Time poems
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Old Song
© Edward Fitzgerald
TIS a dull sight
To see the year dying,
When winter winds
Set the yellow wood sighing:
Sighing, O sighing!
Hugging the Jukebox
© Naomi Shihab Nye
They’ve tried putting him to bed, but he sings in bed.
Even in Spanish—and he doesn’t speak Spanish!
Sings and screams, wants to go back to the jukebox.
O mama I was born with a trumpet in my throat
spent all these years tryin’ to cough it up …
A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General
© Jonathan Swift
His Grace! impossible! what dead!
Of old age too, and in his bed!
Ode to Duty
© André Breton
Jam non consilio bonus, sed more eo perductus, ut non tantum recte facere possim, sed nisi recte facere non possim"
"I am no longer good through deliberate intent, but by long habit have reached a point where I am not only able to do right, but am unable to do anything but what is right."
(Seneca, Letters 120.10)
What The Snow Man Said
© Vachel Lindsay
The Moons a snowball. See the drifts
Of white that cross the sphere.
The Moons a snowball, melted down
A dozen times a year.
A Dost O' Blues
© James Whitcomb Riley
I' got no patience with blues at all!
And I ust to kindo talk
California Prodigal
© Jon Anderson
Star Jasmine and old vines
Lay claim upon the ghosted land,
Then quiet pools whisper
Private childhood secrets.
Cassandra Southwick
© John Greenleaf Whittier
To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing rise today,
From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked the spoil away;
Yes, he who cooled the furnace around the faithful three,
And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set His handmaid free!
The Past Was Goodly Once
© William Ernest Henley
The Past was goodly once, and yet, when all is said,
The best of it we know is that it's done and dead.
AN ELEGY Upon Mrs. Kirk unfortunately drowned in Thames
© Henry King
For all the Ship-wracks, and the liquid graves
Lost men have gain'd within the furrow'd waves,
The Sea hath fin'd and for our wrongs paid use,
When its wrought foam a Venus did produce.
Beowulf
© Charles Baudelaire
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
The Rope-Maker
© Emile Verhaeren
Of old--as one in sleep, life, errant, strayed
Its wondrous morns and fabled evenings through;
When God's right hand toward far Canaan's blue
Traced golden paths, deep in the twilight shade.
The Loehrs And The Hammonds
© James Whitcomb Riley
"Hey, Bud! O Bud!" rang out a gleeful call,--
"_The Loehrs is come to your house!_" And a small
Honours -- Part II.
© Jean Ingelow
As one who, journeying, checks the rein in haste
Because a chasm doth yawn across his way
Too wide for leaping, and too steeply faced
For climber to essay-
Of the Progress of the Soul: The Second Anniversary
© John Donne
(excerpt)
OF THE PROGRESS OF THE SOUL
Wherein,
by occasion of the religious death of Mistress
The Cure For Weariness
© Edgar Albert Guest
Seemed like I couldn't stand it any more,
The factory whistles blowin' day by day,
On A View Of Pasadena From The Hills
© Yvor Winters
From the high terrace porch I watch the dawn.
No light appears, though dark has mostly gone,
Lines For A Flag Raising Ceremony
© Edgar Albert Guest
FULL many a flag the breeze has kissed;
Through ages long the morning sun
