Pet poems
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To The Same (John Dyer)
© William Wordsworth
ENOUGH of climbing toil!--Ambition treads
Here, as 'mid busier scenes, ground steep and rough,
Or slippery even to peril! and each step,
As we for most uncertain recompence
Paradise Regain'd: Book IV (1671)
© Patrick Kavanagh
PErplex'd and troubl'd at his bad success
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
The Aeneid of Virgil: Book 10
© Publius Vergilius Maro
THE GATES of heavn unfold: Jove summons all
The gods to council in the common hall.
Paths
© John Montague
Sealed off by sweetpea
clambering up its wired fence,
the tarred goats' shack
which stank in summer,
in its fallow, stone-heaped corner.
A ceux qui sont petits
© Victor Marie Hugo
Est-ce ma faute à moi si vous n'êtes pas grands ?
Vous aimez les hiboux, les fouines, les tyrans,
A Death in the Desert
© Robert Browning
Then Xanthus said a prayer, but still he slept:
It is the Xanthus that escaped to Rome,
Was burned, and could not write the chronicle.
To Wilhelmina
© Sidney Lanier
A white face, drooping, on a bending neck:
A tube-rose that with heavy petal curves
Her stem: a foam-bell on a wave that swerves
Back from the undulating vessel's deck.
The Amaranth
© Matthew Rohrer
is an imaginary flower that never fades.
The amaranth is blue with black petals,
The College Colonel
© Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
He rides at their head;
A crutch by his saddle just slants in view,
The Lotos-eaters
© Alfred Tennyson
"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land,
"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
Kaddish
© Allen Ginsberg
Magnificent, mourned no more, marred of heart, mind behind, married dreamed, mortal changed—Ass and face done with murder.
In the world, given, flower maddened, made no Utopia, shut under pine, almed in Earth, balmed in Lone, Jehovah, accept.
Nameless, One Faced, Forever beyond me, beginningless, endless, Father in death. Tho I am not there for this Prophecy, I am unmarried, I’m hymnless, I’m Heavenless, headless in blisshood I would still adore
Thee, Heaven, after Death, only One blessed in Nothingness, not light or darkness, Dayless Eternity—
Take this, this Psalm, from me, burst from my hand in a day, some of my Time, now given to Nothing—to praise Thee—But Death
This is the end, the redemption from Wilderness, way for the Wonderer, House sought for All, black handkerchief washed clean by weeping—page beyond Psalm—Last change of mine and Naomi—to God’s perfect Darkness—Death, stay thy phantoms!
Salvador Dali
© David Gascoyne
The smooth plain with its mirrors listens to the cliff
Like a basilisk eating flowers.
And the children, lost in the shadows of the catacombs,
Call to the mirrors for help:
'Strong-bow of salt, cutlass of memory,
Write on my map the name of every river.'
Grandfather Bridgeman
© George Meredith
'Heigh, boys!' cried Grandfather Bridgeman, 'it's time before dinner to-day.'
He lifted the crumpled letter, and thumped a surprising 'Hurrah!'
Up jumped all the echoing young ones, but John, with the starch in his throat,
Said, 'Father, before we make noises, let's see the contents of the note.'
The old man glared at him harshly, and twinkling made answer: 'Too bad!
John Bridgeman, I'm always the whisky, and you are the water, my lad!'
Scorn not the Sonnet
© André Breton
Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Her my body
© Richard Jones
The dog licks my hand as I worry
about the left nipple
of the woman in the bathroom.
Rosamond
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
IN the fragrant bright June morning, Rosamond, the queen of girls,
Down the marble doorsteps loiters, radiant with her sunny curls;
O'er the green sward through the garden passes to the river's brink
Throws away an old bouquet, and wonders if 't will float or sink.
Three Women
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
My love is young, so young;
Young is her cheek, and her throat,
And life is a song to be sung
With love the word for each note.
