War poems
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Love: To A Little Girl
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
When we all lie still
Where churchyard pines their funeral vigil keep,
Ferdiah; Or, The Fight At The Ford
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
Time is it, O Cuchullin, to arise,
Time for the fearful combat to prepare;
For hither with the anger in his eyes,
To fight thee comes Ferdiah called the Fair.
Love, Death, And Reputation
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
Reputation, Love, and Death,
(The Last all Bones, the First all Breath,
from Venus and Adonis
© William Shakespeare
Even as the sunne with purple-colourd face,
Had tane his last leaue of the weeping morne,
Rose-cheekt Adonis hied him to the chace,
Hunting he lou'd, but loue he laught to scorne,
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amaine vnto him,
And like a bold fac'd suter ginnes to woo him.
The Ballad of Nat Turner
© Robert Hayden
Then fled, O brethren, the wicked juba
and wandered wandered far
from curfew joys in the Dismal’s night.
Fool of St. Elmo’s fire
September, 1819
© André Breton
Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling.
To My Old Oak Table
© Robert Bloomfield
Friend of my peaceful days! substantial friend,
Whom wealth can never change, nor int'rest bend,
The Bathers
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Hither, from thirsty day
And stifling labour and the street's hot glare,
To twilight shut away
Beyond the soft roar, under hovering trees,
Wolf And Hound
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
You'll take my tale with a little salt;
But it needs none, nevertheless!
I was foiled completely - fair at fault -
Disheartened, too, I confess!
Campus Sonnets: Before An Examination
© Stephen Vincent Benet
The breeze blows cool and there are stars and stars
Beyond the dark, soft masses of the elms
That whisper things in windy tones and light.
They seem to wheel for dim, celestial wars;
And I - I hear the clash of silver helms
Ring icy-clear from the far deeps of night.
Ave Atque Vale
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
In Memory of Charles Baudelaire
Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs;
Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs,
Et quand Octobre souffle, émondeur des vieux arbres,
Bahaman
© Bliss William Carman
To T. B. M.
IN the crowd that thronged the pierhead, come to see their friends take ship
The Portrait
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
This is her picture as she was:
It seems a thing to wonder on,
Marry Me by Veronica Patterson: American Life in Poetry #172 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
I don't often talk about poetic forms in this column, thinking that most of my readers aren't interested in how the clock works and would rather be given the time. But the following poem by Veronica Patterson of Colorado has a subtitle referring to a form, the senryu, and I thought it might be helpful to mention that the senryu is a Japanese form similar to haiku but dealing with people rather than nature. There; enough said. Now you can forget the form and enjoy the poem, which is a beautiful sketch of a marriage.
Marry Me
when I come late to bed
I move your leg flung over my sideâ
that warm gate
Address to the Devil
© Robert Burns
O thou! whatever title suit thee,—
Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie!
Wha in yon cavern, grim an' sootie,
Clos'd under hatches,
Spairges about the brunstane cootie
To scaud poor wretches!
The Bench of Boors
© Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
In bed I muse on Tenier’s boors,
Embrowned and beery losels all:
A wakeful brain
Elaborates pain:
Within low doors the slugs of boors
Laze and yawn and doze again.
Korner And His Sister
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Green wave the oak for ever o'er thy rest,
Thou that beneath its crowning foliage sleepest,
And, in the stillness of thy country's breast,
Thy place of memory, as an altar keepest;
Brightly thy spirit o'er her hills was pour'd,
Thou of the Lyre and Sword!
