Smile poems
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In Memory Of My Mother
© Patrick Kavanagh
I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane among the poplars
On your way to the station, or happily
The Voice of Robert Desnos
© Robert Desnos
the one I love is not listening
the one I love does not hear
the one I love does not answer.
The Widow
© Walter de la Mare
Grief hath pacified her face;
Even hope might share so still a place;
Yet, on the silence of her heart,
Haply, if a strange footfall start,
The Fool Rings His Bells
© Walter de la Mare
Come, Death, I'd have a word with thee;
And thou, poor Innocency;
And Love -- a lad with broken wing;
Apnd Pity, too;
The Fool shall sing to you,
As Fools will sing.
You Smiled, You Spoke, and I Believed
© Walter Savage Landor
You smiled, you spoke, and I believed,
By every word and smile deceived.
Another man would hope no more;
Nor hope I what I hoped before:
But let not this last wish be vain;
Deceive, deceive me once again!
Nicholas Nye
© Walter de la Mare
Thistle and darnell and dock grew there,
And a bush, in the corner, of may,
On the orchard wall I used to sprawl
In the blazing heat of the day;
At Ease
© Walter de la Mare
Most wounds can Time repair;
But some are mortal -- these:
For a broken heart there is no balm,
No cure for a heart at ease --
Song
© Lady Mary Chudleigh
Why Damon, why, why, why so pressing?
The Heart you beg's not worth possessing:
Each Look, each Word, each Smile's affected,
And inward Charms are quite neglected:
Then scorn her, scorn her, foolish Swain,
And sigh no more, no more in vain.
Soon, O Ianthe! Life is O'er
© Walter Savage Landor
Soon, O Ianthe! life is o'er,
And sooner beauty's heavenly smile:
Grant only (and I ask no more),
Let love remain that little while.
If I were dead
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
'IF I were dead, you'd sometimes say, Poor Child!'
The dear lips quiver'd as they spake,
And the tears brake
From eyes which, not to grieve me, brightly smiled.
Deliciae Sapientiae de Amore
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Love, light for me
Thy ruddiest blazing torch,
That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch
Of the glad Palace of Virginity,
Tides
© Helen Hunt Jackson
O patient shore, thou canst not go to meet
Thy love, the restless sea, how comfortest
Thou all thy loneliness? Art thou at rest,
When, loosing his strong arms from round thy feet,
The Fir-Tree and the Brook
© Helen Hunt Jackson
The Fir-Tree looked on stars, but loved the Brook!
"O silver-voiced! if thou wouldst wait,
My love can bravely woo." All smiles forsook
The brook's white face. "Too late!
Poppies on the Wheat
© Helen Hunt Jackson
Along Ancona's hills the shimmering heat,
A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow
Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow
Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat
The Distant Winter
© Philip Levine
The sour daylight cracks through my sleep-caked lids.
"Stephan! Stephan!" The rattling orderly
Comes on a trot, the cold tray in his hands:
Toast whitening with oleo, brown tea,
The Drunkard
© Philip Levine
He fears the tiger standing in his way.
The tiger takes its time, it smiles and growls.
Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his bowels.
"God help me now," is all that he can say.
Where We Live Now
© Philip Levine
We live here because the houses
are clean, the lawns run
right to the street
M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School--Detroit, 1942
© Philip Levine
He made a line on the blackboard,
one bold stroke from right to left
diagonally downward and stood back
to ask, looking as always at no one
Clouds Above The Sea
© Philip Levine
My father and mother, two tiny figures,
side by side, facing the clouds that move
in from the Atlantic. August, '33.
The whole weight of the rain to come, the weight
In The New Sun
© Philip Levine
A row of sparkling carp
iced in the new sun, odor
of first love, of childhood,
the fingers held to the nose,
or hours while the clock hummed.
