns.
Prairie
© Carl Sandburg
I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.
Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Panels
© Carl Sandburg
THE WEST window is a panel of marching onions.
Five new lilacs nod to the wind and fence boards.
The rain dry fence boards, the stained knot holes, heliograph a peace.
(How long ago the knee drifts here and a blizzard howling at the knot holes, whistling winter war drums?)
Fellow Citizens
© Carl Sandburg
I DRANK musty ale at the Illinois Athletic Club with
the millionaire manufacturer of Green River butter
one night
And his face had the shining light of an old-time Quaker,
Monotone
© Carl Sandburg
The monotone of the rain is beautiful,
And the sudden rise and slow relapse
Of the long multitudinous rain.
For You
© Carl Sandburg
THE PEACE of great doors be for you.
Wait at the knobs, at the panel oblongs.
Wait for the great hinges.
The Precinct. Rochester
© Amy Lowell
The tall yellow hollyhocks stand,
Still and straight,
With their round blossoms spread open,
In the quiet sunshine.
Crepuscule du Matin
© Amy Lowell
All night I wrestled with a memory
Which knocked insurgent at the gates of thought.
The crumbled wreck of years behind has wrought
Its disillusion; now I only cry
The Last Quarter of the Moon
© Amy Lowell
How long shall I tarnish the mirror of life,
A spatter of rust on its polished steel!
The seasons reel
Like a goaded wheel.
The Boston Athenaeum
© Amy Lowell
Thou dear and well-loved haunt of happy hours,
How often in some distant gallery,
Gained by a little painful spiral stair,
Far from the halls and corridors where throng
The Great Adventure of Max Breuck
© Amy Lowell
1
A yellow band of light upon the street
Pours from an open door, and makes a wide
Pathway of bright gold across a sheet
A Fixed Idea
© Amy Lowell
What torture lurks within a single thought
When grown too constant, and however kind,
However welcome still, the weary mind
Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught
The Cremona Violin
© Amy Lowell
Part First
Frau Concert-Meister Altgelt shut the door.
A storm was rising, heavy gusts of wind
Swirled through the trees, and scattered leaves before
The Giver of Stars
© Amy Lowell
Hold your soul open for my welcoming.
Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me
With its clear and rippled coolness,
That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,
1777
© Amy Lowell
I
The Trumpet-Vine Arbour
The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are
wide open,
Spring Day
© Amy Lowell
Bath
The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is
a smell of tulips and narcissus
in the air.
The Allies
© Amy Lowell
August 14th, 1914Into the brazen, burnished sky, the cry hurls itself. The
zigzagging cry
of hoarse throats, it floats against the hard winds, and binds the
head
The Fruit Shop
© Amy Lowell
Cross-ribboned shoes; a muslin gown,
High-waisted, girdled with bright blue;
A straw poke bonnet which hid the frown
She pluckered her little brows into
New York at Night
© Amy Lowell
A near horizon whose sharp jags
Cut brutally into a sky
Of leaden heaviness, and crags
Of houses lift their masonry
