Sad poems
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Crossing the Bar
© Alfred Tennyson
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
The Sorcerer: Act I
© William Schwenck Gilbert
For to-day young Alexis-young Alexis Pointdextre
Is betrothed to Aline-to Aline Sangazure,
And that pride of his sex is-of his sex is to be next her
At the feast on the green-on the green, oh, be sure!
The Test of Fantasy
© Joanne Kyger
It unfolds and ripples like a banner, downward. All the stories
come folding out. The smells and flowers begin to come back, as
the tapestry is brightly colored and brocaded. Rabbits and violets.
Afraid Of His Dad
© Edgar Albert Guest
Bill Jones, who goes to school with me,
Is the saddest boy I ever see.
The Tragic Condition of the Statue of Liberty
© Bernadette Mayer
A collaboration with Emma Lazarus
Give me your tired, your poor,
Bird Parliament (translation of)
© Edward Fitzgerald
And first, with Heart so full as from his Eyes
Ran weeping, up rose Tajidar the Wise;
The mystic Mark upon whose Bosom show'd
That He alone of all the Birds THE ROAD
Had travell'd: and the Crown upon his Head
Had reach'd the Goal; and He stood forth and said:
Hyacinth
© Louise Gluck
2
There were no flowers in antiquity
but boys’ bodies, pale, perfectly imagined.
So the gods sank to human shape with longing.
In the field, in the willow grove,
Apollo sent the courtiers away.
To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth
© Phillis Wheatley
Hail, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,
Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn:
Interview by a Guggenheim Recipient
© Charles Bukowski
this South American up here on a Gugg
walked in with his whore
Here on Earth
© Rahel Bluwstein
Here on Earth - not in high clouds-
On this mother earth that is close:
To sorrow in her sadness, exult in her meager joy
That knows, so well, how to console.
The Ballad of the Black-Sheep
© Henry Lawson
A black-sheep, from England, who worked on the run
Riding where the stockmen ride
He sat by the hut when the days work was done
Lone huts where the black sheep bide.
Im tired of my life! to his lone self said he,
My girl and my country are both done with me!
Love: To A Little Girl
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
When we all lie still
Where churchyard pines their funeral vigil keep,
The Slave Mother
© Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Heard you that shriek? It rose
So wildly on the air,
It seem’d as if a burden’d heart
Was breaking in despair.
from Venus and Adonis
© William Shakespeare
Even as the sunne with purple-colourd face,
Had tane his last leaue of the weeping morne,
Rose-cheekt Adonis hied him to the chace,
Hunting he lou'd, but loue he laught to scorne,
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amaine vnto him,
And like a bold fac'd suter ginnes to woo him.
Ave Atque Vale
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
In Memory of Charles Baudelaire
Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs;
Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs,
Et quand Octobre souffle, émondeur des vieux arbres,
The Portrait
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
This is her picture as she was:
It seems a thing to wonder on,
The Storm
© Adam Mickiewicz
The rudder breaks, the sails are ripped, the roar
Of waters mingles with the ominous sound
The Supper
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Blind Roger
Set the glass in my hand. I'm blind and old,
But still I shun to be left in the cold.
