Time poems
/ page 318 of 792 /
On The Death Of Smet-Smet, The Hippopotamus- Goddess
© Rupert Brooke
(The Priests within the Temple)
She was wrinkled and huge and hideous? She was our Mother.
She was lustful and lewd? - but a God; we had none other.
In the day She was hidden and dumb, but at nightfall moaned in the shade;
We shuddered and gave Her Her will in the darkness; we were afraid.
Medallion
© Sylvia Plath
By the gate with star and moon
Worked into the peeled orange wood
The bronze snake lay in the sun
Sunflower by Frank Steele: American Life in Poetry #176 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Hearts and flowers, that's how some people dismiss poetry, suggesting that's all there is to it, just a bunch of sappy poets weeping over love and beauty. Well, poetry is lots more than that. At times it's a means of honoring the simple things about us. To illustrate the care with which one poet observes a flower, here's Frank Steele, of Kentucky, paying such close attention to a sunflower that he almost gets inside it.
Sunflower
The Armada
© Thomas Babbington Macaulay
Attend, all ye who list to hear our noble England's praise;
I tell of the thrice famous deeds she wrought in ancient days,
Chillingham
© Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
I
Through the sunny garden
The humming bees are still;
The fir climbs the heather,
The heather climbs the hill.
Memorials Of A Tour In Scotland, 1803 X. Rob Roys Grave
© William Wordsworth
Heaven gave Rob Roy a dauntless heart
And wondrous length and strength of arm:
Nor craved he more to quell his foes,
Or keep his friends from harm.
Sequel to Grandfather's Clock
© Henry Clay Work
Grandfather sleeps in his grave;
Strange steps resound in the hall!
And there's that vain, stuck-up thing
(tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick),
There's that vain, stuck-up thing on the wall.
The Rose
© James Whitcomb Riley
It tossed its head at the wooing breeze;
And the sun, like a bashful swain,
Beamed on it through the waving trees
With a passion all in vain,--
For my rose laughed in a crimson glee,
And hid in the leaves in wait for me.
The Angel In The House. Book I. Canto VII.
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Preludes.
I Love's Immortality
Soul In The Ignorance
© Sri Aurobindo
Soul in the Ignorance, wake from its stupor.
Flake of the world-fire, spark of Divinity,
Lift up thy mind and thy heart into glory.
Sun in the darkness, recover thy lustre.
March
© Archibald Lampman
Talk before bed-time of bold deeds together,
Of thefts and fights, of hard-times and the weather,
Till sleep disarm them, to each little brain
Bringing tucked wings and many a blissful dream,
Visions of wind and sun, of field and stream,
And busy barn-yards with their scattered grain.
England My Mother
© William Watson
England my mother,
Wardress of waters.
Builder of peoples,
Maker of men,-
From 'Lines In Memory Of Edmund Morris'
© Duncan Campbell Scott
HERE Morris, on the plains that we have loved,
Think of the death of Akoose, fleet of foot,
On A Candle
© Jonathan Swift
Of all inhabitants on earth,
To man alone I owe my birth,
And yet the cow, the sheep, the bee,
Are all my parents more than he:
Folks
© Edgar Albert Guest
We was speakin' of folks, jes' common folks,
An' we come to this conclusion,
That wherever they be, on land or sea,
They warm to a home allusion;
Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 2. Interlude III.
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"What was the end? I am ashamed
Not to remember Reynard's fate;
A Shakespeare Memorial
© Alfred Austin
Why should we lodge in marble or in bronze
Spirits more vast than earth, or sea, or sky?
A Song Of Exmoor
© Sir Henry Newbolt
So hurry along, the stag's afoot,
The Master's up and away!
Halloo! Halloo! we'll follow it through
From Bratton to Porlock Bay!
It Is The Sinners' Dust-Tongued Bell
© Dylan Thomas
It is the sinners' dust-tongued bell claps me to churches
When, with his torch and hourglass, like a sulpher priest,
His beast heel cleft in a sandal,
Time marks a black aisle kindle from the brand of ashes,
Grief with dishevelled hands tear out the altar ghost
And a firewind kill the candle.
The Greater Love
© Roderic Quinn
ONCE upon a time,
Little Golden-Head,
Steeples used to chime,
And their chiming said:
