Peace poems
/ page 318 of 319 /
Sestina: Altaforte
© Ezra Pound
LOQUITUR: En Bertans de Born. Dante Alighieri put this man in hell
for that he was a stirrer up of strife. Eccovi! Judge ye! Have I dug
him up again? The scene is at his castle, Altaforte. "Papiols" is his
jongleur. "The Leopard," the device of Richard Coeur de Lion.
The Three Taverns
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum, and The Three Taverns.(Acts xxviii, 15)
Herodion, Apelles, Amplias,
And Andronicus? Is it you I see
At last? And is it you now that are gazing
The Book of Annandale
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
IPartly to think, more to be left alone,
George Annandale said something to his friends
A word or two, brusque, but yet smoothed enough
To suit their funeral gazeand went upstairs;
Avon's Harvest
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Mightnt it be as well, my friend, I said,
For you to contemplate the uncompleted
With not such an infernal certainty?
The Old King's New Jester
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
You that in vain would front the coming order
With eyes that meet forlornly what they must,
And only with a furtive recognition
See dust where there is dust,
Hillcrest
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
No sound of any storm that shakes
Old island walls with older seas
Comes here where now September makes
An island in a sea of trees.
On the Way
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
But why forget them? Theyre the same that winked
Upon the world when Alcibiades
Cut off his dogs tail to induce distinction.
There are dogs yet, and Alcibiades
Is not forgotten.
The Burning Book
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
OR THE CONTENTED METAPHYSICIAN
TO the lore of no manner of men
Would his vision have yielded
When he found what will never again
Lazarus
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
The Master loved you as he loved us all,
Martha; and you are saying only things
That children say when they have had no sleep.
Try somehow now to rest a little while;
You know that I am here, and that our friends
Are coming if I call.
Merlin
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see,
So far beyond the faint edge of the world?
Dye look to see the lady Vivian,
Pursued by divers ominous vile demons
John Brown
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Though for your sake I would not have you now
So near to me tonight as now you are,
God knows how much a stranger to my heart
Was any cold word that I may have written;
Peace on Earth
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
I could not pass the fellow by.
Do you believe in God? said I;
And is there to be Peace on Earth?
The Deserted Village
© Oliver Goldsmith
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.
To the Memory of Sarah Livingston
© Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
BEYOND where billows roll or tempests vex
Is gone the gentlest of the gentle sex!
---Her brittle bark on life's wild ocean tost
Unequal to the conflict soon was lost.
On my Sister Joanna's Entrance into Her 33rd Year
© Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
On this thy natal day permit a friend -
A brother - with thy joys his own to blend:
In all gladness he would wish to share
As willing in thy griefs a part to bear.
To my little niece Anne Duyckinck, aged 9 years
© Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
To his charming black-eyed nieceUncle Harry wishest peace!Wishes roses over strow'dO'er her sublunary road!
Into the Dusk-Charged Air
© John Ashbery
Birds circle the Ticino. In winter
The Var was dark blue, unfrozen. The
Thwaite, cold, is choked with sandy ice;
The Ardèche glistens feebly through the freezing rain.
Death In The Lounge Bar
© Vernon Scannell
The bar he went inside was not
A place he often visited;
He welcomed anonymity;
No one to switch inquisitive
Compass Rose
© Jennifer Reeser
Id buy you a Babushka doll, my heart,
and brush your ash-blonde hair until it gleams,
were Russia and our land not laid apart
by ocean so much deeper than it seems.
Good Friday 2001, Riding North
© Jennifer Reeser
Yellow makes a play for green among
the rows of some poor farmer's field outside
the Memphis city limits' northern edge.
A D. J. plays The Day He Wore My Crown,
