Nellie Clark

Related poetry:

1. Washington McNeely Rich, honored by my fellow citizens, The father of many children, born of a noble mother, All raised there In the great mansion-house, at the edge of town. Note the cedar tree on the lawn! I sent all the boys to Ann Arbor, all of the girls to Rockford, The while my life went on, […]...
2. The Forsaken Holy Mother of God, Merciful Mary. Hear Me! I am very weary. I have come From a village miles away, all day I have been coming, and I ache For such Far roaming. I cannot walk as light as I used, and my Thoughts grow confused. I am heavier than I was. Mary Mother, you […]...
3. Jack JACK was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun. He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day, And his hands were tougher than sole leather. He married a tough woman and they had eight children And the woman died and the children grew up and Went away and wrote the old man every two years. […]...
4. Clark Street Bridge DUST of the feet And dust of the wheels, Wagons and people going, All day feet and wheels. Now. . . . . Only stars and mist A lonely policeman, Two cabaret dancers, Stars and mist again, No more feet or wheels, No more dust and wagons. Voices of dollars And drops of blood . […]...
5. The Married Man The bachelor ‘e fights for one As joyful as can be; But the married man don’t call it fun, Because ‘e fights for three For ‘Im an’ ‘Er an’ It (An’ Two an’ One make Three) ‘E wants to finish ‘is little bit, An’ e’ wants to go ‘ome to is tea! The bachelor pokes […]...
6. December, 1919 Last night I heard your voice, mother, The words you sang to me When I, a little barefoot boy, Knelt down against your knee. And tears gushed from my heart, mother, And passed beyond its wall, But though the fountain reached my throat The drops refused to fall. ‘Tis ten years since you died, mother, […]...
7. Lilian Stewart I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins, Born in a cottage near the grist-mill, Reared in the mansion there on the hill, With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate. How proud my mother was of the mansion! How proud of father’s rise in the world! And how my father loved and watched us, And […]...
8. TEXTURES The grain of the exposed boards Speaks through the wall of the years We are back in our cottage On the wind-swathed hills Watching late winter dawns Gather like kindled flame. We are back with those winter dusks, – The hyaline air hung in darkness And a vale of stars, waking in blankets Laid on […]...
9. The Gardener LV: It Was Mid-Day It was mid-day when you went Away. The sun was strong in the sky. I had done my work and sat alone On my balcony when you went away. Fitful gusts came winnowing Through the smells of may distant Fields. The doves cooed tireless in the shade, And a bee strayed in my room hum- […]...
10. Penelope name meaning thread weaver or duck (these may be guesses from obscurity) Ten-year faithful wife whilst her husband Was gallivanting round the islands Deceiving the suitors by her shroud-unpicking Or maybe not such a savoury dame having A high time with those after her favours Allegedly allowing hermes up her skirts And becoming the mother […]...
11. Birthday (Autobiography) Seventy years ago my mother labored to bear me, A twelve-pound baby with a big head, Her first, it was plain torture. Finally they used the forceps And dragged me out, with one prong In my right eye, and slapped and banged me until I breathed. I am not particularly grateful for it. As to […]...
12. Russian Sonia I, born in Weimar Of a mother who was French And German father, a most learned professor, Orphaned at fourteen years, Became a dancer, known as Russian Sonia, All up and down the boulevards of Paris, Mistress betimes of sundry dukes and counts, And later of poor artists and of poets. At forty years, passée, […]...
13. Love Poem There is always something to be made of pain. Your mother knits. She turns out scarves in every shade of red. They were for Christmas, and they kept you warm While she married over and over, taking you Along. How could it work, When all those years she stored her widowed heart As though the […]...
14. The Having To Love Something Else There was a man who would marry his mother, and asked his Father for his mother’s hand in marriage, and was told he could Not marry his mother’s hand because it was attached to all The rest of mother, which was all married to his father; that He’d have to love something else. . . […]...
15. Good Hours I had for my winter evening walk No one at all with whom to talk, But I had the cottages in a row Up to their shining eyes in snow. And I thought I had the folk within: I had the sound of a violin; I had a glimpse through curtain laces Of youthful forms […]...
16. To My Mother Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of “Mother,” Therefore by that dear name I long have called you- You who are more than mother unto me, And fill my heart of hearts, where Death […]...
17. Twilight So Mary died last night! To-day The news has travelled here. And Robert died at Michaelmas, And Walter died last year. I went at sunset up the lane, I lingered by the stile; I saw the dusky fields that stretched Before me many a mile. I leaned against the stile, and thought Of her whose […]...
18. Flossie Cabanis From Bindle’s opera house in the village To Broadway is a great step. But I tried to take it, my ambition fired When sixteen years of age, Seeing “East Lynne” played here in the village By Ralph Barrett, the coming Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul. True, I trailed back home, a broken failure, When […]...
19. A Nativity 1914-18 The Babe was laid in the Manger Between the gentle kine All safe from cold and danger “But it was not so with mine, (With mine! With mine!) “Is it well with the child, is it well?” The waiting mother prayed. “For I know not how he fell, And I know not where he […]...
20. A Western Ballad When I died, love, when I died My heart was broken in your care; I never suffered love so fair As now I suffer and abide When I died, love, when I died. When I died, love, when I died I wearied in an endless maze That men have walked for centuries, As endless as […]...
21. Searcy Foote I wanted to go away to college But rich Aunt Persis wouldn’t help me. So I made gardens and raked the lawns And bought John Alden’s books with my earnings And toiled for the very means of life. I wanted to marry Delia Prickett, But how could I do it with what I earned? And […]...
22. The Hunters in the Snow 1962 The over-all picture is winter Icy mountains In the background the return From the hunt it is toward evening From the left Sturdy hunters lead in Their pack the inn-sign Hanging from A broken hinge is a stag a crucifix Between his antlers the cold Inn yard Is deserted but for a huge bonfire […]...
23. Hymn 60 The Virgin Mary’s song. Luke 1:46ff. Our souls shall magnify the Lord, In God the Savior we rejoice: While we repeat the Virgin’s song, May the same Spirit tune our voice! [The Highest saw her low estate, And mighty things his hand hath done: His overshadowing power and grace Makes her the mother of his […]...
24. The Two Friends AXIOCHUS, a handsome youth of old, And Alcibiades, (both gay and bold,) So well agreed, they kept a beauteous belle, With whom by turns they equally would dwell. IT happened, one of them so nicely played, The fav’rite lass produced a little maid, Which both extolled, and each his own believed, Though doubtless one or […]...
25. Josiah Tompkins I was well known and much beloved And rich, as fortunes are reckoned In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked. That was the home for me, Though all my children had flown afar- Which is the way of Nature-all but one. The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home, To be my […]...
26. The Oldest Drama “It fell on a day, that he went out to his father to the reapers. And he said unto his father, My head, my head. And he said to a lad, Carry him to his mother. And. . . he sat on her knees till noon, And then died. And she went up, and laid […]...
27. John Horace Burleson I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I was twenty-five. I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; There married the banker’s daughter, And later became president of the bank- Always looking forward to some leisure To write an epic novel of […]...
28. Rita Matlock Gruenberg Grandmother! You who sang to green valleys, And passed to a sweet repose at ninety-six, Here is your little Rita at last Grown old, grown forty-nine; Here stretched on your grave under the winter stars, With the rustle of oak leaves over my head; Piecing together strength for the act, Last thoughts, memories, asking how […]...
29. Spring When daisies pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men, for thus sings he: ‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo!’ O word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear. When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks […]...
30. Adonis 1. Each of us like you Has died once, Has passed through drift of wood-leaves, Cracked and bent And tortured and unbent In the winter-frost, The burnt into gold points, Lighted afresh, Crisp amber, scales of gold-leaf, Gold turned and re-welded In the sun; Each of us like you Has died once, Each of us […]...
31. Piano Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings. In spite of myself, the insidious mastery […]...
32. Lady Clare IT was the time when lilies blow, And clouds are highest up in air, Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe To give his cousin, Lady Clare. I trow they did not part in scorn – Lovers long-betroth’d were they: They too will wed the morrow morn: God’s blessing on the day! ‘He does not love […]...
33. The Routine Things Around The House When Mother died I thought: now I’ll have a death poem. That was unforgivable. Yet I’ve since forgiven myself As sons are able to do Who’ve been loved by their mothers. I stared into the coffin Knowing how long she’d live, How many lifetimes there are In the sweet revisions of memory. It’s hard to […]...
34. 402. Song-Meg o' the Mill (Another Version) O KEN ye what Meg o’ the Mill has gotten, An’ ken ye what Meg o’ the Mill has gotten? A braw new naig wi’ the tail o’ a rottan, And that’s what Meg o’ the Mill has gotten. O ken ye what Meg o’ the Mill lo’es dearly, An’ ken ye what Meg o’ […]...
35. Metaphors Of A Magnifico Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, Into twenty villages, Or one man Crossing a single bridge into a village. This is old song That will not declare itself. . . Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are Twenty men crossing a bridge Into a village. […]...
36. The Minotaur The mahogany table-top you smashed Had been the broad plank top Of my mother’s heirloom sideboard- Mapped with the scars of my whole life. That came under the hammer. That high stool you swung that day Demented by my being Twenty minutes late for baby-minding. ‘Marvellous!’ I shouted, ‘Go on, Smash it into kindling. That’s […]...
37. My Centenarian A hundred years is a lot of living I’ve often thought. and I’ll know, maybe, Some day if the gods are good in giving, And grant me to turn the century. Yet in all my eighty years of being I’ve never known but one ancient man Who actively feeling, hearing, seeing, Survived t beyond the […]...
38. Two Hundred Years After Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter’s night, (Unless old hearsay memories tricked his sight) Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky He watched a nosing lorry grinding on, And straggling files of men; when these were gone, A double limber and six mules went by, Hauling the rations up through ruts and mud To […]...
39. Dora Williams When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me I went to Springfield. There I met a lush, Whose father just deceased left him a fortune. He married me when drunk. My life was wretched. A year passed and one day they found him dead. That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago. After a […]...
40. The Czar’s Last Christmas Letter: A Barn in the Urals You were never told, Mother, how old Illyawas drunk That last holiday, for five days and nights He stumbled through Petersburg forming A choir of mutes, he dressed them in pink ascension gowns And, then, sold Father’s Tirietz stallion so to rent A hall for his Christmas recital: the audience Was rowdy but Illya in […]...