War poems
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Special Treatments Ward
© Dana Gioia
I put this poem aside twelve years ago
because I could not bear remembering
the faces it evoked, and every line
seemed—still seems—so inadequate and grim.
The Clod and the Pebble
© William Blake
"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
The Supper
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Blind Roger
Set the glass in my hand. I'm blind and old,
But still I shun to be left in the cold.
Psyche in Somerville
© Denise Levertov
I am angry with X, with Y, with Z,
for not being you.
Enthusiasms jump at me,
wagging and barking. Go away.
Go home.
A Promise. "By the pure spring, whose haunted waters flow"
© Frances Anne Kemble
By the pure spring, whose haunted waters flow
Through thy sequestered dell unto the sea,
Coyote, with Mange
© Mark Wunderlich
Oh, Unreadable One, why
have you done this to your dumb creature?
Why have you chosen to punish the coyote
The Broken Crutch: A Tale
© Robert Bloomfield
A burst of laughter rang throughout the hall,
And Peggy's tongue, though overborne by all,
Pour'd its warm blessings, for, without control
The sweet unbridled transport of her soul
Was obviously seen, till Herbert's kiss
Stole, as it were, the eloquence of bliss.
A Sister on the Tracks
© Donald Hall
Between pond and sheepbarn, by maples and watery birches,
Rebecca paces a double line of rust
Cold Calls: War Music, Continued
© Christopher Logue
Take Quinamid
The son of a Dardanian astrologer
Who disregarded what his father said
And came to Troy in a taxi.
A Ballad: The Lake of the Dismal Swamp
© Thomas Moore
Written at Norfolk, in Virginia
They made her a grave, too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true;
And shes gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,
She paddles her white canoe.
Mary's Tryst
© Isabella Valancy Crawford
Young Mary stole along the vale,
To keep her tryst with Ulnor's lord;
A warrior clad in coat of mail
Stood darkling by the brawling ford.
O Summer Sun!
© Robert Laurence Binyon
O summer sun, O moving trees!
O cheerful human noise, O busy glittering street!
What hour shall Fate in all the future find,
Or what delights, ever to equal these:
Only to taste the warmth, the light, the wind,
Only to be alive, and feel that life is sweet?
August Afternoon
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Thump of a horse's hoof behind the hedge;
Long stripes of shadow, and green flame in the grass
Between them; discrowned, glaucous poppy--pods
On their tall stalks; a rose
Replica
© Marvin Bell
The fake Parthenon in Nashville, Stonehenge reduced by a quarter
near Maryhill on the Columbia, the little Statue of Liberty
The Kaiser's Feast
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Why fell there silence on the chord
Beneath the harper's hand?
And suddenly, from that rich board,
Why rose the wassail-band?
The Garden
© Mark Strand
for Robert Penn Warren
It shines in the garden,
in the white foliage of the chestnut tree,
in the brim of my father’s hat
as he walks on the gravel.
Spring's Messengers
© John Clare
Where slanting banks are always with the sun
The daisy is in blossom even now;
March: An Ode
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
I
Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendour of winter had passed out of sight,
