Time poems
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Poem (The spirit likes to dress up...)
© Mary Oliver
The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,
Next Time
© Mary Oliver
Next time what I'd do is look at
the earth before saying anything. I'd stop
just before going into a house
and be an emperor for a minute
and listen better to the wind
or to the air being still.
Cold Poem
© Mary Oliver
I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.
When Death Comes
© Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
The Sadness Of The Moon
© Charles Baudelaire
THE Moon more indolently dreams to-night
Than a fair woman on her couch at rest,
Caressing, with a hand distraught and light,
Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast.
The Bad Monk
© Charles Baudelaire
On the great walls of ancient cloisters were nailed
Murals displaying Truth the saint,
Whose effect, reheating the pious entrails
Brought to an austere chill a warming paint.
My Earlier Life
© Charles Baudelaire
I've been home a long time among the vast porticos,
Which the mariner sun has tinged with a million fires,
Whose grandest pillars, upright, majestic and cold
Render them the same, this evening, as caves with basalt spires.
Ill-Starred
© Charles Baudelaire
Many jewels are buried or shrouded
In darkness and oblivion's clouds,
Far from any pick or drill bit,
The Enemy
© Charles Baudelaire
My youth was nothing but a black storm
Crossed now and then by brilliant suns.
The thunder and the rain so ravage the shores
Nothing's left of the fruit my garden held once.
War-Music
© Henry Van Dyke
Break off! Dance no more!
Danger is at the door.
Music is in arms.
To signal war's alarms.
Victor Hugo
© Henry Van Dyke
Heart of France for a hundred years,
Passionate, sensitive, proud, and strong,
Quick to throb with her hopes and fears,
Fierce to flame with her sense of wrong!
To James Whitcomb Riley
© Henry Van Dyke
Yours is a garden of old-fashioned flowers;
Joyous children delight to play there;
Weary men find rest in its bowers,
Watching the lingering light of day there.
Time Is
© Henry Van Dyke
Time is
Too Slow for those who Wait,
Too Swift for those who Fear,
Too Long for those who Grieve,
The White Bees
© Henry Van Dyke
Long ago Apollo called to Aristæus,
youngest of the shepherds,
Saying, "I will make you keeper of my bees."
Golden were the hives, and golden was the honey;
golden, too, the music,
Where the honey-makers hummed among the trees.
The Red Flower
© Henry Van Dyke
In the pleasant time of Pentecost,
By the little river Kyll,
I followed the angler's winding path
Or waded the stream at will,
And the friendly fertile German land
Lay round me green and still.
The Foolish Fir-Tree
© Henry Van Dyke
A tale that the poet Rückert told
To German children, in days of old;
Disguised in a random, rollicking rhyme
Like a merry mummer of ancient time,
And sent, in its English dress, to please
The little folk of the Christmas trees.
Reliance
© Henry Van Dyke
Not to the swift, the race:
Not to the strong, the fight:
Not to the righteous, perfect grace:
Not to the wise, the light.
New Year's Eve
© Henry Van Dyke
I The other night I had a dream, most clear
And comforting, complete
In every line, a crystal sphere,
And full of intimate and secret cheer.
Jeanne d'Arc
© Henry Van Dyke
The land was broken in despair,
The princes quarrelled in the dark,
When clear and tranquil, through the troubled air
Of selfish minds and wills that did not dare,
Your star arose, Jeanne d'Arc.
Inscriptions for a Friend's House
© Henry Van Dyke
The cornerstone in Truth is laid,
The guardian walls of Honour made,
The roof of Faith is built above,
The fire upon the hearth is Love:
Though rains descend and loud winds call,
This happy house shall never fall.
