War poems
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Rover
© Henry Kendall
NO classic warrior tempts my pen
To fill with verse these pages
No lordly-hearted man of men
My Muses thought engages.
The Harp Of Hoel
© William Lisle Bowles
It was a high and holy sight,
When Baldwin and his train,
With cross and crosier gleaming bright,
Came chanting slow the solemn rite,
To Gwentland's pleasant plain.
Misgivings
© William Matthews
"Perhaps you'll tire of me," muses
my love, although she's like a great city
to me, or a park that finds new
ways to wear each flounce of light
and investiture of weather.
Soil doesn't tire of rain, I think,
Dire Cure
© William Matthews
"First, do no harm," the Hippocratic
Oath begins, but before she might enjoy
such balm, the docs had to harm her tumor.
It was large, rare, and so anomalous
The Shadow Voice
© Margaret Atwood
Isn't the moon warm
enough for you
why do you need
the blanket of another body
More and More
© Margaret Atwood
More and more frequently the edges
of me dissolve and I become
a wish to assimilate the world, including
you, if possible through the skin
like a cool plant's tricks with oxygen
and live by a harmless green burning.
Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing
© Margaret Atwood
The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
Variations on the Word Love
© Margaret Atwood
This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
History of the Twentieth Century (A Roadshow)
© Joseph Brodsky
Ladies and gentlemen and the day!
All ye made of sweet human clay!
Let me tell you: you are o'kay.
Dickens: Sonnets
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
CHIEF in thy generation born of men
Whom English praise acclaimed as English-born,
You Begin
© Margaret Atwood
Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.
Upon The Blush Of A Faire Ladie
© William Strode
Stay lusty blood! where canst thou seeke
So blest a seat as in her cheeke?
How dar'st thou from her face retire
Whose beauty doth command desire?
The Fan : A Poem. Book I.
© John Gay
The goddess pleas'd, the curious work receive,
Remounts her chariot, and the grotto leaves;
With the light fan she moves the yielding air,
And gales, till then unknown, play round the fair.
Song Of The Redwood-Tree
© Walt Whitman
A prophecy and indirection-a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air;
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing-or hamadryads departing;
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.
The Great Sunset
© Robinson Jeffers
A flight of six heavy-motored bombing-planes
Went over the beautiful inhuman ridges a straight course northward;
On The Yong Baronett Portman Dying Of An Impostume In's Head
© William Strode
Is Death so cunning now that all her blowe
Aymes at the heade? Doth now her wary Bowe
Make surer worke than heertofore? The steele
Slew warlike heroes onely in the heele.
The Wanderings Of Oisin: Book III
© William Butler Yeats
Fled foam underneath us, and round us, a wandering and milky smoke,
High as the Saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide;
And those that fled, and that followed, from the foam-pale distance broke;
The immortal desire of Immortals we saw in their faces, and sighed.
On The Death Of A Twin
© William Strode
Where are yee now, Astrologers, that looke
For petty accidents in Heavens booke?
Two Twins, to whom one Influence gave breath,
Differ in more than Fortune, Life and Death.
'All's Well'
© Francis William Bourdillon
Watchman, watchman, what of the night,
What of the night to tell?
The heavens are dark, and never a light
But the far-off flicker of Hell.
