Time poems
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The Hemp
© Stephen Vincent Benet
Captain Hawk scourged clean the seas
(Black is the gap below the plank)
From the Great North Bank to the Caribbees
(Down by the marsh the hemp grows rank).
Song of The Waiting Dead
© George MacDonald
With us there is no gray fearing,
With us no aching for lack!
Tuckered Out
© Edgar Albert Guest
YOU don't weigh more than thirty pounds,
Your legs are little, plump and fat,
The General Public
© Stephen Vincent Benet
"Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?" -- Browning.
"Shelley? Oh, yes, I saw him often then,"
The old man said. A dry smile creased his face
With many wrinkles. "That's a great poem, now!
That one of Browning's! Shelley? Shelley plain?
The time that I remember best is this --
The Drug-Shop, or, Endymion in Edmonstoun
© Stephen Vincent Benet
No herbage broke the barren flats of land,
No winds dared loiter within smiling trees,
Nor were there any brooks on either hand,
Only the dry, bright sand,
Naked and golden, lay before the seas.
M'Andrew's Hymn
© Rudyard Kipling
Lord, Thou hast made this world below the shadow of a dream,
An', taught by time, I tak' it so - exceptin' always Steam.
From coupler-flange to spindle-guide I see Thy Hand, O God -
Predestination in the stride o' yon connectin'-rod.
Poor Devil!
© Stephen Vincent Benet
Well, I was tired of life; the silly folk,
The tiresome noises, all the common things
I loved once, crushed me with an iron yoke.
I longed for the cool quiet and the dark,
May Morning
© Stephen Vincent Benet
This is the time of all-sufficing laughter
At idiotic things some one has done,
And there is neither past nor vague hereafter.
And all your body stretches in the sun
And drinks the light in like a liquid thing;
Filled with the divine languor of late spring.
Old Tin Liz
© Alice Guerin Crist
We have scrubbed, and scoured and polished, till she's looking just like new,
And her good old engines singing, and our hearts are singing too,
While the magpies pipe a chorus, and the air's like a sparkling fizz.
And we're going to the races in the Old Tin Liz.
Elegy for an Enemy
© Stephen Vincent Benet
(For G. H.) Say, does that stupid earth
Where they have laid her,
Bind still her sullen mirth,
Mirth which betrayed her?
Dedication
© Stephen Vincent Benet
And so, to you, who always were
Perseus, D'Artagnan, Lancelot
To me, I give these weedy rhymes
In memory of earlier times.
Now all those careless days are not.
Of all my heroes, you endure.
Written In Early Youth. The Time,--An Autumnal Evening
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Scenes of my hope! the aching eye ye leave
Like yon bright hues that paint the clouds of eve!
Tearful and sadd'ning with the saddened blaze
Mine eye the gleam pursues with wistful gaze;
Sees shades on shades with deeper tint impend,
Till chill and damp the moonless night descend.
The Chances
© Wilfred Owen
I mind as 'ow the night afore that show
Us five got talking, -- we was in the know,
"Over the top to-morrer; boys, we're for it,
First wave we are, first ruddy wave; that's tore it."
A Terre
© Wilfred Owen
Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell,
Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.
Both arms have mutinied against me -- brutes.
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.
Stanzas Composed During A Thunderstorm
© George Gordon Byron
Chill and mirk is the nightly blast,
Where Pindus' mountains rise,
And angry clouds are pouring fast
The vengeance of the skies.
Vagabonds
© Madison Julius Cawein
Your heart's a-tune with April and mine a-tune with June,
So let us go a-roving beneath the summer moon:
Oh, was it in the sunlight, or was it in the rain,
We met among the blossoms within the locust lane?
All that I can remember's the bird that sang aboon,
And with its music in our hearts we'll rove beneath the moon.
Asleep
© Wilfred Owen
Under his helmet, up against his pack,
After the many days of work and waking,
Sleep took him by the brow and laid him back.
And in the happy no-time of his sleeping,
