TO MY WIFE

Related poetry:

1. The Hill Wife I. LONELINESS Her Word One ought not to have to care So much as you and I Care when the birds come round the house To seem to say good-bye; Or care so much when they come back With whatever it is they sing; The truth being we are as much Too glad for the […]...
2. THE FIRST MONTH OF THE YEAR A page of the ‘Kelmscott’ Chaucer Seen through out cottage window When the Pennines were blind with snow Flurrying round the stones. The fire was low when I began to blow That single flicker to a flame, Was I too late, I wondered, the ‘poet in name’ Whose mind runs endlessly As fingers through an […]...
3. POET-IN-RESIDENCE You are my dream Of the East You are my life In the West Fused in one You begin my day And end each day With a silent smile When I die I will Have only my love To leave you. You said I had written No poems for you And you had written Only […]...
4. An Epitaph upon Husband and Wife TO these whom death again did wed This grave ‘s the second marriage-bed. For though the hand of Fate could force ‘Twixt soul and body a divorce, It could not sever man and wife, Because they both lived but one life. Peace, good reader, do not weep; Peace, the lovers are asleep. They, sweet turtles, […]...
5. Lot's Wife And the just man trailed God’s shining agent, Over a black mountain, in his giant track, While a restless voice kept harrying his woman: “It’s not too late, you can still look back At the red towers of your native Sodom, The square where once you sang, the spinning-shed, At the empty windows set in […]...
6. The Woman and the Wife I THE EXPLANATION “You thought we knew,” she said, “but we were wrong. This we can say, the rest we do not say; Nor do I let you throw yourself away Because you love me. Let us both be strong, And we shall find in sorrow, before long, Only the price Love ruled that we […]...
7. On His Deceased Wife METHOUGHT I saw my late espoused Saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, Whom Joves great Son to her glad Husband gave, Rescu’d from death by force though pale and faint. Mine as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint, Purification in the old Law did save, And such, as yet once more […]...
8. The Faithless Wife So I took her to the river Believing she was a maiden, But she already had a husband. It was on St. James night And almost as if I was obliged to. The lanterns went out And the crickets lighted up. In the farthest street corners I touched her sleeping breasts And they opened to […]...
9. Wife Killer He killed his wife at night. He had tried once or twice in the daylight But she refused to die. In darkness the deed was done, Not crudely with a hammer-hard gun Or strangler’s black kid gloves on. She just ceased being alive, Not there to interfere or connive, Linger, leave or arrive. It seemed […]...
10. Witch-Wife She is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs; In the sun ’tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of coloured beads, Or steps leading into the […]...
11. The Avaricious Wife And Tricking Gallant WHO knows the world will never feel surprise, When men are duped by artful women’s eves; Though death his weapon freely will unfold; Love’s pranks, we find, are ever ruled by gold. To vain coquettes I doubtless here allude; But spite of arts with which they’re oft endued; I hope to show (our honour to […]...
12. Pilate's Wife's Dream I’ve quenched my lamp, I struck it in that start Which every limb convulsed, I heard it fall­ The crash blent with my sleep, I saw depart Its light, even as I woke, on yonder wall; Over against my bed, there shone a gleam Strange, faint, and mingling also with my dream. It sunk, and […]...
13. A Musician's Wife Between the visits to the shock ward The doctors used to let you play On the old upright Baldwin Donated by a former patient Who is said to be quite stable now. And all day long you played Chopin, Badly and hauntingly, when you weren’t Screaming on the porch that looked Like an enormous birdcage. […]...
14. The dreams Two dreams came down to earth one night From the realm of mist and dew; One was a dream of the old, old days, And one was a dream of the new. One was a dream of a shady lane That led to the pickerel pond Where the willows and rushes bowed themselves To the […]...
15. Hymn 126 Charity and uncharitableness. Rom. 14:17,19; 1 Cor. 10:32. Not diff’rent food, or diff’rent dress, Compose the kingdom of our Lord; But peace, and joy, and righteousness, Faith, and obedience to his word. When weaker Christians we despise, We do the gospel mighty wrong; For God, the gracious and the wise, Receives the feeble with the […]...
16. The Houses ‘Twixt my house and thy house the pathway is broad, In thy house or my house is half the world’s hoard; By my house and thy house hangs all the world’s fate, On thy house and my house lies half the world’s hate. For my house and thy house no help shall we find Save […]...
17. Longing Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For so the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day. Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times, A messenger from radiant climes, And smile on thy new world, and be As kind to others as to […]...
18. Symbolism NOW when the spirit in us wakes and broods, Filled with home yearnings, drowsily it flings From its deep heart high dreams and mystic moods, Mixed with the memory of the loved earth things: Clothing the vast with a familiar face; Reaching its right hand forth to greet the starry race. Wondrously near and clear […]...
19. Everything Lately the wind burns The last leaves and evening Comes too late to be Of use, lately I learned That the year has turned Its face to winter And nothing I say or do Can change anything. So I sleep late and waken Long after the sun has risen In an empty house and walk […]...
20. The Song Of The Happy Shepherd The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Grey Truth is now her painted toy; Yet still she turns her restless head: But O, sick children of the world, Of all the many changing things In dreary dancing past us whirled, To the cracked […]...
21. Any Wife To Any Husband I My love, this is the bitterest, that thou Who art all truth and who dost love me now As thine eyes say, as thy voice breaks to say – Shouldst love so truly and couldst love me still A whole long life through, had but love its will, Would death that leads me from […]...
22. Letter Of Recommendation From My Father To My Future Wife During the war, I was in China. Every night we blew the world to hell. The sky was purple and yellow Like his favorite shirt. I was in India once On the Ganges in a tourist boat. There were soldiers, Some women with parasols. A dead body floated by Going in the opposite direction. My […]...
23. Late, Late, So Late Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill! Late, late, so late! but we can enter still. Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. No light had we: for that we do repent; And learning this, the bridegroom will relent. Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now. No light: so late! […]...
24. I Am There I come from there and remember, I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother And a house with many windows, I have brothers, friends and a prison. I have a wave that sea-gulls snatched away. I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass. I have a moon […]...
25. A Prayer On Going Into My House God grant a blessing on this tower and cottage And on my heirs, if all remain unspoiled, No table or chair or stool not simple enough For shepherd lads in Galilee; and grant That I myself for portions of the year May handle nothing and set eyes on nothing But what the great and passionate […]...
26. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not As Christ the Lord was passing by, He came, one night, to a cottage door. He came, a poor man, to the poor; He had no bed whereon to lie. He asked in vain for a crust of bread, Standing there in the frozen blast. The door was locked and bolted fast. ‘Only a beggar!’ […]...
27. The Clean Plater Some singers sing of ladies’ eyes, And some of ladies lips, Refined ones praise their ladylike ways, And course ones hymn their hips. The Oxford Book of English Verse Is lush with lyrics tender; A poet, I guess, is more or less Preoccupied with gender. Yet I, though custom call me crude, Prefer to sing […]...
28. The Wife “Tell Annie I’ll be home in time To help her with her Christmas-tree.” That’s what he wrote, and hark! the chime Of Christmas bells, and where is he? And how the house is dark and sad, And Annie’s sobbing on my knee! The page beside the candle-flame With cruel type was overfilled; I read and […]...
29. Only a Curl I. FRIENDS of faces unknown and a land Unvisited over the sea, Who tell me how lonely you stand With a single gold curl in the hand Held up to be looked at by me, II. While you ask me to ponder and say What a father and mother can do, With the bright fellow-locks […]...
30. The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm. The words were spoken as if there was no book, Except that the reader leaned above the page, Wanted to lean, […]...
31. Symptom Recital I do not like my state of mind; I’m bitter, querulous, unkind. I hate my legs, I hate my hands, I do not yearn for lovelier lands. I dread the dawn’s recurrent light; I hate to go to bed at night. I snoot at simple, earnest folk. I cannot take the gentlest joke. I find […]...
32. TEXTURES The grain of the exposed boards Speaks through the wall of the years We are back in our cottage On the wind-swathed hills Watching late winter dawns Gather like kindled flame. We are back with those winter dusks, – The hyaline air hung in darkness And a vale of stars, waking in blankets Laid on […]...
33. Gods Ms. Sexton went out looking for the gods. She began looking in the sky -expecting a large white angel with a blue crotch. No one. She looked next in all the learned books And the print spat back at her. No one She made a pilgrimage to the great poet And he belched in her […]...
34. Lord Walter's Wife I ‘But where do you go?’ said the lady, while both sat under the yew, And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue. II ‘Because I fear you,’ he answered; ‘because you are far too fair, And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your golfd-coloured hair.’ […]...
35. The Wife of Bath's Tale THE PROLOGUE. 1 Experience, though none authority* *authoritative texts Were in this world, is right enough for me To speak of woe that is in marriage: For, lordings, since I twelve year was of age, (Thanked be God that *is etern on live),* *lives eternally* Husbands at the church door have I had five,2 For […]...
36. The Wife a-Lost Since I noo mwore do zee your feace, Up steairs or down below, I’ll zit me in the lwonesome pleace, Where flat-bough’d beech do grow; Below the beeches’ bough, my love, Where you did never come, An’ I don’t look to meet ye now, As I do look at hwome. Since you noo mwore be […]...
37. The Ivy-Wife I LONGED to love a full-boughed beech And be as high as he: I stretched an arm within his reach, And signalled unity. But with his drip he forced a breach, And tried to poison me. I gave the grasp of partnership To one of other race A plane: he barked him strip by strip […]...
38. The Wife's Will SIT still­a word­a breath may break (As light airs stir a sleeping lake,) The glassy calm that soothes my woes, The sweet, the deep, the full repose. O leave me not! for ever be Thus, more than life itself to me! Yes, close beside thee, let me kneel­ Give me thy hand that I may […]...
39. Sonnet LXIII: Truce, Gentle Love Truce, gentle Love, a parley now I crave; Methinks ’tis long since first these wars begun; Nor thou nor I the better yet can have; Bad is the match where neither party won. I offer free conditions of fair peace, My heart for hostage that it shall remain; Discharge our forces, here let malice cease, […]...
40. The Goblet of Life Filled is Life’s goblet to the brim; And though my eyes with tears are dim, I see its sparkling bubbles swim, And chant a melancholy hymn With solemn voice and slow. No purple flowers, no garlands green, Conceal the goblet’s shade or sheen, Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene, Like gleams of sunshine, flash between Thick […]...