Pet poems
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How To Not Settle It
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
I LIKE, at times, to hear the steeples' chimes
With sober thoughts impressively that mingle;
But sometimes, too, I rather like--don't you?--
To hear the music of the sleigh bells' jingle.
Ogrin The Hermit
© Edith Wharton
Ogrin the Hermit in old age set forth
This tale to them that sought him in the extreme
Ancient grey wood where he and silence housed:
L'orgue
© Charles Cros
Sous un roi d'Allemagne, ancien,
Est mort Gottlieb le musicien.
Un l'a cloué sous les planches.
Hou! hou! hou!
Le vent souffle dans les branches.
La Araucana - Canto II
© Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga
Pónese la discordia que entre los caciques de Arauco hubo sobre la eleción de capitán general, y el medio que se tomó por el consejo del cacique colocolo, con la entrada que por engaño los bárbaros hicieron en la casa fuerte de Tucapel y la batalla que con los españoles tuvieron
Muchos hay en el mundo que han llegado
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Antwerp)
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Messieurs, le Dieu des peintres: We felt odd:
'Twas Rubens, sculptured. A mean florid church
The Pageant
© John Greenleaf Whittier
A sound as if from bells of silver,
Or elfin cymbals smitten clear,
Through the frost-pictured panes I hear.
The One Certain Thing by Peter Cooley : American Life in Poetry #268 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate
© Ted Kooser
If writers are both skilled and lucky, they may write something that will carry their words into the future, past the hour of their own deaths. I’d guess all writers hope for this, and the following poem by Peter Cooley, who lives in New Orleans and teaches creative writing at Tulane, beautifully expresses his hope, and theirs.
The One Certain Thing
A day will come I’ll watch you reading this.
Don Juan: Canto The Thirteenth
© George Gordon Byron
I now mean to be serious;--it is time,
Since laughter now-a-days is deem'd too serious.
Vanitas Vanitatum
© William Makepeace Thackeray
How spake of old the Royal Seer?
(His text is one I love to treat on.)
This life of ours he said is sheer
Mataiotes Mataioteton.
A Hyde Park Larrikin
© Henry Kendall
Most likely you have stuck to tracts
Flushed through with flaming curses -
I judge you, neighbour, by your acts -
So don't you damn my verses.
Written In Petrarchs House At Arqua, Among The Euganean Hills
© Richard Monckton Milnes
Petrarch! I would that there might be
In this thy household sanctuary
No visible monument of thee:
By Mons. Fontenelle
© Matthew Prior
Ma petite ame, ma mignonne,
Tu t'en vas donc, má fille, et Dieu scache ou tu vas:
Tu pars seulette, nuë, et tremblotante, helas!
Que deviendra ton humeur folichonne?
Que deviendront tant de jolis ébats?
Kwannon
© Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
Camphor and wave-worn sandalwood for burning
They bring to me alone,
Shells that are veined like irises, and those
Curved like the clear bright petals of a rose.
Wherefore an hundredfold again returning
I render them their own -
The Heretic's Tragedy
© Robert Browning
(It would seem to be a glimpse from the
burning of Jacques du Bourg-Mulay, at Paris,
A. D. 1314; as distorted by the refraction from
Flemish brain to brain, during the course of
a couple of centuries.)
Misconstruction
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
HOW man misjudges man! the outward seeming,
Gesture, or glance, or utterance that may jar
Against some petty, pampered, poor conceit,
Unworthy, undefined, is straightway made
Pretence. Part I - Table-Talk
© John Kenyon
The youth, who long hath trod with trusting feet,
Starts from the flash which shows him life's deceit;
Then, with slow footstep, ponders, undeceived,
On all his heart, for many a year, believed;
But hence he eyes the world with sharpened view,
And learns, too soon, to separate false from true.
