Time poems
/ page 442 of 792 /
Intimations Of The Beautiful
© Madison Julius Cawein
The hills are full of prophecies
And ancient voices of the dead;
Of hidden shapes that no man sees,
Pale, visionary presences,
That speak the things no tongue hath said,
No mind hath thought, no eye hath read.
Sonnet LVII: Being your slave, what should I do but tend
© William Shakespeare
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 116
© Alfred Tennyson
Is it, then, regret for buried time
That keenlier in sweet April wakes,
And meets the year, and gives and takes
The colours of the crescent prime?
Small Prayer
© Weldon Kees
Change, move, dead clock, that this fresh day
May break with dazzling light to these sick eyes.
Burn, glare, old sun, so long unseen,
That time may find its sound again, and cleanse
Whatever it is that a wound remembers
After the healing ends.
Oh Lovely Rock
© Robinson Jeffers
We stayed the night in the pathless gorge of Ventana Creek, up the east fork.
The rock walls and the mountain ridges hung forest on forest above our heads, maple and redwood,
Laurel, oak, madrone, up to the high and slender Santa Lucian firs that stare up the cataracts
Of slide-rock to the star-color precipices.
Alea Jacta
© Alfred Austin
Dearest, I know thee wise and good,
Beloved by all the best;
With fancy like Ithuriel's spear,
A judgment proof 'gainst rage or fear,
Heart firm through many a stormy year,
And conscience calm in rest.
A Hymn to Childhood
© Li-Young Lee
Childhood? Which childhood?
The one that didn’t last?
The one in which you learned to be afraid
of the boarded-up well in the backyard
and the ladder in the attic?
Gertrude's Prayer
© Rudyard Kipling
That which is marred at birth Time shall not mend,
Nor water out of bitter well make clean;
All evil thing returneth at the end,
Or elseway walketh in our blood unseen.
Whereby the more is sorrow in certaine-
Dayspring mishandled cometh not againe.
Golden State
© Frank Bidart
I
To see my father
lying in pink velvet, a rosary
twined around his hands, rouged,
Sonnet II
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
I FEAR thee not, O Death! nay oft I pine
To clasp thy passionless bosom to mine own,
And on thy heart sob out my latest moan,
Ere lapped and lost in thy strange sleep divine;
Far Away
© Rubén Dario
Ox that I saw in my childhood, as you steamed
in the burning gold on the Nicaraguan sun,
there on the rich plantation filled with tropical
harmonies; woodland dove, of the woods that sang
with the sound of the wind, of axes, of birds and wild bulls:
I salute you both, because you are both my life.
Christmas Day, 1850
© George MacDonald
Beautiful stories wed with lovely days
Like words and music:-what shall be the tale
Of love and nobleness that might avail
To express in action what this sweetness says-
To S. M. A Young African Painter, On Seeing His Works
© Phillis Wheatley
TO show the lab’ring bosom’s deep intent,
And thought in living characters to paint,
from [Eve Describes Her Creation] from Paradise Lost, Book 4
© Patrick Kavanagh
That day I oft remember, when from sleep
I first awak’d and found myself repos’d,
The Spirit Of The Snow
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
The night brings forth the morn-
Of the cloud is lightning born;
From out the darkest earth the brightest roses grow.
Bright sparks from black flints fly,
And from out a leaden sky
Comes the silvery-footed Spirit of the Snow.
To the Angel Spirit of the Most Excellent Sir Philip Sidney
© Mary Sidney Herbert
(Variant printed in Samuel Daniel’s 1623 Works)
To thee, pure spirit, to thee alone addressed
