Father Explains

Related poetry:

1. Jacke-On-Both-Sides I hold as fayth What Rome’s Church sayth Where the King’s head, That flock’s misled Where th’ Altar’s drest That People’s blest Who shuns the Masse Hee’s but an Asse Who Charity preach They Heav’n soone reach On Fayth t’rely, ‘Tis heresy What England’s Church allows My Conscience disavowes; That Church can have no seame; […]...
2. Father Malloy You are over there, Father Malloy, Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave, Not here with us on the hill Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins. You were so human, Father Malloy, Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us, Siding with us who would rescue […]...
3. The Child Is Father To The Man ‘The child is father to the man.’ How can he be? The words are wild. Suck any sense from that who can: ‘The child is father to the man.’ No; what the poet did write ran, ‘The man is father to the child.’ ‘The child is father to the man!’ How can he be? The […]...
4. Father My father knows the proper way The nation should be run; He tells us children every day Just what should now be done. He knows the way to fix the trusts, He has a simple plan; But if the furnace needs repairs, We have to hire a man. My father, in a day or two […]...
5. America for Me ‘Tis fine to see the Old World and travel up and down Among the famous palaces and cities of renown, To admire the crumblyh castles and the statues and kings But now I think I’ve had enough of antiquated things. So it’s home again, and home again, America for me! My heart is turning home […]...
6. An American in Europe ‘Tis fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down Among the famous palaces and cities of renown, To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings, But now I think I’ve had enough of antiquated things. So it’s home again, and home again, America for me! My heart is turning […]...
7. The Father Of Toads A man had just delivered a toad from his wife’s armpit. He Held it by its legs and spanked it. Do you love it? said his wife. It’s our child, isn’t it? Does that mean you can’t love it? she said. It’s hard enough to love a toad, but when it turns out to be […]...
8. Boy and Father THE BOY Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer. The leather law books of Alexander’s father fill a room like hay in a barn. Alexander has asked his father to let him build a house like bricklayers build, a house with walls and roofs made of big leather law books. The rain beats […]...
9. My Father's Love Letters On Fridays he’d open a can of Jax After coming home from the mill, & ask me to write a letter to my mother Who sent postcards of desert flowers Taller than men. He would beg, Promising to never beat her Again. Somehow I was happy She had gone, & sometimes wanted To slip in […]...
10. Father He never made a fortune, or a noise In the world where men are seeking after fame; But he had a healthy brood of girls and boys Who loved the very ground on which he trod. They thought him just little short of God; Oh you should have heard the way they said his name […]...
11. The Absence I speak to you across cities I speak to you across plains My mouth is upon your pillow Both faces of the walls come meeting My voice discovering you I speak to you of eternity O cities memories of cities Cities wrapped in our desires Cities come early cities come lately Cities strong and cities […]...
12. Father Riley's Horse ‘Twas the horse thief, Andy Regan, that was hunted like a dog By the troopers of the upper Murray side, They had searched in every gully they had looked in every log, But never sight or track of him they spied, Till the priest at Kiley’s Crossing heard a knocking very late And a whisper […]...
13. Come up from the Fields, Father 1 COME up from the fields, father, here’s a letter from our Pete; And come to the front door, mother-here’s a letter from thy dear son. 2 Lo, ’tis autumn; Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder, Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages, with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind; Where apples ripe in […]...
14. Song To Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky; Contrariwise, my blood runs cold When little boys go by. For little boys as little boys, No special hate I carry, But now and then they grow to men, And when they do, they marry. No matter how they tarry, Eventually they marry. […]...
15. The Shivering Beggar NEAR Clapham village, where fields began, Saint Edward met a beggar man. It was Christmas morning, the church bells tolled, The old man trembled for the fierce cold. Saint Edward cried, “It is monstrous sin A beggar to lie in rags so thin! An old gray-beard and the frost so keen: I shall give him […]...
16. Salvage GUNS on the battle lines have pounded now a year Between Brussels and Paris. And, William Morris, when I read your old chapter on The great arches and naves and little whimsical Corners of the Churches of Northern France Brr-rr! I’m glad you’re a dead man, William Morris, I’m glad You’re down in the damp […]...
17. My Madonna I haled me a woman from the street, Shameless, but, oh, so fair! I bade her sit in the model’s seat And I painted her sitting there. I hid all trace of her heart unclean; I painted a babe at her breast; I painted her as she might have been If the Worst had been […]...
18. The Ballad Of Father O'Hart Good Father John O’Hart In penal days rode out To a Shoneen who had free lands And his own snipe and trout. In trust took he John’s lands; Sleiveens were all his race; And he gave them as dowers to his daughters. And they married beyond their place. But Father John went up, And Father […]...
19. TO FATHER* KRONOS [written in a post-chaise.] (* In the original, Schwager, which has the Twofold meaning of brother-in-law and postilion.) HASTEN thee, Kronos! On with clattering trot Downhill goeth thy path; Loathsome dizziness ever, When thou delayest, assails me. Quick, rattle along, Over stock and stone let thy trot Into life straightway lead Now once more Up […]...
20. THE CARDINAL LOOKS BACK I was a good father to my people, Their houses among the terraced hills Adored God every day, grape-clusters on the vines Made Christ’s blood richer in the goblet My father gave me: the chased silver had vines Round the stem and Cellini made it, ‘Let him take it to Rome’, he had said, ‘The […]...
21. Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
22. Poet And Peer They asked the Bard of Ayr to dine; The banquet hall was fit and fine, With gracing it a Lord; The poet came; his face was grim To find the place reserved for him Was at the butler’s board. So when the gentry called him in, He entered with a knavish grin And sipped a […]...
23. A Nervous Governor-General We read in the press that Lord Northcote is here To take up Lord Tennyson’s mission. ‘Tis pleasant to find they have sent us a Peer, And a man of exalted position. It’s his business to see that the Radical horde From loyalty’s path does not swerve us; But his tastes, and the task, don’t […]...
24. The Bell From Europe The tower bell in the Tenth Street Church Rang out nostalgia for the refugee Who knew the source of bells by sound. We liked it, but in ignorance. One meets authorities on bells infrequently. Europe alone made bells with such a tone, Herr Mannheim said. The bell Struck midnight, and it shook the room. He […]...
25. Night Ray Most brightly of all burned the hair of my evening loved one: To her I send the coffin of lightest wood. Waves billow round it as round the bed of our dream in Rome; It wears a white wig as I do and speaks hoarsely: It talks as I do when I grant admittance to […]...
26. Infelice Walking swiftly with a dreadful duchess, He smiled too briefly, his face was pale as sand, He jumped into a taxi when he saw me coming, Leaving my alone with a private meaning, He loves me so much, my heart is singing. Later at the Club when I rang him in the evening They said: […]...
27. His Wife, The Painter There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks, And outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like Insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev, Says the radio, and Jane Austin, Jane Austin, too. “I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are At work.” He […]...
28. To Qiwu Qian Bound Home After Failing an Examination In a happy reign there should be no hermits; The wise and able should consult together…. So you, a man of the eastern mountains, Gave up your life of picking herbs And came all the way to the Gate of Gold But you found your devotion unavailing. …To spend the Day of No Fire on […]...
29. At Lulworth Cove A Century Back Had I but lived a hundred years ago I might have gone, as I have gone this year, By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know, And Time have placed his finger on me there: “You see that man?” I might have looked, and said, “O yes: I see him. One that boat has […]...
30. Apollo Belvedere A-sitttin’ on a cracker box an’ spittin’ in the stove, I took a sudden notion that I’d kindo’ like to rove; An’ so I bought a ticket, jest as easy as could be, From Pumpkinville in Idaho to Rome in Italy; An’ found myself in seven days of mostly atmosphere A-starin’ at a statoo called […]...
31. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
32. The Song of Seven Cities I was Lord of Cities very sumptuously builded. Seven roaring Cities paid me tribute from far. Ivory their outposts were the guardrooms of them gilded, And garrisoned with Amazons invincible in war. All the world went softly when it walked before my Cities Neither King nor Army vexed my peoples at their toil. Never horse […]...
33. September 22 It’s the day of the ram And the head of the year Rosh Ha’Shanah at Services I sat next to Mel Torme who outshone All comers with his bar Mitzvah heroics while on My left is Barnett Newman Big talker whose favorite Subjects include the horses And the stock market he Knows the odds the […]...
34. Bredon Hill In summertime on Bredon The bells they sound so clear; Round both the shires they ring them In steeples far and near, A happy noise to hear. Here of a Sunday morning My love and I would lie, And see the coloured counties, And hear the larks so high About us in the sky. The […]...
35. A LOOK INTO THE GULF I LOOKED one night, and there the Semiramis, With all her mourning doves about her head, Sat rocking on an ancient road of Hell, Withered and eyeless, chanting to the moon Snatches of song they sang to her of old Upon the lighted roofs of Nineveh. And then her voice rang out with rattling laugh: […]...
36. Lydia Humphrey Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church, With my Bible under my arm Till I was gray and old; Unwedded, alone in the world, Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, And children in the church. I know they laughed and thought me queer. I knew of the eagle souls that […]...
37. THE FAIRY TEMPLE; OR, OBERON'S CHAPEL THE FAIRY TEMPLE; OR, OBERON’S CHAPEL DEDICATED TO MR JOHN MERRIFIELD, COUNSELLOR AT LAW RARE TEMPLES THOU HAST SEEN, I KNOW, AND RICH FOR IN AND OUTWARD SHOW; SURVEY THIS CHAPEL BUILT, ALONE, WITHOUT OR LIME, OR WOOD, OR STONE. THEN SAY, IF ONE THOU’ST SEEN MORE FINE THAN THIS, THE FAIRIES’ ONCE, NOW THINE. […]...
38. Father The long lines of diesels Groan toward evening Carrying off the breath Of the living. The face of your house Is black, It is your face, black And fire bombed In the first street wars, A black tooth planted in the earth Of Michigan And bearing nothing, And the earth is black, Sick on used […]...
39. 46. The Belles of Mauchline IN Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles, The pride of the place and its neighbourhood a’; Their carriage and dress, a stranger would guess, In Lon’on or Paris, they’d gotten it a’. Miss Miller is fine, Miss Markland’s divine, Miss Smith she has wit, and Miss Betty is braw: There’s beauty and fortune to […]...
40. To God the Father To the little, pitiful God I make my prayer, The God with the long grey beard And flowing robe fastened with a hempen girdle Who sits nodding and muttering on the all-too-big throne Of Heaven. What a long, long time, dear God, since you set the Stars in their places, Girded the earth with the […]...