Power poems
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The Country Life:
© Robert Herrick
TO THE HONOURED MR ENDYMION PORTER, GROOM OF
THE BED-CHAMBER TO HIS MAJESTYSweet country life, to such unknown,
Whose lives are others', not their own!
But serving courts and cities, be
To The Dead
© Frank Bidart
What I hope (when I hope) is that we'll
see each other again,--. . . and again reach the VEINin which we loved each other . .
It existed. It existed.There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--. . . for, like the detectives (the Ritz Brothers)
in The Gorilla,once we'd been battered by the gorillawe searched the walls, the intricately carved
Under
© Carl Sandburg
I
I AM the undertow
Washing tides of power
Battering the pillars
Under your things of high law.
Three Spring Notations on Bipeds
© Carl Sandburg
1THE DOWN drop of the blackbird,
The wing catch of arrested flight,
The stop midway and then off: off for triangles, circles, loops of new hieroglyphs
This is Aprils way: a woman:
The Walking Man of Rodin
© Carl Sandburg
LEGS hold a torso away from the earth.
And a regular high poem of legs is here.
Powers of bone and cord raise a belly and lungs
Out of ooze and over the loam where eyes look and ears hear
Population Drifts
© Carl Sandburg
NEW-MOWN hay smell and wind of the plain made her
a woman whose ribs had the power of the hills in
them and her hands were tough for work and there
was passion for life in her womb.
New Farm Tractor
© Carl Sandburg
The rear axles hold the kick of twenty Missouri jackasses.
It is in the records of the patent office and the ads there is twenty horse power pull here.
Haze
© Carl Sandburg
KEEP a red heart of memories
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
Monadnock in Early Spring
© Amy Lowell
Cloud-topped and splendid, dominating all
The little lesser hills which compass thee,
Thou standest, bright with April's buoyancy,
Yet holding Winter in some shaded wall
Crepuscule du Matin
© Amy Lowell
All night I wrestled with a memory
Which knocked insurgent at the gates of thought.
The crumbled wreck of years behind has wrought
Its disillusion; now I only cry
An Opera House
© Amy Lowell
Within the gold square of the proscenium arch,
A curtain of orange velvet hangs in stiff folds,
Its tassels jarring slightly when someone crosses the stage behind.
Gold carving edges the balconies,
The Great Adventure of Max Breuck
© Amy Lowell
1
A yellow band of light upon the street
Pours from an open door, and makes a wide
Pathway of bright gold across a sheet
Loon Point
© Amy Lowell
Softly the water ripples
Against the canoe's curving side,
Softly the birch trees rustle
Flinging over us branches wide.
The Shadow
© Amy Lowell
The Coroner took the body away,
And the watches were sold that Saturday.
The Auctioneer said one could seldom buy
Such watches, and the prices were high.
To an Early Daffodil
© Amy Lowell
Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring!
Thou herald of rich Summer's myriad flowers!
The climbing sun with new recovered powers
Does warm thee into being, through the ring
The Promise of the Morning Star
© Amy Lowell
Thou father of the children of my brain
By thee engendered in my willing heart,
How can I thank thee for this gift of art
Poured out so lavishly, and not in vain.
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
© Amy Lowell
A drifting, April, twilight sky,
A wind which blew the puddles dry,
And slapped the river into waves
That ran and hid among the staves
A Tulip Garden
© Amy Lowell
Guarded within the old red wall's embrace,
Marshalled like soldiers in gay company,
The tulips stand arrayed. Here infantry
Wheels out into the sunlight. What bold grace
A Fairy Tale
© Amy Lowell
On winter nights beside the nursery fire
We read the fairy tale, while glowing coals
Builded its pictures. There before our eyes
We saw the vaulted hall of traceried stone
To Miss Cornish
© Robert Louis Stevenson
THEY tell me, lady, that to-day
On that unknown Australian strand -
Some time ago, so far away -
Another lady joined the band.
