Smile poems
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Elegy For Jane
© Theodore Roethke
I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,
February: The Boy Breughel
© Norman Dubie
And a fox crosses through snow
Down a hill; then, he runs,
He has overcome something white
Beside a white bush, he shakes
It twice, and as he turns
For the woods, the blood in the snow
Los Angeles, 1954
© David St. John
It was in the old days,
When she used to hang out at a place
Called Club Zombie,
A black cabaret that the police liked
Grammar
© Tony Hoagland
Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she's a conjugated verb.
She's been doing the direct object
Air
© William Stanley Merwin
Naturally it is night.
Under the overturned lute with its
One string I am going my way
Which has a strange sound.
Phoebus with Admetus
© George Meredith
NOW the North wind ceases,
The warm South-west awakes;
Swift fly the fleeces,
Thick the blossom-flakes.
Modern Love XXXVI: My Lady unto Madam
© George Meredith
My Lady unto Madam makes her bow.
The charm of women is, that even while
You're probed by them for tears, you yet may smile,
Nay, laugh outright, as I have done just now.
Modern Love VII: She Issues Radiant
© George Meredith
She issues radiant from her dressing-room,
Like one prepared to scale an upper sphere:
--By stirring up a lower, much I fear
How deftly that oiled barber lays his bloom
Love in the Valley
© George Meredith
Under yonder beech-tree single on the green-sward,
Couched with her arms behind her golden head,
Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly,
Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.
Juggling Jerry
© George Meredith
Pitch here the tent, while the old horse grazes:
By the old hedge-side we'll halt a stage.
It's nigh my last above the daisies:
My next leaf'll be man's blank page.
A Hymn to the Name and Honour of the Admirable Saint Teresa
© Richard Crashaw
Farewell then, all the world, adieu!
Teresa is no more for you.
Farewell all pleasures, sports, and joys,
Never till now esteemed toys!
Wishes To His (Supposed) Mistress
© Richard Crashaw
Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me;
To the Name above every Name, the Name of Jesus
© Richard Crashaw
I sing the Name which None can say
But toucht with An interiour Ray:
The Name of our New Peace; our Good:
Our Blisse: and Supernaturall Blood:
The Year of the Rose
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
From the depths of the green garden-closes
Where the summer in darkness dozes
Till autumn pluck from his hand
An hour-glass that holds not a sand;
In Memory of Walter Savage Landor
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
By this white wandering waste of sea,
Far north, I hear
One face shall never turn to me
As once this year:
A Year's Carols
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
JANUARY
HAIL, January, that bearest here
On snowbright breasts the babe-faced year
That weeps and trembles to be born.
The Roundel
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
A roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere,
With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought,
That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear
A roundel is wrought.
The Eve Of Revolution
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
The trumpets of the four winds of the world
From the ends of the earth blow battle; the night heaves,
With breasts palpitating and wings refurled,
With passion of couched limbs, as one who grieves
Concord
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
Reconciled by death's mild hand, that giving
Peace gives wisdom, not more strong than mild,
Love beholds them, each without misgiving
Reconciled.
