Petit, The Poet

Related poetry:

1. The Poet Fears Failure The poet fears failure & so she says “Hold on pen What if the critics Hate me?” & with that question She blots out more lines Than any critic could. The critic is only doing his job: Keeping the poet lonely. He barks Like a dog at the door When the master comes home. It’s […]...
2. Tick-Tock Tick-tocking in my ear My dollar clock I hear. ‘Arise,’ it seems to say: ‘Behold another day To grasp the golden key Of Opportunity; To turn the magic lock Tick-tock! ‘Another day to gain Some goal you sought in vain; To sing a sweeter song, Perchance to right a wrong; To win a height unscaled […]...
3. The Petit Vieux “Sow your wild oats in your youth,” so we’re always told; But I say with deeper sooth: “Sow them when you’re old.” I’ll be wise till I’m about seventy or so: Then, by Gad! I’ll blossom out as an ancient beau. I’ll assume a dashing air, laugh with loud Ha! ha! . . . How […]...
4. Death Of A Poet Laid now on his smooth bed For the last time, watching dully Through heavy eyelids the day’s colour Widow the sky, what can he say Worthy of record, the books all open, Pens ready, the faces, sad, Waiting gravely for the tired lips To move once what can he say? His tongue wrestles to force […]...
5. Widow McFarlane I was the Widow McFarlane, Weaver of carpets for all the village. And I pity you still at the loom of life, You who are singing to the shuttle And lovingly watching the work of your hands, If you reach the day of hate, of terrible truth. For the cloth of life is woven, you […]...
6. The Poet VIII He is a link between this and the coming world. He is A pure spring from which all thirsty souls may drink. He is a tree watered by the River of Beauty, bearing Fruit which the hungry heart craves; He is a nightingale, soothing the depressed Spirit with his beautiful melodies; He is a white […]...
7. Idler's Song I sit in the twilight dim At the close of an idle day, And I list to the soft sweet hymn, That rises far away, And dies on the evening air. Oh, all day long, They sing their song, Who toil in the valley there. But never a song sing I, Sitting with folded hands, […]...
8. Insomnia. Homer. Taut canvas Insomnia. Homer. Taut canvas. Half the catalogue of ships is mine: That flight of cranes, long stretched-out line, That once rose, out of Hellas. To an alien land, like a phalanx of cranes – Foam of the gods on the heads of kings – Where do you sail? What would the things Of Troy, be […]...
9. Dartside, 1849 I cannot tell what you say green leaves, I cannot tell what you say : But I know that there is a spirit in you, And a word in you this day. I cannot tell what you say, rosy rocks, I cannot tell what you say : But I know that there is a spirit […]...
10. So Let Us Dare How do we discover an antidote to each other, A faculty to commune in spiteful space? Our bleeding hearts and noxious farts Tie us in a hopeless chase to free this place Of evil parts that detonate without behest; Distress the poise we need to keep our sanity. Profanity which vents each manic crash Rends […]...
11. The Proud Poet (For Shaemas O Sheel) One winter night a Devil came and sat upon my bed, His eyes were full of laughter for his heart was full of crime. “Why don’t you take up fancy work, or embroidery?” he said, “For a needle is as manly a tool as a pen that makes a rhyme!” “You […]...
12. Tell Me Tell me, dear beauty of the dusk, When purple ribbons bind the hill, Do dreams your secret wish fulfill, Do prayers, like kernels from the husk Come from your lips? Tell me if when The mountains loom at night, giant shades Of softer shadow, swift like blades Of grass seeds come to flower. Then Tell […]...
13. To A Poet Breaking Silence Too wearily had we and song Been left to look and left to long, Yea, song and we to long and look, Since thine acquainted feet forsook The mountain where the Muses hymn For Sinai and the Seraphim. Now in both the mountains’ shine Dress thy countenance, twice divine! From Moses and the Muses draw […]...
14. Written On Sunday Morning Go thou and seek the House of Prayer! I to the Woodlands wend, and there In lovely Nature see the GOD OF LOVE. The swelling organ’s peal Wakes not my soul to zeal, Like the wild music of the wind-swept grove. The gorgeous altar and the mystic vest Rouse not such ardor in my breast, […]...
15. The Poet What instinct forces man to journey on, Urged by a longing blind but dominant! Nothing he sees can hold him, nothing daunt His never failing eagerness. The sun Setting in splendour every night has won His vassalage; those towers flamboyant Of airy cloudland palaces now haunt His daylight wanderings. Forever done With simple joys and […]...
16. A Tale of the Miser and the Poet A WIT, transported with Inditing, Unpay’d, unprais’d, yet ever Writing; Who, for all Fights and Fav’rite Friends, Had Poems at his Fingers Ends; For new Events was still providing; Yet now desirous to be riding, He pack’d-up ev’ry Ode and Ditty And in Vacation left the City; So rapt with Figures, and Allusions, With secret […]...
17. The Poet And His Book Down, you mongrel, Death! Back into your kennel! I have stolen breath In a stalk of fennel! You shall scratch and you shall whine Many a night, and you shall worry Many a bone, before you bury One sweet bone of mine! When shall I be dead? When my flesh is withered, And above my […]...
18. Noctambule Zut! it’s two o’clock. See! the lights are jumping. Finish up your bock, Time we all were humping. Waiters stack the chairs, Pile them on the tables; Let us to our lairs Underneath the gables. Up the old Boul’ Mich’ Climb with steps erratic. Steady. . . how I wish I was in my attic! […]...
19. The Wait It is life in slow motion, It’s the heart in reverse, It’s a hope-and-a-half: Too much and too little at once. It’s a train that suddenly Stops with no station around, And we can hear the cricket, And, leaning out the carriage Door, we vainly contemplate A wind we feel that stirs The blooming meadows, […]...
20. The Old Poet I will be glad because it is the Spring; I will forget the winter in my heart Dead hopes and withered promise; and will wring A little joy from life ere life depart. For spendthrift youth with passion-blinded eyes, Stays not to see how woods and fields are bright; He hears the phantom voices call, […]...
21. The Poet O hour of my muse: why do you leave me, Wounding me by the wingbeats of your flight? Alone: what shall I use my mouth to utter? How shall I pass my days? And how my nights? I have no one to love. I have no home. There is no center to sustain my life. […]...
22. Noon I bend to the ground To catch Something whispered, Urgent, drifting Across the ditches. The heaviness of Flies stuttering In orbit, dirt Ripening, the sweat Of eggs. There are Small streams The width ofa thumb Running in the villages Of sheaves, whole Eras of grain Wakening on The stalks, a roof That breathes over My […]...
23. 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...
24. Miscast II My heart is like a cleft pomegranate Bleeding crimson seeds And dripping them on the ground. My heart gapes because it is ripe and over-full, And its seeds are bursting from it. But how is this other than a torment to me! I, who am shut up, with broken crockery, In a dark closet!...
25. Had I presumed to hope Had I presumed to hope The loss had been to Me A Value for the Greatness’ Sake As Giants gone away Had I presumed to gain A Favor so remote The failure but confirm the Grace In further Infinite ‘Tis failure not of Hope But Confident Despair Advancing on Celestial Lists With faint Terrestial power […]...
26. Theodore the Poet As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours On the shore of the turbid Spoon With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish’s burrow, Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead, First his waving antennae, like straws of hay, And soon his body, colored like soap-stone, Gemmed with eyes of jet. And […]...
27. In Memoriam A. H. H.: 99. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again, So loud with voices of the birds, So thick with lowings of the herds, Day, when I lost the flower of men; Who tremblest thro’ thy darkling red On yon swoll’n brook that bubbles fast By meadows breathing of the past, And woodlands holy to the dead; Who murmurest […]...
28. The Poet To Death TARRY a while, O Death, I cannot die While yet my sweet life burgeons with its spring; Fair is my youth, and rich the echoing boughs Where dhadikulas sing. Tarry a while, O Death, I cannot die With all my blossoming hopes unharvested, My joys ungarnered, all my songs unsung, And all my tears unshed. […]...
29. 365. Lines on Fergusson, the Poet ILL-FATED genius! Heaven-taught Fergusson! What heart that feels and will not yield a tear, To think Life’s sun did set e’er well begun To shed its influence on thy bright career. O why should truest Worth and Genius pine Beneath the iron grasp of Want and Woe, While titled knaves and idiot-Greatness shine In all […]...
30. Easter Week See the land, her Easter keeping, Rises as her Maker rose. Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping, Burst at last from winter snows. Earth with heaven above rejoices; Fields and gardens hail the spring; Shaughs and woodlands ring with voices, While the wild birds build and sing. You, to whom your Maker granted Powers to […]...
31. The Sower Sure of the spring that warms them into birth, The golden seeds thou trustest to the earth; And dost thou doubt the eternal spring sublime, For deeds the seeds which wisdom sows in time....
32. The Seraph and the Poet THE seraph sings before the manifest God-One, and in the burning of the Seven, And with the full life of consummate Heaving beneath him like a mother’s Warm with her first-born’s slumber in that The poet sings upon the earth grave-riven, Before the naughty world, soon self-forgiven For wronging him, and in the darkness prest […]...
33. POET-IN-RESIDENCE You are my dream Of the East You are my life In the West Fused in one You begin my day And end each day With a silent smile When I die I will Have only my love To leave you. You said I had written No poems for you And you had written Only […]...
34. Mad As The Mist And Snow Bolt and bar the shutter, For the foul winds blow: Our minds are at their best this night, And I seem to know That everything outside us is Mad as the mist and snow. Horace there by Homer stands, Plato stands below, And here is Tully’s open page. How many years ago Were you and […]...
35. Poet's Path My garden hath a slender path With ivy overgrown, A secret place where once would pace A pot all alone; I see him now with fretted brow, Plunged deep in thought; And sometimes he would write maybe, And sometimes he would not. A verse a day he used to say Keeps worry from the door; […]...
36. A Poet's Death is His Life IV The dark wings of night enfolded the city upon which Nature had spread a pure white garment of snow; and men deserted the streets for their houses in search of warmth, while the north wind probed in contemplation of laying waste the gardens. There in the suburb stood an old hut heavily laden with snow […]...
37. The Poet in the Nursery The youngest poet down the shelves was fumbling In a dim library, just behind the chair From which the ancient poet was mum-mumbling A song about some Lovers at a Fair, Pulling his long white beard and gently grumbling That rhymes were beastly things and never there. And as I groped, the whole time I […]...
38. To A Young Poet Who Killed Himself When you had played with life a space And made it drink and lust and sing, You flung it back into God’s face And thought you did a noble thing. “Lo, I have lived and loved,” you said, “And sung to fools too dull to hear me. Now for a cool and grassy bed With […]...
39. Brass Kaleidoscope My daughter raises the smooth brass kaleidoscope and watches as coloured glass slivers conspire together. New worlds create themselves before her eyes. Garnet spires flirt with sapphire and turquoise. Topaz and amethyst meet in harmony, a selenic mystery. A melody of stars singing a tune only she can hear. Eclectic patterns shiver and shimmer then […]...
40. Browning Decides To Be A Poet in these red labyrinths of London I find that I have chosen The strangest of all callings, Save that, in its way, any calling is strange. Like the alchemist Who sought the philosopher’s stone In quicksilver, I shall make everyday words The gambler’s marked cards, the common coin Give off the magic that was their […]...