Strength poems

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“It Out-Herods Herod. Pray You, Avoid It.”

© Anthony Evan Hecht

Tonight my children hunch
Toward their Western, and are glad
As, with a Sunday punch,
The Good casts out the Bad.

Paradise Lost: Book I

© Patrick Kavanagh

So spake th' apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but rack'd with deep despair.
And him thus answer'd soon his bold compeer:

Paradise Lost: Book VII (1674)

© Patrick Kavanagh

DEscend from Heav'n Urania, by that name

If rightly thou art call'd, whose Voice divine

from The Triumph of Love

© Geoffrey Hill

Rancorous, narcissistic old sod—what
makes him go on? We thought, hoped rather,
he might be dead. Too bad. So how
much more does he have of injury time?

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

© André Breton

The child is father of the man;

And I could wish my days to be

Playthings

© Anselm Hollo

Child, how happy you are sitting in the dust, playing with a broken twig all the morning.

I smile at your play with that little bit of a broken twig.

She Was a Phantom of Delight

© André Breton

She was a Phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight;

Parable of the Hostages

© Louise Gluck

The Greeks are sitting on the beach

wondering what to do when the war ends. No one

Shore Scene

© John Logan

There were bees about. From the start I thought

The day was apt to hurt. There is a high

His Suicide

© May Swenson

He looked down at his withering body and saw a hair

near his navel, swaying.

In the Past

© Trumbull Stickney

There lies a somnolent lake
Under a noiseless sky,
Where never the mornings break
Nor the evenings die.

Rivers and Mountains

© John Ashbery

On the secret map the assassins

Cloistered, the Moon River was marked

Mechanism

© Archie Randolph Ammons

Honor a going thing, goldfinch, corporation, tree,

morality: any working order,

At the equinox when the earth was veiled in a late rain, wreathed with wet poppies, waiting spring,

The ocean swelled for a far storm and beat its boundary, the ground-swell shook the beds of granite.

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.

from The Sleepers

© Walt Whitman

I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked through the eddies of the sea,
His brown hair lies close and even to his head, he strikes out with courageous arms, he urges himself with his legs,
I see his white body, I see his undaunted eyes,
I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him head-foremost on the rocks.

Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)

Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel

Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;

To the Swimmer

Now as I watch you, strong of arm and endurance, battling and struggling
With the waves that rush against you, ever with invincible strength returning
Into my heart, grown each day more tranquil and peaceful, comes a fierce longing
Of mind and soul that will not be appeased until, like you, I breast yon deep and boundless expanse of blue.