Smile poems
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The Organ-Blower
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
DEVOUTEST of my Sunday friends,
The patient Organ-blower bends;
I see his figure sink and rise,
(Forgive me, Heaven, my wandering eyes!)
But One Talent
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Ye who yourselves of larger worth esteem
Than common mortals, listen to my dream,
and learn the lesson of life's cozening cheat,
The coinage of conceit.
The Iron Gate
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
WHERE is this patriarch you are kindly greeting?
Not unfamiliar to my ear his name,
Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meeting
In days long vanished,-- is he still the same,
The Silent Melody
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
"BRING me my broken harp," he said;
"We both are wrecks,-- but as ye will,--
Though all its ringing tones have fled,
Their echoes linger round it still;
It had some golden strings, I know,
But that was long-- how long!-- ago.
The Last Leaf
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.
A Familiar Letter
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
YES, write, if you want to, there's nothing like trying;
Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold?
I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying,
If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold.
Summer Images
© John Clare
Now swarthy Summer, by rude health embrowned,
Precedence takes of rosy fingered Spring;
The Missionary - Canto Eighth
© William Lisle Bowles
Oh, shout for Lautaro, the young and the brave!
The arm of whose strength was uplifted to save,
When the steeds of the strangers came rushing amain,
And the ghosts of our fathers looked down on the slain!
A Day In The Castle Of Envy
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
The castle walls are full of eyes,
And not a mouse may creep unseen.
All the window slits are spies;
And the towers stand sentinel
The Fall of Jock Gillespie
© Rudyard Kipling
This fell when dinner-time was done -
'Twixt the first an' the second rub -
That oor mon Jock cam' hame again
To his rooms ahist the Club.
Red Is The Color Of Blood
© Conrad Aiken
Red is the color of blood, and I will seek it:
I have sought it in the grass.
You, Doctor Martin
© Anne Sexton
You, Doctor Martin, walk
from breakfast to madness. Late August,
I speed through the antiseptic tunnel
where the moving dead still talk
The Moss Of His Skin
© Anne Sexton
"Young girls in old Arabia were often buried alive next
to their fathers, apparently as sacrifice to the goddesses
of the tribes..."
An Autumnal Extravaganza
© James Whitcomb Riley
With a sweeter voice than birds
Dare to twitter in their sleep,
The Double Image
© Anne Sexton
They sent me letters with news
of you and I made moccasins that I would never use.
When I grew well enough to tolerate
myself, I lived with my mother, the witches said.
But I didn't leave. I had my portrait
done instead.
Amarantha. A Pastorall
© Richard Lovelace
Up with the jolly bird of light
Who sounds his third retreat to night;
Faire Amarantha from her bed
Ashamed starts, and rises red
That Day
© Anne Sexton
This is the desk I sit at
and this is the desk where I love you too much
and this is the typewriter that sits before me
where yesterday only your body sat before me
The Temptation
© Edith Nesbit
YOU bring your love too late, dear, I have no love to buy it,
I spent my love on worthless toys, at fairs you do not know;
I am a bankrupt trader--dear eyes, do not deny it,
I could have bought your love, dear, but that was long ago.
