To Helen

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1. Helen of Tyre What phantom is this that appears Through the purple mist of the years, Itself but a mist like these? A woman of cloud and of fire; It is she; it is Helen of Tyre, The town in the midst of the seas. O Tyre! in thy crowded streets The phantom appears and retreats, And the […]...
2. From The Graveyard By The Sea (After Valery) This hushed surface where the doves parade Amid the pines vibrates, amid the graves; Here the noon’s justice unites all fires when The sea aspires forever to begin again and again. O what a gratification comes after long meditation O satisfaction, after long meditation or ratiocination Upon the calm of the gods Upon […]...
3. Late Autumn In Venice (After Rilke) The city floats no longer like a bait To hook the nimble darting summer days. The glazed and brittle palaces pulsate and radiate And glitter. Summer’s garden sways, A heap of marionettes hanging down and dangled, Leaves tired, torn, turned upside down and strangled: Until from forest depths, from bony leafless trees A […]...
4. Helen In Hollywood When she goes to Hollywood She is an angel. She writes in red red lipstick On the window of her body, Long for me, oh need me! Parts her lips like a lotus. Opening night she stands, poised On her carpet, luminescent, Young men humming All around her. She is flying. Her high heels are […]...
5. Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing The world is full of women Who’d tell me I should be ashamed of myself If they had the chance. Quit dancing. Get some self-respect And a day job. Right. And minimum wage, And varicose veins, just standing In one place for eight hours Behind a glass counter Bundled up to the neck, instead of […]...
6. 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 […]...
7. Rosalind and Helen: a Modern Eclogue ROSALIND, HELEN, and her Child. SCENE. The Shore of the Lake of Como. HELEN Come hither, my sweet Rosalind. ‘T is long since thou and I have met; And yet methinks it were unkind Those moments to forget. Come, sit by me. I see thee stand By this lone lake, in this far land, Thy […]...
8. The New Helen Where hast thou been since round the walls of Troy The sons of God fought in that great emprise? Why dost thou walk our common earth again? Hast thou forgotten that impassioned boy, His purple galley and his Tyrian men And treacherous Aphrodite’s mocking eyes? For surely it was thou, who, like a star Hung […]...
9. Helen All Greece hates The still eyes in the white face, The lustre as of olives Where she stands, And the white hands. All Greece reviles The wan face when she smiles, Hating it deeper still When it grows wan and white, Remembering past enchantments And past ills. Greece sees, unmoved, God’s daughter, born of love, […]...
10. To Helen 2 I saw thee once – once only – years ago: I must not say how many – but not many. It was a July midnight; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, With quietude, and sultriness, […]...
11. To Helen 1 Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicæan barks of yore, That gently, o’er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And […]...
12. Helen all Alone “In the Same Boat” A Diversity of Creatures There was darkness under Heaven For an hour’s space Darkness that we knew was given Us for special grace. Sun and noon and stars were hid, God had left His Throne, When Helen came to me, she did, Helen all alone! Side by side (because our fate […]...
13. The wanderer Upon a mountain height, far from the sea, I found a shell, And to my listening ear the lonely thing Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing, Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell. How came the shell upon that mountain height? Ah, who can say Whether there dropped by some too careless […]...
14. Menelaus and Helen I Hot through Troy’s ruin Menelaus broke To Priam’s palace, sword in hand, to sate On that adulterous whore a ten years’ hate And a king’s honour. Through red death, and smoke, And cries, and then by quieter ways he strode, Till the still innermost chamber fronted him. He swung his sword, and crashed into […]...
15. Aunt Helen MISS HELEN SLINGSBY was my maiden aunt, And lived in a small house near a fashionable square Cared for by servants to the number of four. Now when she died there was silence in heaven And silence at her end of the street. The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet- He was […]...
16. When Helen Lived We have cried in our despair That men desert, For some trivial affair Or noisy, insolent sport, Beauty that we have won From bitterest hours; Yet we, had we walked within Those topless towers Where Helen waked with her boy, Had given but as the rest Of the men and women of Troy, A word […]...
17. Japanese lullaby Sleep, little pigeon, and fold your wings, Little blue pigeon with velvet eyes; Sleep to the singing of mother-bird swinging Swinging the nest where her little one lies. Away out yonder I see a star, Silvery star with a tinkling song; To the soft dew falling I hear it calling Calling and tinkling the night […]...
18. Admire their style I’m reading fellow poets’ blogs today, A sustaining source of entertainment; I admire their style without exciting comment Or resorting to an unkind eye, simple though It is to sigh about uneasy affirmation. I hope when they read me (if they ever do) They rest as easy on my lack of finished form, The hazy, […]...
19. The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit A BROADSIDE DISTRIBUTED IN SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS Censers are swinging, Over the town; Censers are swinging, Look overhead! Censers are swinging, Heaven comes down. City, dead city, Awake from the dead! Censers, tremendous, Gleam overhead. Wind-harps are ringing, Wind-harps unseen- Calling and calling:- “Wake from the dead. Rise, little city, Shine like a queen.” Soldiers of […]...
20. Petropolis From a fearful height, a wandering light, But does a star glitter like this, crying? Transparent star, wandering light Your brother, Petropolis, is dying. From a fearful height, earthly dreams are alight, And a green star is crying. Oh star, if you are the brother of water and light, Your brother, Petropolis, is dying. A […]...
21. Womanly Qualms When I go rowing on the lake, I long to be a man; I’ll give my Sunday frock to have A callous heart like Dan. I love the ripple of the waves When gliding o’er the deep, But when I see the cruel ours, I close my eyes and weep; For there are cat-fish in […]...
22. Invitation To Miss Marianne Moore From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning, please come flying. In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals, please come flying, To the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums Descending out of the mackerel sky Over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water, please come flying. Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The […]...
23. Fame's Penny-Trumpet Blow, blow your trumpets till they crack, Ye little men of little souls! And bid them huddle at your back – Gold-sucking leeches, shoals on shoals! Fill all the air with hungry wails – “Reward us, ere we think or write! Without your Gold mere Knowledge fails To sate the swinish appetite!” And, where great […]...
24. Theme For English B The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you Then, it will be true. I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here To this college on the hill above Harlem. I am […]...
25. Christmas Holidays Along the Woodford road there comes a noise Of wheels, and Mr. Rounding’s neat post-chaise Struggles along, drawn by a pair of bays, With Reverend Mr. Crow and six small boys, Who ever and anon declare their joys With trumping horns and juvenile huzzas, At going home to spend their Christmas days, And changing learning’s […]...
26. Prelude They say that rhyme and rhythm are Outmoded now. I do not know, for I am far From high of brow. But if the twain you take away, Since basely bred, Proud Poetry, I dare to say, Would scarce be read. With humble heart I thus define My rôle in rhyme: Oh may I never […]...
27. 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 […]...
28. The Oldest Song “These were never your true love’s eyes. Why do you feign that you love them? You that broke from their constancies, And the wide calm brows above them! This was never your true love’s speech. Why do you thrill when you hear it? You that have ridden out of its reach The width of the […]...
29. I never hear the word "escape&quot I never hear the word “escape” Without a quicker blood, A sudden expectation A flying attitude! I never hear of prisons broad By soldiers battered down, But I tug childish at my bars Only to fail again!...
30. Out in the Garden Out in the garden, Out in the windy, swinging dark, Under the trees and over the flower-beds, Over the grass and under the hedge border, Someone is sweeping, sweeping, Some old gardener. Out in the windy, swinging dark, Someone is secretly putting in order, Someone is creeping, creeping....
31. Alcidor While Monarchs in stern Battle strove For proud Imperial Sway; Abandon’d to his milder Love, Within a silent peaceful Grove, Alcidor careless lay. Some term’d it cold, unmanly Fear; Some, Nicety of Sense, That Drums and Trumpets cou’d not hear, The sullying Blasts of Powder bear, Or with foul Camps dispense. A patient Martyr to […]...
32. Across The Red Sky Across the red sky two birds flying, Flying with drooping wings. Silent and solitary their ominous flight. All day the triumphant sun with yellow banners Warred and warred with the earth, and when she yielded Stabbed her heart, gathered her blood in a chalice, Spilling it over the evening sky. When the dark plumaged birds […]...
33. Walt Whitman The master-songs are ended, and the man That sang them is a name. And so is God A name; and so is love, and life, and death, And everything. But we, who are too blind To read what we have written, or what faith Has written for us, do not understand: We only blink, and […]...
34. Do You Hear The Angel Speaking? Do you hear the angel speaking? Do you hear her heavenly voice? Do you hear the song she’s singing? Will you help her to rejoice? Do you hear her when you’re weary And find it hard to cope? Do you hear her inspiration and Her messages of hope? Do you hear her voice of wisdom… […]...
35. Psalm 47 Christ ascending and reigning. O for a shout of sacred joy To God the sovereign King! Let every land their tongues employ, And hymns of triumph sing. Jesus our God ascends on high, His heav’nly guards around Attend him rising through the sky, With trumpets’ joyful sound. While angels shout and praise their King, Let […]...
36. 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...
37. Come down, O Maid COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang), In height and cold, the splendour of the hills? But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; And come, for Love […]...
38. 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...
39. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
40. The Wicked Postman Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me, Mother dear? The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all Wet, and you don’t mind it. Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother To come home from school. What has happened […]...