Work poems
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Lost and Found
© George MacDonald
I missed him when the sun began to bend;
I found him not when I had lost his rim;
Timothy Winters
© Charles Causley
Timothy Winters comes to school
With eyes as wide as a football pool,
Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:
A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.
Dedication
© Lewis Carroll
Inscribed to a Dear Child:
In Memory of Golden Summer Hours
And Whispers of a Summer Sea
Epitaph On Miss Stanley, In Holyrood Church, Southampton
© James Thomson
E. S.
Once a lively image of human nature,
Rebirth
© Rudyard Kipling
If any God should say,
"I will restore
The world her yesterday
Whole as before
My Judgment blasted it"-who would not lift
Heart, eye, and hand in passion o'er the gift?
The Old-Home Folks
© James Whitcomb Riley
Who shall sing a simple ditty all about the Willow,
Dainty-fine and delicate as any bending spray
That dandles high the happy bird that flutters there to trill a
Tremulously tender song of greeting to the May.
Damascus, What Are You Doing to Me?
© Nizar Qabbani
3
I return to the womb in which I was formed . . .
To the first book I read in it . . .
To the first woman who taught me
The geography of love . . .
And the geography of women . . .
Lucy Gray [or Solitude]
© William Wordsworth
Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray,
And when I cross'd the Wild,
I chanc'd to see at break of day
The solitary Child.
If This Were All
© Edgar Albert Guest
If this were all of life we'll know,
If this brief space of breath
Ignorance
© Philip Larkin
Strange to know nothing, never to be sure
Of what is true or right or real,
But forced to qualify or so I feel,
Or Well, it does seem so:
Someone must know.
Leaf Sermon
© Craig Erick Chaffin
I have been spiritually poisoned
by the unclean, in ignorance
blessed their springs.
In consequence I withered
Year's End
© Marilyn Hacker
Twice in my quickly disappearing forties
someone called while someone I loved and I were
making love to tell me another woman had died of cancer.
Paragraphs from a Day-Book
© Marilyn Hacker
Cherry-ripe: dark sweet burlats, scarlet reverchons
firm-fleshed and tart in the mouth
bigarreaux, peach-and-white napoléons
as the harvest moves north
For K. J., Leaving and Coming Back
© Marilyn Hacker
August First: it was a year ago
we drove down from St.-Guilhem-le-Désert
to open the house in St. Guiraud
The Earthly Paradise: The Lady of the Land
© William Morris
The ArgumentA certain man having landed on an island in the Greek sea, found there a beautifuldamsel, whom he would fain have delivered from a strange & dreadful doom, butfailing herein, he died soon afterwards.
It happened once, some men of Italy
Midst the Greek Islands went a sea-roving,
And much good fortune had they on the sea:
The Defence of Guenevere
© William Morris
But, learning now that they would have her speak,
She threw her wet hair backward from her brow,
Her hand close to her mouth touching her cheek,
Sir Galahad, a Christmas Mystery
© William Morris
It is the longest night in all the year,
Near on the day when the Lord Christ was born;
Six hours ago I came and sat down here,
And ponder'd sadly, wearied and forlorn.
In Arthur's House
© William Morris
"As quoth the lion to the mouse,"
The man said; "in King Arthur's House
Men are not names of men alone,
But coffers rather of deeds done."
Atalanta's Race
© William Morris
Through such fair things unto the gates he came,
And found them open, as though peace were there;
Wherethrough, unquestioned of his race or name,
He entered, and along the streets 'gan fare,
Which at the first of folk were well-nigh bare;
But pressing on, and going more hastily,
