Teacher poems
/ page 22 of 23 /The Past is the Present
© Marianne Clarke Moore
If external action is effete
and rhyme is outmoded,
I shall revert to you,
Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class
The Inauguration of the University College
© William Topaz McGonagall
Good people of Dundee, your voices raise,
And to Miss Baxter give great praise;
Rejoice and sing and dance with glee,
Because she has founded a College in Bonnie Dundee.
Blue Girls
© John Crowe Ransom
Twirling your blue skirts, travelling the sward
Under the towers of your seminary,
Go listen to your teachers old and contrary
Without believing a word.
The Little Big Man
© Rabindranath Tagore
I am small because I am a little child. I shall be big when I am
as old as my father is.
My teacher will come and say, "It is late, bring your slate
and your books."
The Growth of Love
© Robert Seymour Bridges
So in despite of sorrow lately learn'd
I still hold true to truth since thou art true,
Nor wail the woe which thou to joy hast turn'd
Nor come the heavenly sun and bathing blue
To my life's need more splendid and unearn'd
Than hath thy gift outmatch'd desire and due.
Nature
© Chris Mansell
the yellow legged plovers live at the university and stare down
pale students who dare to walk near themwe like themthey are the smartest things around with their brown caps and stiffish know-it-all walk
god, don't they look like the newly arrived so proud to be here, and busy, the plovers should have keys and a whistle on a lanyard each
like brisk brutish phys ed teachers they probably once were
Paradise Regained: The Fourth Book
© John Milton
Perplexed and troubled at his bad success
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his hope
So oft, and the persuasive rhetoric
Paradise Lost: Book 12
© John Milton
As one who in his journey bates at noon,
Though bent on speed; so here the Arch-Angel paused
Betwixt the world destroyed and world restored,
If Adam aught perhaps might interpose;
Paradise Lost: Book 11
© John Milton
Undoubtedly he will relent, and turn
From his displeasure; in whose look serene,
When angry most he seemed and most severe,
What else but favour, grace, and mercy, shone?
Paradise Regained: The First Book
© John Milton
I, who erewhile the happy Garden sung
By one man's disobedience lost, now sing
Recovered Paradise to all mankind,
By one man's firm obedience fully tried
The Flight Of The Duchess
© Robert Browning
You're my friend:
I was the man the Duke spoke to;
I helped the Duchess to cast off his yoke, too;
So here's the tale from beginning to end,
My friend!
Poem With Refrains
© Robert Pinsky
But they did speak: on the phone. Wept and argued,
So fiercely one or the other often cut off
A sentence by hanging up in rage--like lovers,
But all that year she never saw her face.
Impossible To Tell
© Robert Pinsky
Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;
In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,
Axe Handles
© Gary Snyder
One afternoon the last week in April
Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
He recalls the hatchet-head
Prairie
© Carl Sandburg
I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.
Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
The Allies
© Amy Lowell
August 14th, 1914Into the brazen, burnished sky, the cry hurls itself. The
zigzagging cry
of hoarse throats, it floats against the hard winds, and binds the
head
Fixed Is The Doom
© Robert Louis Stevenson
FIXED is the doom; and to the last of years
Teacher and taught, friend, lover, parent, child,
Each walks, though near, yet separate; each beholds
His dear ones shine beyond him like the stars.
Absalom And Achitophel
© John Dryden
Him staggering so when Hell's dire agent found,
While fainting virtue scarce maintain'd her ground,
He pours fresh forces in, and thus replies:
The Magic Cup
© Jean de La Fontaine
YOUR wife the same; to make her, in your eye,
More beautiful 's the aim you may rely;
For, if unkind, she would a hag be thought,
Incapable soft love scenes to be taught.
These reasons make me to my thesis cling,--
To be a cuckold is a useful thing.