Time poems
/ page 473 of 792 /
Apostrophe to Nature
© Victor Marie Hugo
O Sun! bright face aye undefiled;
O flowers i' the valley blooming wild;
Caverns, dim haunt of Solitude;
Perfume whereby one's step's beguiled
Deep, deep into the sombre wood;
The Eviction
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Unruly tenant of my heart,
Full fain would I be quit of thee.
I've played too long a losing part.
Thou bringest me neither gold nor fee.
The King Of Brentfords Testament
© William Makepeace Thackeray
The noble King of Brentford
Was old and very sick,
He summon'd his physicians
To wait upon him quick;
They stepp'd into their coaches
And brought their best physick.
Monday In Whitsun-Week
© John Keble
Since all that is not Heaven must fade,
Light be the hand of Ruin laid
Upon the home I love:
With lulling spell let soft Decay
Steal on, and spare the giant sway,
The crash of tower and grove.
A Day on the Big Branch
© Howard Nemerov
Still half drunk, after a night at cards,
with the grey dawn taking us unaware
Prayer
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Give us the open mind, O God,
The mind that dares believe
In paths of thought as yet untrod;
The mind that can conceive
Large visions of a wider way
Than circumscribes our world to-day.
From the Plane by Anne Marie Macari : American Life in Poetry #211 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 20
© Ted Kooser
Some of you are so accustomed to flying that you no longer sit by the windows. But I'd guess that at one time you gazed down, after dark, and looked at the lights below you with innocent wonder. This poem by Anne Marie Macari of New Jersey perfectly captures the gauziness of those lights as well as the loneliness that often accompanies travel.
From the Plane
Five Visions of Captain Cook
© Kenneth Slessor
Two chronometers the captain had,
One by Arnold that ran like mad,
One by Kendal in a walnut case,
Poor devoted creature with a hangdog face.
the difference between a bad poet and a good one is luck
© Charles Bukowski
I suppose so.
I was living in an attic in Philadelphia
My Mother-Land
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
Death! What of death?--
Can he who once drew honorable breath
In liberty's pure sphere,
Foster a sensual fear,
When death and slavery meet him face to face,
Phillis I Long Yr Powr Have Ownd
© Thomas Parnell
Phillis I long yr powr have ownd
& you still gently swayd
Epistle to Miss Blount, On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation
© Alexander Pope
As some fond virgin, whom her mothers care
Drags from the town to wholesome country air,
Synopsis for a German Novella
© John Fuller
The Doctor is glimpsed among his mulberry trees.
The dark fruits disfigure the sward like contusions.
He is at once aloof, timid, intolerant
Of all banalities of village life,
And yet is stupefied by loneliness.
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry: American Life in Poetry #17 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureat
© Ted Kooser
Nearly all of us spend too much of our lives thinking about what has happened, or worrying about what's coming next. Very little can be done about the past and worry is a waste of time. Here the Kentucky poet Wendell Berry gives himself over to nature.
The Peace of Wild Things
Elegy (“Who keeps the owl’s breath?”)
© David St. John
—Tacitus
Who keeps the owl’s breath? Whose eyes desire?
Why do the stars rhyme? Where does
The flush cargo sail? Why does the daybook close?
The More a Man Has the More a Man Wants
© Paul Muldoon
At four in the morning he wakes
to the yawn of brakes,
Sonnet VII: How soon hath Time, the Subtle Thief of Youth
© Patrick Kavanagh
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
