Time poems
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Wedding-Ring
© Denise Levertov
My wedding-ring lies in a basket
as if at the bottom of a well.
Nothing will come to fish it back up
and onto my finger again.
What Were They Like?
© Denise Levertov
Did the people of Viet Nam
use lanterns of stone?
Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
Time of Roses
© Thomas Hood
It was not in the Winter
Our loving lot was cast;
It was the time of roses
We pluck'd them as we pass'd!
The Expert
© Rudyard Kipling
Youth that trafficked long with Death,
And to second life returns,
Squanders little time or breath
On his fellow-man's concerns.
Earned peace is all he asks
To fulfill his broken tasks.
Tim Turpin
© Thomas Hood
Tim Turpin he was gravel-blind,
And ne'er had seen the skies :
For Nature, when his head was made,
Forgot to dot his eyes.
The Song of the Shirt
© Thomas Hood
With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread--
The Haunted House
© Thomas Hood
Oh, very gloomy is the house of woe,
Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,
With all the dark solemnities that show
That Death is in the dwelling!
The Dream of Eugene Aram
© Thomas Hood
'Twas in the prime of summer-time
An evening calm and cool,
And four-and-twenty happy boys
Came bounding out of school:
There were some that ran and some that leapt,
Like troutlets in a pool.
Of The Nature Of Things: Book I - Part 05 - Character Of The Atoms
© Lucretius
So primal germs have solid singleness
Nor otherwise could they have been conserved
Through aeons and infinity of time
For the replenishment of wasted worlds.
November
© Thomas Hood
No sun - no moon!
No morn - no noon -
No dawn - no dusk - no proper time of day.
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No!
© Thomas Hood
No sun--no moon!
No morn--no noon!
No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day--
No sky--no earthly view--
Faithless Nelly Gray
© Thomas Hood
Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.
The Golden Legend: VI. The School Of Salerno
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
_Doctor Serafino._ I, with the Doctor Seraphic, maintain,
That a word which is only conceived in the brain
Is a type of eternal Generation;
The spoken word is the Incarnation.
The Cold Change
© Caroline Norton
In the cold change which time hath wrought on love
(The snowy winter of his summer prime),
A Glee For Winter
© Alfred Domett
HENCE, rude Winter! crabbed old fellow,
Never merry, never mellow!
Turns And Movies: Duval's Birds
© Conrad Aiken
The parrot, screeching, flew out into the darkness,
Circled three times above the upturned faces
With a great whir of brilliant outspread wings,
And then returned to stagger on her finger.
Eclogue:--A Bit O Sly Coorten
© William Barnes
Now, Fanny, 'tis too bad, you teazèn maïd!
How leäte you be a' come! Where have ye staÿ'd?
How long you have a-meäde me waït about!
I thought you werden gwaïn to come ageän:
I had a mind to goo back hwome ageän.
This idden when you promis'd to come out.
The Room
© Conrad Aiken
Through that windowall else being extinct
Except itself and meI saw the struggle
Of darkness against darkness. Within the room
It turned and turned, dived downward. Then I saw
The House Of Dust: Part 04: 06: Cinema
© Conrad Aiken
The music ends. The screen grows dark. We hurry
To go our devious secret ways, forgetting
Those many lives . . . We loved, we laughed, we killed,
We danced in fire, we drowned in a whirl of sea-waves.
The flutes are stilled, and a thousand dreams are stilled.
