Smile poems
/ page 307 of 369 /
Autobiography At An Air-Station
© Philip Larkin
Six hours pass: if I'd gone by boat last night
I'd be there now. Well, it's too late for that.
The kiosk girl is yawning. I fell stale,
Stupified, by inaction - and, as light
Begins to ebb outside, by fear, I set
So much on this Assumption. Now it's failed.
The Witch's Frolic
© Richard Harris Barham
Thou mayest have read, my little boy Ned,
Though thy mother thine idlesse blames,
In Doctor Goldsmith's history book,
Of a gentleman called King James,
In quilted doublet, and great trunk breeches,
Who held in abhorrence tobacco and witches.
Nancy
© Robert Bloomfield
You ask me, dear Nancy, what makes me presume
That you cherish a secret affection for me?
When we see the Flow'rs bud, don't we look for the Bloom?
Then, sweetest, attend, while I answer to thee.
The Me Within Thee Blind!
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
Since God is lost, then all is lost indeed.
You did not know the comfort or the need
Of God for me, who am so frail and weak.
Blown by all winds, I know not where to seek.
Beautiful Old Age
© David Herbert Lawrence
It ought to be lovely to be old
to be full of the peace that comes of experience
and wrinkled ripe fulfilment.
The Piano (Notebook Version)
© David Herbert Lawrence
The full throated woman has chosen a winning, living song
And surely the heart that is in me must belong
To the old Sunday evenings, when darkness wandered outside
And hymns gleamed on our warm lips, as we watched mother's fingers glide
Piano
© David Herbert Lawrence
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
Come, Said My Soul
© Walt Whitman
Come, said my soul,
Such verses for my body let us write, (For we are One),
Rhythm of Life
© Eileen Carney Hulme
The clock is silent
nowadays clocks no longer
need to make
that rhythmic sound of life.
One Day And Another: A Lyrical Eclogue Part I
© Madison Julius Cawein
Herein the dearness of her is;
The thirty perfect days of June
Made one, in maiden loveliness
Were not more sweet to clasp and kiss,
With love not more in tune.
A Point Of Honour
© Alfred Austin
``Tell me again; I did not hear: It was wailing so sadly. Nay,
Hush! little one, for mother wants to know what they have to say.
There! At my breast be good and still! What quiets you calms me too.
They say that the source is poisoned; still, it seems pure enough for you!
The Last Conqueror
© James Shirley
Victorious men of earth, no more
Proclaim how wide your empires are;
To Beethoven
© Sidney Lanier
In o'er-strict calyx lingering,
Lay music's bud too long unblown,
Till thou, Beethoven, breathed the spring:
Then bloomed the perfect rose of tone.
The Dying Hour
© Caroline Norton
OH! watch me; watch me still
Thro' the long night's dreary hours,
Uphold by thy firm will
Worn Nature's sinking powers!
II.
The Tournament
© Sidney Lanier
Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies,
And the knights still hurried amain
To the tournament under the ladies' eyes,
Where the jousters were Heart and Brain.
The Symphony
© Sidney Lanier
And yet shall Love himself be heard,
Though long deferred, though long deferred:
O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred:
Music is Love in search of a word."
The Revenge Of Hamish
© Sidney Lanier
It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay;
And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man,
Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran
Down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way.
The Jacquerie A Fragment
© Sidney Lanier
Chapter I.Once on a time, a Dawn, all red and bright
Leapt on the conquered ramparts of the Night,
And flamed, one brilliant instant, on the world,
Then back into the historic moat was hurled
Street Cries
© Sidney Lanier
Oft seems the Time a market-town
Where many merchant-spirits meet
Who up and down and up and down
Cry out along the street
