Smile poems
/ page 194 of 369 /
A Poet's Wooing
© James Whitcomb Riley
I woo'd a woman once,
But she was sharper than an eastern wind.
Tennyson
The Old Guitar
© James Whitcomb Riley
Neglected now is the old guitar
And moldering into decay;
Fretted with many a rift and scar
That the dull dust hides away,
While the spider spins a silver star
In its silent lips to-day.
Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
Tra-la-la-la-la-la-lairenil nisi divinum stabile est; caetera fumusthe gondola
stopped, the old palace was there, how charming its grey and pinkgoats and
monkeys, with such hair too!so the countess passed on until she came through the
little park, where Niobe presented her with a cabinet, and so departed.
Morning at the Window
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
THEY are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
(The Dry Salvagespresumably les trois sauvagesis a small
group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E. coast of Cape Ann,
Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced to rhyme with assuages.
Groaner: a whistling buoy.)
The Sonnets To Orpheus: IV
© Rainer Maria Rilke
O you tender ones, walk now and then
into the breath that blows coldly past,
Upon your cheeks let it tremble and part;
behind you it will tremble together again.
Going Blind
© Rainer Maria Rilke
She sat just like the others at the table.
But on second glance, she seemed to hold her cup
a little differently as she picked it up.
She smiled once. It was almost painful.
Archaic Torso Of Apollo
© Rainer Maria Rilke
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
To A Young Lady
© John Trumbull
From me, not famed for much goodnature,
Expect not compliment, but satire;
To draw your picture quite unable,
Instead of fact accept a Fable.
who sharpens every dull... (26)
© Edward Estlin Cummings
who sharpens every dull
here comes the only man
reminding with his bell
to disappear a sun
this evangelist... (XXIX)
© Edward Estlin Cummings
this evangelist
buttons with his big gollywog voice
the kingdomofheaven up behind and crazily
skating thither and hither in filthy sawdust
chucks and rolls
against the tent his thick joggling fists
if i have made,my lady,intricate
© Edward Estlin Cummings
-let the world say "his most wise music stole
nothing from death"-
you only will create
(who are so perfectly alive)my shame:
lady through whose profound and fragile lips
the sweet small clumsy feet of April came
Epithalamion
© Edward Estlin Cummings
I.Thou aged unreluctant earth who dost
with quivering continual thighs invite
the thrilling rain the slender paramour
to toy with thy extraordinary lust,
a light Out
© Edward Estlin Cummings
--who therefor Thee(once and once only,Queen
among centuries universes between
Who out of deeplyness rose to undeath)
my father moved through dooms of love
© Edward Estlin Cummings
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height
if I should sleep with a lady called death
© Edward Estlin Cummings
if I should sleep with a lady called death
get another man with firmer lips
to take your new mouth in his teeth
(hips pumping pleasure into hips).
but the other
© Edward Estlin Cummings
but the other
day i was passing a certain
gate rain
fell as it will
gee i like to think of dead
© Edward Estlin Cummings
gee i like to think of dead it means nearer because deeper firmer
since darker than little round water at one end of the well it's
too cool to be crooked and it's too firm to be hard but it's sharp
and thick and it loves, every old thing falls in rosebugs and
jackknives and kittens and pennies they all sit there looking at
each other having the fastest time because they've never met before
my love is building a building... (XII)
© Edward Estlin Cummings
my love is building a building
around you, a frail slippery
house, a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginning
my girl's tall with hard long eyes... (XIX)
© Edward Estlin Cummings
my girl's tall with hard long eyes
as she stands, with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress, good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with surprise
