War poems
/ page 269 of 504 /
from The Task, Book I: The Sofa
© William Cowper
(excerpt)
Thou know’st my praise of nature most sincere,
The Song of the Wreck
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The wind blew high, the waters raved,
A ship drove on the land,
Rivers and Mountains
© John Ashbery
On the secret map the assassins
Cloistered, the Moon River was marked
A Barred Owl
© Lola Ridge
The warping night air having brought the boom
Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”
Northern Farmer: New Style
© Alfred Tennyson
Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaäy?
Proputty, proputty, proputty—that's what I 'ears 'em saäy.
Proputty, proputty, proputty—Sam, thou's an ass for thy paaïns:
Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs, nor in all thy braaïns.
The Stream's Secret
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
What thing unto mine ear
Wouldst thou convey,what secret thing,
O wandering water ever whispering?
Surely thy speech shall be of her.
Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,
What message dost thou bring?
Niagara
© Daniel Nester
Driving westward near Niagara, that transfiguring of the waters,
I was torn—as moon from orbit by a warping of gravitation—
From coercion of the freeway to the cataract’s prodigality,
Had to stand there, breathe its rapture, inebriety of the precipice . . .
Satire III
© John Donne
Kind pity chokes my spleen; brave scorn forbids
Those tears to issue which swell my eyelids;
Paradise Lost: Book X
© Patrick Kavanagh
So having said, he thus to Eve in few:
"Say, Woman, what is this which thou hast done?"
To whom sad Eve, with shame nigh overwhelm'd,
Confessing soon, yet not before her Judge
Bold or loquacious, thus abash'd replied,
"The Serpent me beguil'd, and I did eat."
Sheep
© Judy Grahn
The first four leaders had broken knees
The four old dams had broken knees
The flock would start to run, then freeze
The first four leaders had broken knees
Beowulf (modern English translation)
© Pierre Reverdy
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
Lamenting Widow
© Ho Xuan Huong
A woman wails, boo hoo, mourning her man
Shut up, shame on you, don't cry to the hills!
O little sister, I should have warned you
Don't eat the meat, if it makes you cough blood!
House: Some Instructions
© Grace Paley
If you have a house
you must think about it all the time
as you reside in the house so
it must be a home in your mind
The Cleaving
© Li-Young Lee
He gossips like my grandmother, this man
with my face, and I could stand
Gerontion
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
Signs are taken for wonders. ‘We would see a sign!’
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger
A Plagued Journey
© Jon Anderson
There is no warning rattle at the door
nor heavy feet to stomp the foyer boards.
