Is it Well with the Child?

Related poetry:

1. First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
2. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
3. The Dictators An odor has remained among the sugarcane: A mixture of blood and body, a penetrating Petal that brings nausea. Between the coconut palms the graves are full Of ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles. The delicate dictator is talking With top hats, gold braid, and collars. The tiny palace gleams like a watch And the rapid […]...
4. Nevertheless you’ve seen a strawberry That’s had a struggle; yet Was, where the fragments met, A hedgehog or a star- Fish for the multitude Of seeds. What better food Than apple seeds – the fruit Within the fruit – locked in Like counter-curved twin Hazelnuts? Frost that kills The little rubber-plant – Leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can’t […]...
5. The Happy Child I saw this day sweet flowers grow thick But not one like the child did pick. I heard the packhounds in green park But no dog like the child heard bark. I heard this day bird after bird But not one like the child has heard. A hundred butterflies saw I But not one like […]...
6. UPON A DELAYING LADY Come, come away Or let me go; Must I here stay Because you’re slow, And will continue so; Troth, lady, no. I scorn to be A slave to state; And since I’m free, I will not wait, Henceforth at such a rate, For needy fate. If you desire My spark should glow, The peeping fire […]...
7. A Child's Laughter ALL the bells of heaven may ring, All the birds of heaven may sing, All the wells on earth may spring, All the winds on earth may bring All sweet sounds together – Sweeter far than all things heard, Hand of harper, tone of bird, Sound of woods at sundawn stirred, Welling water’s winsome word, […]...
8. The Child Bearers Jean, death comes close to us all, Flapping its awful wings at us And the gluey wings crawl up our nose. Our children tremble in their teen-age cribs, Whirling off on a thumb or a motorcycle, Mine pushed into gnawing a stilbestrol cancer I passed on like hemophilia, Or yours in the seventh grade, with […]...
9. TO HIS SAVIOUR, A CHILD;A PRESENT, BY A CHILD Go, pretty child, and bear this flower Unto thy little Saviour; And tell him, by that bud now blown, He is the Rose of Sharon known. When thou hast said so, stick it there Upon his bib or stomacher; And tell him, for good handsel too, That thou hast brought a whistle new, Made of […]...
10. Not A Child ‘Not a child: I call myself a boy,’ Says my king, with accent stern yet mild, Now nine years have brought him change of joy; ‘Not a child.’ How could reason be so far beguiled, Err so far from sense’s safe employ, Stray so wide of truth, or run so wild? Seeing his face bent […]...
11. Sonnet 124: If my dear love were but the child of state If my dear love were but the child of state, It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfathered, As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate, Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered. No, it was builded far from accident; It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls Under the blow of thralled discontent, […]...
12. Ye Mariners of England 1 Ye Mariners of England 2 That guard our native seas, 3 Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, 4 The battle and the breeze 5 Your glorious standard launch again 6 To match another foe! 7 And sweep through the deep, 8 While the stormy winds do blow, 9 While the battle rages loud […]...
13. 311. On the Birth of a Posthumous Child SWEET flow’ret, pledge o’ meikle love, And ward o’ mony a prayer, What heart o’ stane wad thou na move, Sae helpless, sweet, and fair? November hirples o’er the lea, Chill, on thy lovely form: And gane, alas! the shelt’ring tree, Should shield thee frae the storm. May He who gives the rain to pour, […]...
14. Song of Karen, the Dancing Child (O little white feet of mine) Out in the storm and the rain you fly; (Red, red shoes the colour of wine) Can the children hear my cry? (O little white feet of mine) Never a child in the whole great town; (Red, red shoes the colour of wine) Lights out and the blinds pulled […]...
15. The Sea-Child HE crawls to the cliff and plays on a brink Where every eye but his own would shrink; No music he hears but the billow’s noise, And shells and weeds are his only toys. No lullaby can the mother find To sing him to rest like the moaning wind; And the louder it wails and […]...
16. My Ships If all the ships I have at sea Should come a-sailing home to me, From sunny lands, and lands of cold, Ah well! the harbor could not hold So many sails as there would be If all my ships came in from sea. If half my ships came home from sea, And brought their precious […]...
17. Blow, Bugle, Blow THE splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O […]...
18. Danger With what a childish and short-sighted sense Fear seeks for safety; recons up the days Of danger and escape, the hours and ways Of death; it breathless flies the pestilence; It walls itself in towers of defence; By land, by sea, against the storm it lays Down barriers; then, comforted, it says: “This spot, this […]...
19. There was a Child went Forth THERE was a child went forth every day; And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became; And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years. The early lilacs became part of this child, And grass, […]...
20. Miscast II My heart is like a cleft pomegranate Bleeding crimson seeds And dripping them on the ground. My heart gapes because it is ripe and over-full, And its seeds are bursting from it. But how is this other than a torment to me! I, who am shut up, with broken crockery, In a dark closet!...
21. I Will Not Let Thee Go I will not let thee go. Ends all our month-long love in this? Can it be summed up so, Quit in a single kiss? I will not let thee go. I will not let thee go. If thy words’ breath could scare thy deeds, As the soft south can blow And toss the feathered seeds, […]...
22. The Sower Sure of the spring that warms them into birth, The golden seeds thou trustest to the earth; And dost thou doubt the eternal spring sublime, For deeds the seeds which wisdom sows in time....
23. A Child's Christmas In Wales One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound Except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember Whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it […]...
24. On Seeing A Piece Of Our Artillery Brought Into Action Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm, Great gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse; Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse Huge imprecations like a blasting charm! Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm, And beat it down before its sins grow worse; Spend our resentment, cannon, yea, disburse Our gold […]...
25. Days I am a Day. . . My sky is grey, My wind is wild, My sea high-piled: In year of days the first In misery. . . Oh pity me! I am a Day Accurst. “Sweet Day, not curst but blest: Behold upon my breast My baby born Your early morn. Safe in my arms […]...
26. Child of Europe 1 We, whose lungs fill with the sweetness of day. Who in May admire trees flowering Are better than those who perished. We, who taste of exotic dishes, And enjoy fully the delights of love, Are better than those who were buried. We, from the fiery furnaces, from behind barbed wires On which the winds […]...
27. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
28. The Child and the Mariner A dear old couple my grandparents were, And kind to all dumb things; they saw in Heaven The lamb that Jesus petted when a child; Their faith was never draped by Doubt: to them Death was a rainbow in Eternity, That promised everlasting brightness soon. An old seafaring man was he; a rough Old man, […]...
29. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
30. How Fortunate The Man With None You saw sagacious Solomon You know what came of him, To him complexities seemed plain. He cursed the hour that gave birth to him And saw that everything was vain. How great and wise was Solomon. The world however did not wait But soon observed what followed on. It’s wisdom that had brought him to […]...
31. The Holy of Holies ‘Elder father, though thine eyes Shine with hoary mysteries, Canst thou tell what in the heart Of a cowslip blossom lies? ‘Smaller than all lives that be, Secret as the deepest sea, Stands a little house of seeds, Like an elfin’s granary. ‘Speller of the stones and weeds, Skilled in Nature’s crafts and creeds, Tell […]...
32. Variation On A Theme By Rilke A certain day became a presence to me; There it was, confronting me a sky, air, light: A being. And before it started to descend From the height of noon, it leaned over And struck my shoulder as if with The flat of a sword, granting me Honor and a task. The day’s blow Rang […]...
33. Night Opens to the Storm Poem by Anne-Marie Derése, translated by Judith Skillman. Night opens to the storm, A mauve coupling, Swollen. The sky, laden Like a merchant ship, Throws off its anchor. Danger, heavier Each instant, Exudes the mugginess Of a greenhouse. Shimmering like mercury The Valley of the Seven Muses Breathes mist Through its gray nostrils. The valley […]...
34. Felixstowe, or The Last of Her Order With one consuming roar along the shingle The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down To where its backwash and the next wave mingle, A mounting arch of water weedy-brown Against the tide the off-shore breezes blow. Oh wind and water, this is Felixstowe. In winter when the sea winds chill and shriller Than […]...
35. After Love There is no magic any more, We meet as other people do, You work no miracle for me Nor I for you. You were the wind and I the sea There is no splendor any more, I have grown listless as the pool Beside the shore. But though the pool is safe from storm And […]...
36. Psalm 32 Part 2 A guilty conscience eased by confession and pardon. While I keep silence, and conceal My heavy guilt within my heart, What torments doth my conscience feel! What agonies of inward smart! I spread my sins before the Lord, And all my secret faults confess; Thy gospel speaks a pard’ning word, Thine Holy Spirit seals the […]...
37. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
38. Child In Red Sometimes she walks through the village in her little red dress All absorbed in restraining herself, And yet, despite herself, she seems to move According to the rhythm of her life to come. She runs a bit, hesitates, stops, Half-turns around… And, all while dreaming, shakes her head For or against. Then she dances a […]...
39. On a Dead Child Perfect little body, without fault or stain on thee, With promise of strength and manhood full and fair! Though cold and stark and bare, The bloom and the charm of life doth awhile remain on thee. Thy mother’s treasure wert thou;-alas! no longer To visit her heart with wondrous joy; to be Thy father’s pride:-ah, […]...
40. Child Lover Drunk or sober Uncle Jim Played the boy; Never glum or sour or grim, Oozin’ joy. Most folks thought he was no good, Blamin’ him; But where kiddies were, you could Bank on Jim. Sure he allus hated work, Lovin’ play. “Jest a good fer nuthin’ jerk,” Lots would say. Yet how the children fell […]...