Pet poems
/ page 63 of 126 /
The Three Quiet Gentlemen
© Henry Lawson
There is a quiet gentleman a-motoring in France
(Oh, dont you hear the honking of a British motor-car?)
Consolation. (To M. Duperrier, Gentleman Of Aix In Provence, On The Death Of His Daughter)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Will then, Duperrier, thy sorrow be eternal?
And shall the sad discourse
Whispered within thy heart, by tenderness paternal,
Only augment its force?
A God's Labour
© Sri Aurobindo
I have gathered my dreams in a silver air
Between the gold and the blue
And wrapped them softly and left them there,
My jewelled dreams of you.
Sonnet XXIII: Love's Baubles
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore
Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit:
Song For Heroes
© Ellis Parker Butler
Captain OHare was a mariner brave;
He refused to abandon his ship;
A hero, he sleeps in a watery grave
And his widow is now Mrs. Bipp,
Haw! Haw!
His widow is now Mrs. Bipp!
Judgment Day
© Ellis Parker Butler
Saint Peter stood, at Heaven's gate,
All souls claims to adjudicate
Saying to some souls, "Enter in!"
"Go to Hell," to others, "you are steeped in sin."
A Study In Feeling
© Ellis Parker Butler
To be a great musician you must be a man of moods,
You have to be, to understand sonatas and etudes.
To execute pianos and to fiddle with success,
With sympathy and feeling you must fairly effervesce;
It was so with Paganini, Remenzi and Cho-pang,
And so it was with Peterkin Von Gabriel OLang.
The Spelling Bee At Angels
© Francis Bret Harte
Waltz in, waltz in, ye little kids, and gather round my knee,
And drop them books and first pot-hooks, and hear a yarn from me.
I kin not sling a fairy tale of Jinnys fierce and wild,
For I hold it is unchristian to deceive a simple child;
But as from school yer driftin' by, I thowt ye'd like to hear
Of a "Spelling Bee" at Angels that we organized last year.
Crucifix
© Anna Akhmatova
I
This greatest hour was hallowed and thandered
By angel's choirs; fire melted sky.
He asked his Father:"Why am I abandoned...?"
And told his Mother: "Mother, do not cry..."
For Osip Mandelstam
© Anna Akhmatova
And the town is frozen solid in a vice,
Trees, walls, snow, beneath a glass.
Over crystal, on slippery tracks of ice,
the painted sleighs and I, together, pass.
Niobe in Distress
© Phillis Wheatley
Seven sprightly sons the royal bed adorn,
Seven daughters beauteous as the op'ning morn,
As when Aurora fills the ravish'd sight,
And decks the orient realms with rosy light
From their bright eyes the living splendors play,
Nor can beholders bear the flashing ray.
Le Directeur
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
MALHEUR à la malheureuse Tamise
Qui coule si preès du Spectateur.
Le directeur
Conservateur
Dans le Restaurant
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
Mais alors, vieux lubrique, à cet âge...
Monsieur, le fait est dur.
Il est venu, nous peloter, un gros chien;
Moi javais peur, je lai quittée à mi-chemin.
Cest dommage.
Mais alors, tu as ton vautour!
Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
(The Dry Salvagespresumably les trois sauvagesis a small
group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E. coast of Cape Ann,
Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced to rhyme with assuages.
Groaner: a whistling buoy.)
Four Quartets 2: East Coker
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.
The Naming Of Cats
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
The Testimony Of Light
© Carolyn Forche
Outside everything visible and invisible a blazing maple.
Daybreak: a seam at the curve of the world. The trousered legs of the women
shimmered.
They held their arms in front of them like ghosts.
The Sonnets To Orpheus: Book 2: VI
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Rose, you majesty-once, to the ancients, you were
just a calyx with the simplest of rims.
But for us, you are the full, the numberless flower,
the inexhaustible countenance.
Duino Elegies: The Tenth Elegy
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Yet the dead youth must go on alone.
In silence the elder Lament brings him
as far as the gorge where it shimmers in the moonlight:
The Foutainhead of Joy. With reverance she names it,
saying: "In the world of mankind it is a life-bearing stream."
M'Fingal - Canto IV
© John Trumbull
"For me, before that fatal time,
I mean to fly th' accursed clime,
And follow omens, which of late
Have warn'd me of impending fate.
