War poems
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Sonnet: Oh! How I Love, On A Fair Summer's Eve
© John Keats
Oh! how I love, on a fair summer's eve,
When streams of light pour down the golden west,
A Day In The Castle Of Envy
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
The castle walls are full of eyes,
And not a mouse may creep unseen.
All the window slits are spies;
And the towers stand sentinel
A Destiny
© Caroline Norton
And his two sons in careless beauty grew,
Like wild-flowers in his path: he mark'd them not,
Nor reck'd he what they needed, learnt, or knew,
Or what might be on earth their future lot;
But they died young--which is a thought of rest!
Unscorn'd, untempted, undefiled--so best.
The Fury Of Sunrises
© Anne Sexton
Darkness
as black as your eyelid,
poketricks of stars,
the yellow mouth,
Sonnet 154: "The little Love-god lying once asleep,..."
© William Shakespeare
The little Love-god lying once asleep,
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
Alone
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
There came to me softly a small wind from the sea.
And it lifted a curl as it passed by me.
But I sang sorrow and ho the heavy day!
And I sang heigho and well-away!
You, Doctor Martin
© Anne Sexton
You, Doctor Martin, walk
from breakfast to madness. Late August,
I speed through the antiseptic tunnel
where the moving dead still talk
Doubtful Dreams
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
Aye, snows are rife in December,
And sheaves are in August yet,
The Black Art
© Anne Sexton
A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
Lines. "Upon the altar of my life there lies"
© Frances Anne Kemble
Upon the altar of my life there lies
A costly offering: its price I know;
A Summer Shower
© Henry Timrod
Welcome, rain or tempest
From yon airy powers,
We have languished for them
Many sultry hours,
And earth is sick and wan, and pines with all her flowers.
Amarantha. A Pastorall
© Richard Lovelace
Up with the jolly bird of light
Who sounds his third retreat to night;
Faire Amarantha from her bed
Ashamed starts, and rises red
The Ambition Bird
© Anne Sexton
So it has come to this
insomnia at 3:15 A.M.,
the clock tolling its engine
August 17th
© Anne Sexton
Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health.Surely I will be disquieted
by the hospital, that body zone--
bodies wrapped in elastic bands,
bodies cased in wood or used like telephones,
A Story For Rose On The Midnight Flight To Boston
© Anne Sexton
Until tonight they were separate specialties,
different stories, the best of their own worst.
Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy's
laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first
Unknown Girl In A Maternity Ward
© Anne Sexton
Child, the current of your breath is six days long.
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed
Flee On Your Donkey
© Anne Sexton
Today an intern knocks my knees,
testing for reflexes.
Once I would have winked and begged for dope.
Today I am terribly patient.
Today crows play black-jack
on the stethoscope.
Upon His Majesty's Happy Return
© Edmund Waller
The rising sun complies with our weak sight,
First gilds the clouds, then shows his globe of light
At such a distance from our eyes, as though
He knew what harm his hasty beams would do.
On The Death Of A Friend's Child
© James Russell Lowell
Death never came so nigh to me before,
Nor showed me his mild face: oft had I mused
