Time poems
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Dublinesque
© Philip Larkin
Down stucco sidestreets,
Where light is pewter
And afternoon mist
Brings lights on in shops
Above race-guides and rosaries,
A funeral passes.
Faith Healing
© Philip Larkin
Slowly the women file to where he stands
Upright in rimless glasses, silver hair,
Dark suit, white collar. Stewards tirelessly
Persuade them onwards to his voice and hands,
No Road
© Philip Larkin
Since we agreed to let the road between us
Fall to disuse,
And bricked our gates up, planted trees to screen us,
And turned all time's eroding agents loose,
Silence, and space, and strangers - our neglect
Has not had much effect.
The Moon-Path
© Archibald Lampman
The full, clear moon uprose and spread
Her cold, pale splendor o'er the sea;
Quinquagesima Sunday
© John Keble
Sweet Dove! the softest, steadiest plume,
In all the sunbright sky,
Brightening in ever-changeful bloom
As breezes change on high; -
Orlie Wilde
© James Whitcomb Riley
A goddess, with a siren's grace,-
A sun-haired girl on a craggy place
Above a bay where fish-boats lay
Drifting about like birds of prey.
To Failure
© Philip Larkin
It is these sunless afternoons, I find
Install you at my elbow like a bore
The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I'm
Aware the days pass quicker than before,
Smell staler too. And once they fall behind
They look like ruin. You have been here some time.
Mother, Summer, I
© Philip Larkin
My mother, who hates thunder storms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;
House-Hunting
© Edgar Albert Guest
Time was when spring returned we went
To find another home to rent;
We wanted fresher, cleaner walls,
And bigger rooms and wider halls,
And open plumbing and the dome
That made the fashionable home.
Love Songs In Age
© Philip Larkin
She kept her songs, they kept so little space,
The covers pleased her:
One bleached from lying in a sunny place,
One marked in circles by a vase of water,
The Minstrel; Or, The Progress Of Genius : Book I.
© James Beattie
I.
Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar!
Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime
Ambulances
© Philip Larkin
Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited.
The Song Of Honour
© Ralph Hodgson
I heard no more of bird or bell,
The mastiff in a slumber fell,
I stared into the sky,
As wondering men have always done
Since beauty and the stars were one,
Though none so hard as I.
Next, Please
© Philip Larkin
Always too eager for the future, we
Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
Something is always approaching; every day
Till then we say,
The Fellowship Of Books
© Edgar Albert Guest
I care not who the man may be,
Nor how his tasks may fret him,
Nor where he fares, nor how his cares
And troubles may beset him,
If books have won the love of him,
Maturity
© Philip Larkin
A stationary sense... as, I suppose,
I shall have, till my single body grows
Inaccurate, tired;
Then I shall start to feel the backward pull
Take over, sickening and masterful -
Some say, desired.
Winter - The Fourth Pastoral, or Daphne
© Alexander Pope
Lycidas.
Thyrsis, the music of that murm'ring spring,
Venetian Morning
© Rainer Maria Rilke
Windows pampered like princes always see
what on occasion deigns to trouble us:
the city that, time and again, where a shimmer
of sky strikes a feeling of floodtide,
Continuing To Live
© Philip Larkin
Continuing to live -- that is, repeat
A habit formed to get necessaries --
Is nearly always losing, or going without.
It varies.
