Work poems
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An Arbor
© Michael Rosen
The world’s a world of trouble, your mother must
have told you
that. Poison leaks into the basements
Recollections of the Arabian Nights
© Alfred Tennyson
When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free
In the silken sail of infancy,
Paradise Lost: Book XI (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
He added not, for Adam at the newes
Heart-strook with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discover'd soon the place of her retire.
Paradise Lost: Book IX
© Patrick Kavanagh
So gloz'd the Tempter, and his proem tun'd.
Into the heart of Eve his words made way,
Though at the voice much marvelling; at length,
Not unamaz'd, she thus in answer spake:
The Gatekeeper’s Children
© Philip Levine
This is the house of the very rich.
You can tell because it’s taken all
Poems
© Anselm Hollo
i
thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger. I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter; I forgot that there abides the old in the new, and that there also thou abidest.
Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my endless life who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar. When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of the One in the play of the many.
ii
There's A Moon Inside My Body
© Kabir
THE moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it:
The moon is within me, and so is the sun.
The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me; but my deaf ears cannot hear it.
The Three Graves. A Fragment Of A Sexton's Tale
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The grapes upon the Vicar's wall
Were ripe as ripe could be;
And yellow leaves in sun and wind
Were falling from the tree.
English Eclogues I - The Old Mansion-House
© Robert Southey
STRANGER.
Old friend! why you seem bent on parish duty,
Breaking the highway stones,--and 'tis a task
Somewhat too hard methinks for age like yours.
No Classes!
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
No classes here! Why, that is idle talk.
The village beau sneers at the country boor;
The importuning mendicants who walk
Our cites streets despise the parish poor.
Of Love To God
© John Bunyan
When I do this begin to apprehend,
My heart, my soul, and mind, begins to bend
Hymns to the Night : 5
© Novalis
In ancient times, over the widespread families of men an iron Fate ruled with dumb force. A gloomy oppression swathed their heavy souls - the earth was boundless - the abode of the gods and their home. From eternal ages stood its mysterious structure. Beyond the red hills of the morning, in the sacred bosom of the sea, dwelt the sun, the all-enkindling, living Light. An aged giant upbore the blissful world. Fast beneath mountains lay the first-born sons of mother Earth. Helpless in their destroying fury against the new, glorious race of gods, and their kindred, glad-hearted men. The ocean's dark green abyss was the lap of a goddess. In crystal grottos revelled a luxuriant folk. Rivers, trees, flowers, and beasts had human wits. Sweeter tasted the wine - poured out by Youth-abundance - a god in the grape-clusters - a loving, motherly goddess upgrew in the full golden sheaves - love's sacred inebriation was a sweet worship of the fairest of the god-ladies - Life rustled through the centuries like one spring-time, an ever-variegated festival of heaven-children and earth-dwellers. All races childlike adored the ethereal, thousand-fold flame as the one sublimest thing in the world. There was but one notion, a horrible dream-shape -
That fearsome to the merry tables strode,
Dressing My Daughters
© Mark Jarman
One girl a full head taller
Than the other—into their Sunday dresses.
My Father in the Night Commanding No
© Louis Simpson
My father in the night commanding No
Has work to do. Smoke issues from his lips;
He reads in silence.
The frogs are croaking and the street lamps glow.
After This The Judgement
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
As eager homebound traveller to the goal,
Or steadfast seeker on an unsearched main,
An Extraordinary Morning
© Philip Levine
Two young men—you just might call them boys—
waiting for the Woodward streetcar to get
Declining Days
© Henry Francis Lyte
Why do I sigh to find
Life's evening shadows gathering round my way?
The keen eye dimming, and the buoyant mind
Unhinging day by day?
