Time poems
/ page 547 of 792 /
The Moment
© Margaret Atwood
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
Lines Written At Sea (I)
© Frances Anne Kemble
Dear, yet forbidden thoughts, that from my soul,
While shines the weary sun, with stern control
History of the Twentieth Century (A Roadshow)
© Joseph Brodsky
Ladies and gentlemen and the day!
All ye made of sweet human clay!
Let me tell you: you are o'kay.
Postcards
© Margaret Atwood
I'm thinking about you. What else can I say?
The palm trees on the reverse
are a delusion; so is the pink sand.
What we have are the usual
The Rest
© Margaret Atwood
The rest of us watch from beyond the fence
as the woman moves with her jagged stride
into her pain as if into a slow race.
We see her body in motion
The Death of Mary
© Charles Wolfe
I do not think, where'er thou art,
Thou hast forgotten me;
And I, perhaps, may soothe this heart
In thinking too of thee!
In The Secular Night
© Margaret Atwood
In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
Bored
© Margaret Atwood
All those times I was bored
out of my mind. Holding the log
while he sawed it. Holding
the string while he measured, boards,
This Is A Photograph Of Me
© Margaret Atwood
It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;
Siren Song
© Margaret Atwood
This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:
Alfs Twelfth Bit
© Ezra Pound
Sez the Times a silver lining
Is what has set us pining,
Montague, Montague!
When Orpheus Sweetly Did Complayne
© William Strode
When Orpheus sweetly did complayne
Upon his lute with heavy strayne
How his Euridice was slayne,
The trees to heare
Obtayn'd an eare,
And after left it off againe.
The Fan : A Poem. Book I.
© John Gay
The goddess pleas'd, the curious work receive,
Remounts her chariot, and the grotto leaves;
With the light fan she moves the yielding air,
And gales, till then unknown, play round the fair.
Song Of The Redwood-Tree
© Walt Whitman
A prophecy and indirection-a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air;
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing-or hamadryads departing;
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.
The Great Sunset
© Robinson Jeffers
A flight of six heavy-motored bombing-planes
Went over the beautiful inhuman ridges a straight course northward;
On The Death Of Sir Thomas Lea
© William Strode
You that affright with lamentable notes
The servants from their beef, whose hungry throats
Vex the grume porter's surly conscience:
That blesse the mint for coyning lesse than pence:
On The Death Of Sir Tho: Peltham
© William Strode
Meerly for man's death to mourne
Were to repine that man was borne.
When weake old age doth fall asleepe
Twere foule ingratitude to weepe:
The Things You Can't Forget
© Edgar Albert Guest
They ain't much, seen from day to day--
The big elm tree across the way,
On The Death Of Mistress Mary Prideaux
© William Strode
Weep not because this childe hath dyed so yong,
But weepe because yourselves have livde so long:
Age is not fild by growth of time, for then
What old man lives to see th' estate of men?
