Pet poems
/ page 92 of 126 /The Passing Of Arthur
© Alfred Tennyson
That story which the bold Sir Bedivere,
First made and latest left of all the knights,
Told, when the man was no more than a voice
In the white winter of his age, to those
With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds.
"Beneath a veil of milky white"
© Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
Beneath a veil of milky white
Stands Isaac's like a hoary dovecote,
The crozier irritates the grey silences,
The heart understands the airy rite.
Self-Abandonment
© Li Po
I sat srinking and did not notice the dusk,
Till falling petals filled the folds of my dress.
Drunken I rose and walked to the moonlit stream;
The birds were gone, and men also few.
April
© Rémy Belleau
April, pride of woodland ways,
Of glad days,
April, bringing hope of prime,
To the young flowers that beneath
Their bud sheath
Are guarded in their tender time;
Ode to Mr. Graham, the Aeronaut
© Thomas Hood
Dear Graham, whilst the busy crowd,
The vain, the wealthy, and the proud,
Their meaner flights pursue,
Let us cast off the foolish ties
That bind us to the earth, and rise
And take a bird's-eye view!
Job Interview
© William Matthews
Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife
He would have written sonnets all his life?
DON JUAN, III, 63-4
Ambition
© Aline Murray Kilmer
Kenton and Deborah, Michael and Rose,
These are fine children as all the world knows,
But into my arms in my dreams every night
Come Peter and Christopher, Faith and Delight.
History of the Twentieth Century (A Roadshow)
© Joseph Brodsky
Ladies and gentlemen and the day!
All ye made of sweet human clay!
Let me tell you: you are o'kay.
The Fan : A Poem. Book I.
© John Gay
The goddess pleas'd, the curious work receive,
Remounts her chariot, and the grotto leaves;
With the light fan she moves the yielding air,
And gales, till then unknown, play round the fair.
On The Death Of A Twin
© William Strode
Where are yee now, Astrologers, that looke
For petty accidents in Heavens booke?
Two Twins, to whom one Influence gave breath,
Differ in more than Fortune, Life and Death.
The Dictators
© Pablo Neruda
An odor has remained among the sugarcane:
a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating
Upon My Dear and Loving Husband his Going into England Jan. 16
© Anne Bradstreet
O thou Most High who rulest all
And hear'st the prayers of thine,
O hearken, Lord, unto my suit
And my petition sign.
To My Book
© Benjamin Jonson
It will be looked for, book, when some but see
Thy title, Epigrams, and named of me,
The Country Schoolmaster.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"I feel new life in every limb!"
Our traveller cried in ecstasy.
"Who art thou who thus gladden'st me?
May Heaven such blessings ever send!
Ne'er may I want a jovial friend!"
Brother Jonathan's Lament for Sister Caroline
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
SHE has gone,- she has left us in passion and pride,-
Our stormy-browed sister, so long at our side!
She has torn her own star from our firmament's glow,
And turned on her brother the face of a foe!
Scattering Flowers
© George Hitchcock
There is a dark tolling in the air,
an unbearable needle in the vein,
the horizon flaked with feathers of rust.
From the caves of drugged flowers
fireflies rise through the night:
they bear the sweet gospel of napalm.
The Petition
© James Russell Lowell
Oh, tell me less or tell me more,
Soft eyes with mystery at the core,
That always seem to melt my own
Frankly as pansies fully grown,
Yet waver still 'tween no and yes!