Poems begining by W
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When He Would Have His Verses Read
© Robert Herrick
In sober mornings, do not thou rehearse
The holy incantation of a verse;
But when that men have both well drunk, and fed,
Let my enchantments then be sung or read.
Writing
© Robert Herrick
When words we want, Love teacheth to indite;
And what we blush to speak, she bids us write.
Why Flowers Change Colour
© Robert Herrick
These fresh beauties, we can prove,
Once were virgins, sick of love,
Turn'd to flowers: still in some,
Colours go and colours come.
WlT PUNISHED PROSPERS MOST
© Robert Herrick
Dread not the shackles; on with thine intent,
Good wits get more fame by their punishment.
Working Girls
© Carl Sandburg
THE working girls in the morning are going to work--
long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores
and factories, thousands with little brick-shaped
lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms.
Women Washing Their Hair
© Carl Sandburg
THEY have painted and sung
the women washing their hair,
and the plaits and strands in the sun,
and the golden combs
Woman with a Past
© Carl Sandburg
THERE was a woman tore off a red velvet gown
And slashed the white skin of her right shoulder
And a crimson zigzag wrote a finger nail hurry.
Wistful
© Carl Sandburg
WISHES left on your lips
The mark of their wings.
Regrets fly kites in your eyes.
Winter Milk
© Carl Sandburg
THE MILK drops on your chin, Helga,
Must not interfere with the cranberry red of your cheeks
Nor the sky winter blue of your eyes.
Let your mammy keep hands off the chin.
Window
© Carl Sandburg
Night from a railroad car window
Is a great, dark, soft thing
Broken across with slashes of light.
White Ash
© Carl Sandburg
THERE is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice.
She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the front door.
Whirls
© Carl Sandburg
NEITHER rose leaves gathered in a jarrespectably in Bostonthesenor drops of Christ blood for a chalicedecently in Philadelphia or Baltimore.
Cindersthesehissing in a marl and lime of Chicagoalso thesethe howling of northwest winds across North and South Dakotaor the spatter of winter spray on sea rocks of Kamchatka.
Whiffletree
© Carl Sandburg
GIVE me your anathema.
Speak new damnations on my head.
The evening mist in the hills is soft.
The boulders on the road say communion.
Weeds
© Carl Sandburg
FROM the time of the early radishes
To the time of the standing corn
Sleepy Henry Hackerman hoes.
Washerwoman
© Carl Sandburg
THE WASHERWOMAN is a member of the Salvation Army.
And over the tub of suds rubbing underwear clean
She sings that Jesus will wash her sins away
And the red wrongs she has done God and man
Shall be white as driven snow.
Rubbing underwear she sings of the Last Great Washday.
Wars
© Carl Sandburg
IN the old wars drum of hoofs and the beat of shod feet.
In the new wars hum of motors and the tread of rubber tires.
In the wars to come silent wheels and whirr of rods not
yet dreamed out in the heads of men.
Work Gangs
© Carl Sandburg
BOX cars run by a mile long.
And I wonder what they say to each other
When they stop a mile long on a sidetrack.
Maybe their chatter goes:
Wind Song
© Carl Sandburg
LONG ago I learned how to sleep,
In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money and throwing it away,
In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out and listened or never listened at all,
In a passel of trees where the branches trapped the wind into whistling, Who, who are you?
Wilderness
© Carl Sandburg
THERE is a wolf in me
fangs pointed for tearing gashes
a red tongue for raw meat
and the hot lapping of bloodI keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fox in me
a silver-gray fox
I sniff and guess
I pick things out of the wind and air
I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers
I circle and loop and double-cross.
