A Well-Worn Story

Related poetry:

1. Always Marry An April Girl Praise the spells and bless the charms, I found April in my arms. April golden, April cloudy, Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy; April soft in flowered languor, April cold with sudden anger, Ever changing, ever true I love April, I love you....
2. A Story For Rose On The Midnight Flight To Boston Until tonight they were separate specialties, Different stories, the best of their own worst. Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy’s Laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first Story. Someday, I promised her, I’ll be someone Going somewhere and we plotted it in the humdrum School for proper girls. The next […]...
3. On that dear Frame the Years had worn On that dear Frame the Years had worn Yet precious as the House In which We first experienced Light The Witnessing, to Us Precious! It was conceiveless fair As Hands the Grave had grimed Should softly place within our own Denying that they died....
4. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
5. Distressed Haiku In a week or ten days The snow and ice Will melt from Cemetery Road. I’m coming! Don’t move! Once again it is April. Today is the day We would have been married Twenty-six years. I finished with April Halfway through March. You think that their Dying is the worst Thing that could happen. Then […]...
6. 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 […]...
7. The Story Of Our Lives 1 We are reading the story of our lives Which takes place in a room. The room looks out on a street. There is no one there, No sound of anything. The tress are heavy with leaves, The parked cars never move. We keep turning the pages, hoping for something, Something like mercy or change, […]...
8. The Second Oldest Story Go I must along my ways Though my heart be ragged, Dripping bitter through the days, Festering, and jagged. Smile I must at every twinge, Kiss, to time its throbbing; He that tears a heart to fringe Hates the noise of sobbing. Weep, my love, till Heaven hears; Curse and moan and languish. While I […]...
9. Colors Passing Through Us Purple as tulips in May, mauve Into lush velvet, purple As the stain blackberries leave On the lips, on the hands, The purple of ripe grapes Sunlit and warm as flesh. Every day I will give you a color, Like a new flower in a bud vase On your desk. Every day I will paint […]...
10. Sheep and Lambs All in the April evening, April airs were abroad; The sheep with their little lambs Passed me by on the road. The sheep with their little lambs Passed me by on the road; All in the April evening I thought on the Lamb of God. The lambs were weary and crying With a weak, human […]...
11. Centenarian's Story, The GIVE me your hand, old Revolutionary; The hill-top is nigh-but a few steps, (make room, gentlemen;) Up the path you have follow’d me well, spite of your hundred and extra years; You can walk, old man, though your eyes are almost done; Your faculties serve you, and presently I must have them serve me. Rest, […]...
12. Story “And if he’s gone away,” said she, “Good riddance, if you’re asking me. I’m not a one to lie awake And weep for anybody’s sake. There’s better lads than him about! I’ll wear my buckled slippers out A-dancing till the break of day. I’m better off with him away! And if he never come,” said […]...
13. The Story of Ung Once, on a glittering ice-field, ages and ages ago, Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow. Fashioned the form of a tribesman gaily he whistled and sung, Working the snow with his fingers. Read ye the Story of Ung! Pleased was his tribe with that image came in their hundreds to scan […]...
14. The Tree: An Old Man's Story I Its roots are bristling in the air Like some mad Earth-god’s spiny hair; The loud south-wester’s swell and yell Smote it at midnight, and it fell. Thus ends the tree Where Some One sat with me. II Its boughs, which none but darers trod, A child may step on from the sod, And twigs […]...
15. Smoke Smoke, it is all smoke In the throat of eternity. . . . For centuries, the air was full of witches Whistling up chimneys On their spiky brooms Cackling or singing more sweetly than Circe, As they flew over rooftops Blessing & cursing their Kind. We banished & burned them Making them smoke in the […]...
16. All the letters I can write All the letters I can write Are not fair as this Syllables of Velvet Sentences of Plush, Depths of Ruby, undrained, Hid, Lip, for Thee Play it were a Humming Bird And just sipped me...
17. Spring To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is […]...
18. Paudeen Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite Of our old paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind Among the stones and thorn-trees, under morning light; Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought That on the lonely height where all are in God’s eye, There […]...
19. Laughing Rose If I were gusty April now, How I would blow at laughing Rose; I’d make her ribbons slip their knots, And all her hair come loose. If I were merry April now, How I would pelt her cheeks with showers; I’d make carnations, rich and warm, Of her vermillion flowers. Since she will laugh in […]...
20. The Story of Sigurd the Volsung (excerpt) But therewith the sun rose upward and lightened all the earth, And the light flashed up to the heavens from the rims of the glorious girth; But they twain arose together, and with both her palms outspread, And bathed in the light returning, she cried aloud and said: “All hail, O Day and thy Sons, […]...
21. Love and Law TRUE Love is founded in rocks of Remembrance In stones of Forbearance and mortar of pain. The workman lays wearily granite on granite, And bleeds for his castle, ‘mid sunshine and rain. Love is not velvet, not all of it velvet, Not all of it banners, not gold-leaf alone. ‘Tis stern as the ages and […]...
22. From The Short Story Shadow-Children Little shadows, little shadows Dancing on the chamber wall, While I sit beside the hearthstone Where the red flames rise and fall. Caps and nightgowns, caps and nightgowns, My three antic shadows wear; And no sound they make in playing, For the six small feet are bare. Dancing gayly, dancing gayly, To and fro all […]...
23. July 10 The sky was a midnight blue Velvet cloth draping A birdcage and no moon But the breeze was whistling And the sound of a car On Valentine Place was The rush of a waterfall On the phone in New York City And that’s when the muse Turned up with curly brown locks She was a […]...
24. Tell Me a Story Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard The great geese hoot northward. I could not see them, there being no moon And the stars sparse. I heard them. I did not know what was happening in my heart. It was the season before the elderberry […]...
25. Story A woman’s taking her late-afternoon walk On Chestnut where no sidewalk exists And houses with gravel driveways Sit back among the pines. Only the house With the vicious dog is close to the road. An electric fence keeps him in check. When she comes to that house, the woman Always crosses to the other side. […]...
26. An Old Story (Retold in Rhyme) They threw him in a prison cell; He moaned upon his bed. And when he crept from coils of hell: “Last night you killed,” they said. “last night in drunken rage you slew A being brave with breath; A radiant soul, because of you Lies dark in death.” “last night I killed,” […]...
27. Story Tired of a landscape known too well when young: The deliberate shallow hills, the boring birds Flying past rocks; tired of remembering The village children and their naughty words, He abandoned his small holding and went South, Recognised at once his wished-for lie In the inhabitants’ attractive mouth, The church beside the marsh, the hot […]...
28. The Plowboy AFTER the last red sunset glimmer, Black on the line of a low hill rise, Formed into moving shadows, I saw A plowboy and two horses lined against the gray, Plowing in the dusk the last furrow. The turf had a gleam of brown, And smell of soil was in the air, And, cool and […]...
29. An Old Story Strange that I did not know him then. That friend of mine! I did not even show him then One friendly sign; But cursed him for the ways he had To make me see My envy of the praise he had For praising me. I would have rid the earth of him Once, in my […]...
30. The Story of Uriah Jack Barrett went to Quetta Because they told him to. He left his wife at Simla On three-fourths his monthly screw. Jack Barrett died at Quetta Ere the next month’s pay he drew. Jack Barrett went to Quetta. He didn’t understand The reason of his transfer From the pleasant mountain-land. The season was September, And […]...
31. A True Story Little Ann and her mother were walking one day Through London’s wide city so fair, And business obliged them to go by the way That led them through Cavendish Square. And as they pass’d by the great house of a Lord, A beautiful chariot there came, To take some most elegant ladies abroad, Who straightway […]...
32. True Story they found him walking along the freeway All red in Front He had taken a rusty tin can And cut off his sexual Machinery As if to say See what you’ve done to Me? you might as well have the Rest. And he put part of him In one pocket and Part of him in […]...
33. Story Of Isaac The door it opened slowly, My father he came in, I was nine years old. And he stood so tall above me, His blue eyes they were shining And his voice was very cold. He said, “I’ve had a vision And you know I’m strong and holy, I must do what I’ve been told.” So […]...
34. A Sourdough Story Hark to the Sourdough story, told at sixty below, When the pipes are lit and we smoke and spit Into the campfire glow. Rugged are we and hoary, and statin’ a general rule, A genooine Sourdough story Ain’t no yarn for the Sunday School. A Sourdough came to stake his claim in Heav’n one morning […]...
35. Bedtime Story The moon lies on the river Like a drop of oil. The children come to the banks to be healed Of their wounds and bruises. The fathers who gave them their wounds and bruises Come to be healed of their rage. The mothers grow lovely; their faces soften, The birds in their throats awake. They […]...
36. Pirate Story Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing, Three of us abroad in the basket on the lea. Winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring, And waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea. Where shall we adventure, to-day that we’re afloat, Wary of the […]...
37. A Christmas Ghost Story South of the Line, inland from far Durban, A mouldering soldier lies your countryman. Awry and doubled up are his gray bones, And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans Nightly to clear Canopus: “I would know By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified, Was ruled to […]...
38. A Disqualified Jockey's Story You see, the thing was this way there was me, That rode Panopply, the Splendor mare, And Ikey Chambers on the Iron Dook, And Smith, the half-caste rider on Regret, And that long bloke from Wagga him that rode Veronikew, the Snowy River horse. Well, none of them had chances not a chance Among the […]...
39. The Story Of The Ashes And The Flame No matter why, nor whence, nor when she came, There was her place. No matter what men said, No matter what she was; living or dead, Faithful or not, he loved her all the same. The story was as old as human shame, But ever since that lonely night she fled, With books to blind […]...
40. The Story of Mongrel Grey This is the story the stockman told On the cattle-camp, when the stars were bright; The moon rose up like a globe of gold And flooded the plain with her mellow light. We watched the cattle till dawn of day And he told me the story of Mongrel Grey. He was a knock-about station hack, […]...