Poems begining by S
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Summer Downpour on Campus by Juliana Gray: American Life in Poetry #110 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laurea
© Ted Kooser
I've talked a lot in this column about poetry as celebration, about the way in which a poem can make an ordinary experience seem quite special. Here's the celebration of a moment on a campus somewhere, anywhere. The poet is Juliana Gray, who lives in New York. I especially like the little comic surprise with which it closes.
Summer Downpour on Campus
When clouds turn heavy, rich
and mottled as an oyster bed,
Sonnet XIII. To Mr. H. Lawes On His Aires
© John Milton
Harry whose tuneful and well measur'd Song
First taught our English Musick how to span
Words with just note and accent, not to scan
With Midas Ears, committing short and long;
Song Of Fortunio
© Alfred de Musset
If you suppose I'm going to say
Whose love I dare,
I would not for an empire's sway
Her name declare.
Seeing Off Meng Haoran For Guangling At Yellow Crane Tower
© Li Po
My old friend's said goodbye to the west, here at Yellow Crane Tower,
In the third month's cloud of willow blossoms, he's going down to Yangzhou.
The lonely sail is a distant shadow, on the edge of a blue emptiness,
All I see is the Yangtze River flow to the far horizon.
Song of Marion's Men
© William Cullen Bryant
Our band is few, but true and tried,
Our leader frank and bold;
Satan Absolved
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Angels. And we would know God's plan,
His true thought for the world, the wherefore and the why
Of His long patience mocked, His name in jeopardy.
We have no heart to serve without instructions new.
Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce; Or, The Slave-Trader In The Dumps
© William Cowper
Tis a curious assortment of dainty regales,
To tickle the Negroes with when the ship sails,
Fine chains for the neck, and a cat with nine tails,
Which nobody, &c.
Stopped Dead
© Sylvia Plath
A squeal of brakes.
Or is it a birth cry?
And here we are, hung out over the dead drop
Uncle, pants factory Fatso, millionaire.
And you out cold beside me in your chair.
Sonnet 89: Now, That Of Absence
© Sir Philip Sidney
Now that of absence the most irksome night,
With darkest shade doth overcome my day;
Since Stella's eyes, wont to give me my day,
Leaving my hemisphere, leave me in night,
Sonnet 62: Late, Tir'd With Woe
© Sir Philip Sidney
Late tir'd with woe, ev'n ready for to pine,
With rage of love, I call'd my love unkind;
She is whose eyes Love, though unfelt, doth shine,
Sweet said that I true love in her should find.
Song of the Cattle Hunters
© Henry Kendall
While the morning light beams on the fern-matted streams,
And the water-pools flash in its glow,
Sweetheart, Goodbye
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
SWEETHEART, good-bye! Our varied day
Is closing into twilight gray,
And up from bare, bleak wastes of sea
The north-wind rises mournfully;
So Cruel Prison
© Henry Howard
So cruel prison how could betide, alas,
As proud Windsor? Where I in lust and joy
Sonnet: Before He Went
© John Keats
BEFORE he went to feed with owls and bats
Nebuchadnezzar had an ugly dream,
Sonnet III.
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Thou gentle Look, that didst my soul beguile,
Why hast thou left me? Still in some fond dream
Revisit my sad heart, auspicious Smile!
As falls on closing flowers the lunar beam:
