Pet poems
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Lament for the Makers
© William Dunbar
I THAT in heill was and gladness
Am trublit now with great sickness
And feblit with infirmitie:--
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
The Czar's Last Christmas Letter: A Barn in the Urals
© Norman Dubie
You were never told, Mother, how old Illyawas drunk
That last holiday, for five days and nightsHe stumbled through Petersburg forming
A choir of mutes, he dressed them in pink ascension gownsAnd, then, sold Father's Tirietz stallion so to rent
A hall for his Christmas recital: the audienceWas rowdy but Illya in his black robes turned on them
The Chronicle Of The Drum
© William Makepeace Thackeray
"'Though Europe against me was arm'd,
Your chiefs and my people are true;
I still might have struggled with fortune,
And baffled all Europe with you.
Green Fields
© William Stanley Merwin
By this part of the century few are left who believe
in the animals for they are not there in the carved parts
of them served on plates and the pleas from the slatted trucks
are sounds of shadows that possess no future
Modern Love XXXVIII: Give to Imagination
© George Meredith
Give to imagination some pure light
In human form to fix it, or you shame
The devils with that hideous human game:
Imagination urging appetite!
Mater Triumphalis
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Mother of man's time-travelling generations,
Breath of his nostrils, heartblood of his heart,
God above all Gods worshipped of all nations,
Light above light, law beyond law, thou art.
The Complaint of Lisa
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Song, speak for me who am dumb as are the dead;
From my sad bed of tears I send forth thee,
To fly all day from sun's birth to sun's death
Down the sun's way after the flying sun,
For love of her that gave thee wings and breath
Ere day be done, to seek the sunflower.
A Forsaken Garden
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
IN a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
Four Songs Of Four Seasons
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
If this be the rose that the world hears singing,
Soft in the soft night, loud in the day,
Songs for the fireflies to dance as they hear;
If that be the song of the nightingale, springing
Forth in the form of a rose in May,
What do they say of the way of the year?
Mentana : First Anniversary
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
At the time when the stars are grey,
And the gold of the molten moon
Fades, and the twilight is thinned,
And the sun leaps up, and the wind,
A light rose, not of the day,
A stronger light than of noon.
The Many
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Greene, garlanded with February's few flowers
Ere March came in with Marlowe's rapturous rage;
Peele, from whose hand the sweet white locks of age
Took the mild chaplet woven of honored hours;
The Monument
© Elizabeth Bishop
Now can you see the monument? It is of wood
built somewhat like a box. No. Built
like several boxes in descending sizes
one above the other.
Roosters
© Elizabeth Bishop
At four o'clock
in the gun-metal blue dark
we hear the first crow of the first cock
Snowbirds
© Peter Conners
My maternal grandparents were snowbirds; the scent of their plumage an evergreen air freshener dangling off the rearview mirror of a Cadillac
The Eviction
© William Allingham
In early morning twilight, raw and chill,
Damp vapours brooding on the barren hill,
Through miles of mire in steady grave array
Threescore well-arm'd police pursue their way;
Une Charogne (The Carcass)
© Charles Baudelaire
Rappelez-vous l'objet que nous vîmes, mon âme,
Ce beau matin d'été si doux:
Au détour d'un sentier une charogne infâme
Sur un lit semé de cailloux,
Laughter And Tears IX
© Khalil Gibran
As the Sun withdrew his rays from the garden, and the moon threw cushioned beams upon the flowers, I sat under the trees pondering upon the phenomena of the atmosphere, looking through the branches at the strewn stars which glittered like chips of silver upon a blue carpet; and I could hear from a distance the agitated murmur of the rivulet singing its way briskly into the valley.
When the birds took shelter among the boughs, and the flowers folded their petals, and tremendous silence descended, I heard a rustle of feet though the grass. I took heed and saw a young couple approaching my arbor. The say under a tree where I could see them without being seen.
Come On In, The Senility Is Fine
© Ogden Nash
People live forever in Jacksonville and St. Petersburg and Tampa,
But you don't have to live forever to become a grampa.
The entrance requirements for grampahood are comparatively mild,
You only have to live until your child has a child.
