Eugenia Todd

Related poetry:

1. The Benefactors Ah! What avails the classic bent And what the cultured word, Against the undoctored incident That actually occurred? And what is Art whereto we press Through paint and prose and rhyme When Nature in her nakedness Defeats us every time? It is not learning, grace nor gear, Nor easy meat and drink, But bitter pinch […]...
2. On A March Day Here in the teeth of this triumphant wind That shakes the naked shadows on the ground, Making a key-board of the earth to strike From clattering tree and hedge a separate sound, Bear witness for me that I loved my life, All things that hurt me and all things that healed, And that I swore […]...
3. Healed of My Hurt Healed of my hurt, I laud the inhuman Sea Yea, bless the Angels Four that there convene; For healed I am even by the pitiless breath Distilled in wholesome dew named rosmarine....
4. To Lucy, Countess of Bedford, with John Donne's Satires Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are Life of the Muses’ day, their morning star! If works, not th’ author’s, their own grace should look, Whose poems would not wish to be your book? But these, desir’d by you, the maker’s ends Crown with their own. Rare poems ask rare friends. Yet satires, since […]...
5. Picture Dealer There were twin artists A. and B. Who painted pictures two, And hung them in my galley For everyone to view; The one exhibited by A. The name “A Sphere” did bear, While strangely brother B’s display Was catalogued: “A Square”. Now although A. (and this is queer) Could squeeze a pretty tube, The picture […]...
6. A Greeting Good morning, Life and all Things glad and beautiful. My pockets nothing hold, But he that owns the gold, The Sun, is my great friend His spending has no end. Hail to the morning sky, Which bright clouds measure high; Hail to you birds whose throats Would number leaves by notes; Hail to you shady […]...
7. A Poet's Wooing I woo’d a woman once, But she was sharper than an eastern wind. Tennyson “What may I do to make you glad, To make you glad and free, Till your light smiles glance And your bright eyes dance Like sunbeams on the sea? Read some rhyme that is blithe and gay Of a bright May […]...
8. Modern Love XXVI: Love Ere He Bleeds Love ere he bleeds, an eagle in high skies, Has earth beneath his wings: from reddened eve He views the rosy dawn. In vain they weave The fatal web below while far he flies. But when the arrow strikes him, there’s a change. He moves but in the track of his spent pain, Whose red […]...
9. The Hour of the King WHO would think this quiet breather From the world had taken flight? Yet within the form we see there Wakes the Golden King to-night. Out upon the face of faces He looked forth before his sleep: Now he knows the starry races Haunters of the ancient deep. On the Bird of Diamond Glory Floats in […]...
10. COMING TO TERMS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA Why our son, why? Every morning the same dark chorus wakes me And I wonder how I am still alive. “Balance the forces of life and death” Is the Kleinian recipe for survival. “It is God’s will, life is meant to test us” My Christian heritage tells me. “Life is a vale of soul making” […]...
11. Passers-By PASSERS-BY, Out of your many faces Flash memories to me Now at the day end Away from the sidewalks Where your shoe soles traveled And your voices rose and blend To form the city’s afternoon roar Hindering an old silence. Passers-by, I remember lean ones among you, Throats in the clutch of a hope, Lips […]...
12. Growth of Man like Growth of Nature Growth of Man like Growth of Nature Gravitates within Atmosphere, and Sun endorse it Bit it stir alone Each its difficult Ideal Must achieve Itself Through the solitary prowess Of a Silent Life Effort is the sole condition Patience of Itself Patience of opposing forces And intact Belief Looking on is the Department Of its […]...
13. Idyll In the grey summer garden I shall find you With day-break and the morning hills behind you. There will be rain-wet roses; stir of wings; And down the wood a thrush that wakes and sings. Not from the past you’ll come, but from that deep Where beauty murmurs to the soul asleep: And I shall […]...
14. A Tooth upon Our Peace A Tooth upon Our Peace The Peace cannot deface Then Wherefore be the Tooth? To vitalize the Grace The Heaven hath a Hell Itself to signalize And every sign before the Place Is Gilt with Sacrifice...
15. All the Hills and Vales Along All the hills and vales along Earth is bursting into song, And the singers are the chaps Who are going to die perhaps. O sing, marching men, Till the valleys ring again. Give your gladness to earth’s keeping, So be glad, when you are sleeping. Cast away regret and rue, Think what you are marching […]...
16. Mrs. Meyers He protested all his life long The newspapers lied about him villainously; That he was not at fault for Minerva’s fall, But only tried to help her. Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see That even trying to help her, as he called it, He had broken the law human and divine. […]...
17. Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks At The Dancers I found that ivory image there Dancing with her chosen youth, But when he wound her coal-black hair As though to strangle her, no scream Or bodily movement did I dare, Eyes under eyelids did so gleam; Love is like the lion’s tooth. When She, and though some said she played I said that she […]...
18. Not What Was Meant When the Academy of Arts demanded freedom Of artistic expression from narrow-minded bureaucrats There was a howl and a clamour in its immediate vicinity But roaring above everything Came a deafening thunder of applause From beyond the Sector boundary. Freedom! it roared. Freedom for the artists! Freedom all round! Freedom for all! Freedom for the […]...
19. The Soldiers at Lauro Young are our dead Like babies they lie The wombs they blest once Not healed dry And yet – too soon Into each space A cold earth falls On colder face. Quite still they lie These fresh-cut reeds Clutched in earth Like winter seeds But they will not bloom When called by spring To burst […]...
20. John Cabanis Neither spite, fellow citizens, Nor forgetfulness of the shiftlessness, And the lawlessness and waste Under democracy’s rule in Spoon River Made me desert the party of law and order And lead the liberal party. Fellow citizens! I saw as one with second sight That every man of the millions of men Who give themselves to […]...
21. Psalm 30 part 1 Sickness healed, and sorrow removed. I Will extol thee, Lord, on high, At thy command diseases fly: Who but a God can speak and save From the dark borders of the grave? Sing to the Lord, ye saints of his, And tell how large his goodness is; Let all your powers rejoice and bless While […]...
22. Rest O EARTH, lie heavily upon her eyes; Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth; Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. She hath no questions, she hath no replies, Hush’d in and curtain’d with a blessed dearth Of all that irk’d her from […]...
23. A Sad State Of Freedom You waste the attention of your eyes, The glittering labour of your hands, And knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves Of which you’ll taste not a morsel; You are free to slave for others You are free to make the rich richer. The moment you’re born They plant around you Mills that grind […]...
24. The Widower For a season there must be pain For a little, little space I shall lose the sight of her face, Take back the old life again While She is at rest in her place. For a season this pain must endure, For a little, little while I shall sigh more often than smile Till time […]...
25. God-Forgotten I towered far, and lo! I stood within The presence of the Lord Most High, Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win Some answer to their cry. “The Earth, say’st thou? The Human race? By Me created? Sad its lot? Nay: I have no remembrance of such place: Such world I fashioned not.” […]...
26. A Song of the White Men 1899 Now, this is the cup the White Men drink When they go to right a wrong, And that is the cup of the old world’s hate Cruel and strained and strong. We have drunk that cup and a bitter, bitter cup And tossed the dregs away. But well for the world when the White […]...
27. TO MUSIC, TO BECALM A SWEET SICK YOUTH Charms, that call down the moon from out her sphere, On this sick youth work your enchantments here! Bind up his senses with your numbers, so As to entrance his pain, or cure his woe. Fall gently, gently, and a-while him keep Lost in the civil wilderness of sleep: That done, then let him, dispossess’d […]...
28. To Hannah Spirit girl to whom ’twas given To revisit scenes of pain, From the hell I thought was Heaven You have lifted me again; Through the world that I inherit, Where I loved her ere she died, I am walking with the spirit Of a dead girl by my side. Through my old possessions only For […]...
29. Julian Scott Toward the last The truth of others was untruth to me; The justice of others injustice to me; Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life; Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death; I would have killed those they saved, And save those they killed. And I saw how a god, if […]...
30. Caroline Branson With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked, As often before, the April fields till star-light Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood, Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing Like notes of music that run together, into winning, In the […]...
31. The Robing of the King ON the bird of air blue-breasted glint the rays of gold, And its shadowy fleece above us waves the forest old, Far through rumorous leagues of midnight stirred by breezes warm. See the old ascetic yonder, ah, poor withered form, Where he crouches wrinkled over by unnumbered years Through the leaves the flakes of moon-fire […]...
32. To Whom It May Concern In Autumn, As in Spring, The sap flows, The sap wishes to race Against heartbeats Before the winter, Before the winter Buries us In her usual shroud of ice. I turn to you Knowing that Unrequited love Is good For poetry, Knowing that pain Will nudge the muse As well as anything, Knowing that you […]...
33. The Curse of Kehama I charm thy life, From the weapons of strife, From stone and from wood, From fire and from flood, From the serpent’s tooth, And the beast of blood. From sickness I charm thee, And time shall not harm thee; But earth, which is mine, Its fruits shall deny thee; And water shall hear me, And […]...
34. Sleeping Out: Full Moon They sleep within. . . . I cower to the earth, I waking, I only. High and cold thou dreamest, O queen, high-dreaming and lonely. We have slept too long, who can hardly win The white one flame, and the night-long crying; The viewless passers; the world’s low sighing With desire, with yearning, To the […]...
35. II. Safety Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest He who has found our hid security, Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest, And heard our word, ‘Who is so safe as we?’ We have found safety with all things undying, The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth, The deep […]...
36. Harlan Sewall You never understood, O unknown one, Why it was I repaid Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations First with diminished thanks, Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you, So that I might not be compelled to thank you, And then with silence which followed upon Our final Separation. You had cured my diseased soul. […]...
37. The Man to the Angel I HAVE wept a million tears: Pure and proud one, where are thine, What the gain though all thy years In unbroken beauty shine? All your beauty cannot win Truth we learn in pain and sighs: You can never enter in To the circle of the wise. They are but the slaves of light Who […]...
38. The Wanderlust The Wanderlust has lured me to the seven lonely seas, Has dumped me on the tailing-piles of dearth; The Wanderlust has haled me from the morris chairs of ease, Has hurled me to the ends of all the earth. How bitterly I’ve cursed it, oh, the Painted Desert knows, The wraithlike heights that hug the […]...
39. The Pilgrim Youth’s gay springtime scarcely knowing Went I forth the world to roam And the dance of youth, the glowing, Left I in my father’s home, Of my birthright, glad-believing, Of my world-gear took I none, Careless as an infant, cleaving To my pilgrim staff alone. For I placed my mighty hope in Dim and holy […]...
40. Art thou the thing I wanted? Art thou the thing I wanted? Begone my Tooth has grown Supply the minor Palate That has not starved so long I tell thee while I waited The mystery of Food Increased till I abjured it And dine without Like God Art thou the thing I wanted? Begone my Tooth has grown Affront a minor […]...