Smile poems
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To Joanna
© William Wordsworth
AMID the smoke of cities did you pass
The time of early youth; and there you learned,
Stray Birds 51 - 60
© Rabindranath Tagore
51
YOUR idol is shattered in the dust
to prove that God's dust is greater than
your idol.
The Picture Book
© Robert Graves
When I was not quite five years old
I first saw the blue picture book,
And Fraulein Spitzenburger told
Stories that sent me hot and cold;
I loathed it, yet I had to look:
It was a German book.
Long time a child, and still a child, when years
© Victor Segalen
Long time a child, and still a child, when years
Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I,
The Garden Buddha by Peter Pereira: American Life in Poetry #132 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004
© Ted Kooser
Children at play give personalities to lifeless objects, and we don't need to give up that pleasure as we grow older. Poets are good at discerning life within what otherwise might seem lifeless. Here the poet Peter Pereira, a family physician in the Seattle area, contemplates a smiling statue, and in that moment of contemplation the smile is given by the statue to the man.
The Garden Buddha
Gift of a friend, the stone Buddha sits zazen,
prayer beads clutched in his chubby fingers.
Through snow, icy rain, the riot of spring flowers,
he gazes forward to the city in the distanceâalways
Sappho
© James Wright
The twilight falls; I soften the dusting feathers,
And clean again.
The house has lain and moldered for three days.
The windows smeared with rain, the curtains torn,
The mice come in,
The kitchen blown with cold.
In My Dreams
© Stevie Smith
In my dreams I am always saying goodbye and riding away,
Whither and why I know not nor do I care.
And the parting is sweet and the parting over is sweeter,
And sweetest of all is the night and the rushing air.
From Faust - Second Part - I.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
HARK! the storm of hours draws near,
Loudly to the spirit-ear
Signs of coming day appear.
Rocky gates are wildly crashing,
Phoebus' wheels are onward dashing;
Vanity Fair
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
In Vanity Fair, as we bow and smile,
As we talk of the opera after the weather,
Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children
© Edward Taylor
A Curious Knot God made in Paradise,
And drew it out inamled neatly Fresh.
It was the True-Love Knot, more sweet than spice
And set with all the flowres of Graces dress.
Its Weddens Knot, that ne're can be unti'de.
No Alexanders Sword can it divide.
Essay on Psychiatrists
© Robert Pinsky
It's crazy to think one could describe them—
Calling on reason, fantasy, memory, eyes and ears—
As though they were all alike any more
For love I, too, could die (she said) nor fear it,
© Robert Crawford
Such love as some of the dead queens have had
Whose sorrow matched their beauty. I could bear it,
And I think die too, to have been so glad.
With the sweet wonder in a great light lying
The Princess (part 4)
© Alfred Tennyson
But when we planted level feet, and dipt
Beneath the satin dome and entered in,
There leaning deep in broidered down we sank
Our elbows: on a tripod in the midst
A fragrant flame rose, and before us glowed
Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold.
Isle Of Wight--Spring, 1891
© Horace Smith
I know not what the cause may be,
Or whether there be one or many;
But this year's Spring has seemed to me
More exquisite than any.
Lincoln Is Dead
© George Moses Horton
He is gone, the strong base of the nation,
The dove to his covet has fled;
My Son the Man
© Sharon Olds
Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider,
the way Houdini would expand his body
Among The Timothy
© Archibald Lampman
Long hours ago, while yet the morn was blithe,
Nor sharp athirst had drunk the beaded dew,
