The Unknown

Related poetry:

1. In Memory of Anyone Unknown to Me At this particular time I have no one Particular person to grieve for, though there must Be many, many unknown ones going to dust Slowly, not remembered for what they have done Or left undone. For these, then, I will grieve Being impartial, unable to deceive. How they lived, or died, is quite unknown, And, […]...
2. Unknown Bird Out of the dry days Through the dusty leaves Far across the valley Those few notes never Heard here before One fluted phrase Floating over its Wandering secret All at once wells up Somewhere else And is gone before it Goes on fallen into Its own echo leaving A hollow through the air That is […]...
3. Robert Davidson I grew spiritually fat living off the souls of men. If I saw a soul that was strong I wounded its pride and devoured its strength. The shelters of friendship knew my cunning, For where I could steal a friend I did so. And wherever I could enlarge my power By undermining ambition, I did […]...
4. Unknown Girl In A Maternity Ward Child, the current of your breath is six days long. You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed; Lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong At my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed With love. At first hunger is not wrong. The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded Down […]...
5. To the Unknown Goddess Will you conquer my heart with your beauty; my sould going out from afar? Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautions shikar? Have I met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking and blind? Shall I meet you next session at Simla, O sweetest and best of your kind? […]...
6. To the Unknown Warrior You whom the kings saluted; who refused not The one great pleasure of ignoble days, Fame without name and glory without gossip, Whom no biographer befouls with praise. Who said of you “Defeated”? In the darkness The dug-out where the limelight never comes, Nor the big drum of Barnum’s show can shatter That vibrant stillness […]...
7. After Spanish Proverb Oh, mercifullest one of all, Oh, generous as dear, None lived so lowly, none so small, Thou couldst withhold thy tear: How swift, in pure compassion, How meek in charity, To offer friendship to the one Who begged but love of thee! Oh, gentle word, and sweetest said! Oh, tender hand, and first To hold […]...
8. Hymn 44 part 2 The true improvement of life. Ps. 90:12. Ane is this life prolonged to me? Are days and seasons giv’n? O let me, then, prepare to be A fitter heir of heav’n. In vain these moments shall not pass, These golden hours be gone: Lord, I accept thine offered grace, I bow before thy throne. Now […]...
9. O Glorious France You have become a forge of snow-white fire, A crucible of molten steel, O France! Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn And fade in light for you, O glorious France! They pass through meteor changes with a song Which to all islands and all continents Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor […]...
10. Jesus, Thou Divine Companion Jesus, Thou divine Companion, By Thy lowly human birth Thou hast come to join the workers, Burden bearers of the earth. Thou, the Carpenter of Nazareth, Toiling for Thy daily food, By Thy patience and Thy courage, Thou hast taught us toil is good. They who tread the path of labor Follow where Thy feet […]...
11. Psalm 16 part 2 Christ’s all-sufficiency. How fast their guilt and sorrows rise Who haste to seek some idol-god! I will not taste their sacrifice, Their offerings of forbidden blood. My God provides a richer cup, And nobler food to live upon; He for my life has offered up Jesus, his best-beloved Son. His love is my perpetual feast; […]...
12. Life CHILDREN, ye have not lived, to you it seems Life is a lovely stalactite of dreams, Or carnival of careless joys that leap About your hearts like billows on the deep In flames of amber and of amethyst. Children, ye have not lived, ye but exist Till some resistless hour shall rise and move Your […]...
13. Outbid When Cupid held an auction sale, I hastened to his mart, For I had heard that he would sell The blue-eyed Dora’s heart. I brought a wealth of truest love, The most that I could proffer, Because, forsooth, of stocks or bonds I had not one to offer. When Cupid offered Dora’s heart, I bid […]...
14. Unknown God FAR up the dim twilight fluttered Moth-wings of vapour and flame: The lights danced over the mountains, Star after star they came. The lights grew thicker unheeded, For silent and still were we; Our hearts were drunk with a beauty Our eyes could never see....
15. For An Unknown Lady Lady, if you’d slumber sound, Keep your eyes upon the ground. If you’d toss and turn at night, Slip your glances left and right. Would the mornings find you gay, Never give your heart away. Would they find you pale and sad, Fling it to a whistling lad. Ah, but when his pleadings burn, Will […]...
16. The Bedridden Peasant to an Unknown God Much wonder I here long low-laid – That this dead wall should be Betwixt the Maker and the made, Between Thyself and me! For, say one puts a child to nurse, He eyes it now and then To know if better ’tis, or worse, And if it mourn, and when. But Thou, Lord, giv’st us […]...
17. Our Daily Bread “Give me my daily bread. It seems so odd, When all is done and said, This plea to God. To pray for cake might be The thing to do; But bread, it seems to me, Is just our due. “Give me my daily toil,” I ought to say – (If from life’s cursed coil I’d […]...
18. You and I I explain quietly. You Hear me shouting. You Try a new tack. I Feel old wounds reopen. You see both sides. I See your blinkers. I Am placatory. You Sense a new selfishness. I am a dove. You Recognize the hawk. You Offer an olive branch. I Feel the thorns. You bleed. I See crocodile […]...
19. An Epitaph ENOUGH; and leave the rest to Fame! ‘Tis to commend her, but to name. Courtship which, living, she declined, When dead, to offer were unkind: Nor can the truest wit, or friend, Without detracting, her commend. To say she lived a virgin chaste In this age loose and all unlaced; Nor was, when vice is […]...
20. Rooks There where the rusty iron lies, The rooks are cawing all the day. Perhaps no man, until he dies, Will understand them, what they say. The evening makes the sky like clay. The slow wind waits for night to rise. The world is half content. But they Still trouble all the trees with cries, That […]...
21. Professor Newcomer Everyone laughed at Col. Prichard For buying an engine so powerful That it wrecked itself, and wrecked the grinder He ran it with. But here is a joke of cosmic size: The urge of nature that made a man Evolve from his brain a spiritual life Oh miracle of the world! The very same brain […]...
22. Le Roy Goldman “What will you do when you come to die, If all your life long you have rejected Jesus, And know as you lie there, He is not your friend?” Over and over I said, I, the revivalist. Ah, yes! but there are friends and friends. And blessed are you, say I, who know all now, […]...
23. Silence I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea, And the silence of the city when it pauses, And the silence of a man and a maid, And the silence of the sick When their eyes roam about the room. And I ask: For the depths, Of what use is language? A […]...
24. The Clean Plater Some singers sing of ladies’ eyes, And some of ladies lips, Refined ones praise their ladylike ways, And course ones hymn their hips. The Oxford Book of English Verse Is lush with lyrics tender; A poet, I guess, is more or less Preoccupied with gender. Yet I, though custom call me crude, Prefer to sing […]...
25. Individuality Ah yes, I love you, and with all my heart; Just as a weaker woman loves her own, Better than I love my beloved art, Which, until you came, reigned royally, alone, My king, my master. Since I saw your face I have dethroned it, and you hold that place. I am as weak as […]...
26. A Valentine Sent to a friend who had complained that I was glad enough to see Him when he came, but didn’t seem to miss him if he stayed away. And cannot pleasures, while they last, Be actual unless, when past, They leave us shuddering and aghast, With anguish smarting? And cannot friends be firm and fast, […]...
27. William H. Herndon There by the window in the old house Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley, My days of labor closed, sitting out life’s decline, Day by day did I look in my memory, As one who gazes in an enchantress’ crystal globe, And I saw the figures of the past, As if in a […]...
28. That The Night Come She lived in storm and strife, Her soul had such desire For what proud death may bring That it could not endure The common good of life, But lived as ’twere a king That packed his marriage day With banneret and pennon, Trumpet and kettledrum, And the outrageous cannon, To bundle time away That the […]...
29. If you fancy that your people came of better stock than mine If you fancy that your people came of better stock than mine, If you hint of higher breeding by a word or by a sign, If you’re proud because of fortune or the clever things you do Then I’ll play no second fiddle: I’m a prouder man than you! If you think that your profession […]...
30. No, Thank You John I never said I loved you, John: Why will you tease me day by day, And wax a weariness to think upon With always “do” and “pray”? You Know I never loved you, John; No fault of mine made me your toast: Why will you haunt me with a face as wan As shows an […]...
31. Searching These quiet Autumn days, My soul, like Noah’s dove, on airy wings Goes out and searches for the hidden things Beyond the hills of haze. With mournful, pleading cries, Above the waters of the voiceless sea That laps the shore of broad Eternity, Day after day, it flies, Searching, but all in vain, For some […]...
32. Old St David's at Radnor What an image of peace and rest Is this little church among its graves! All is so quiet; the troubled breast, The wounded spirit, the heart oppressed, Here may find the repose it craves. See, how the ivy climbs and expands Over this humble hermitage, And seems to caress with its little hands The rough, […]...
33. Herman Altman Did I follow Truth wherever she led, And stand against the whole world for a cause, And uphold the weak against the strong? If I did I would be remembered among men As I was known in life among the people, And as I was hated and loved on earth, Therefore, build no monument to […]...
34. To A Friend Who prop, thou ask’st in these bad days, my mind? He much, the old man, who, clearest-souled of men, Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen, And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind. Much he, whose friendship I not long since won, That halting slave, who in Nicopolis Taught Arrian, when Vespasian’s brutal […]...
35. Return A little too abstract, a little too wise, It is time for us to kiss the earth again, It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies, Let the rich life run to the roots again. I will go to the lovely Sur Rivers And dip my arms in them up to the […]...
36. A Calendar of Sonnets: February Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white; And reigns the winter’s pregnant silence still; No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill, And willow stems grow daily red and bright. These are days when ancients held a rite Of expiation for the old year’s ill, And prayer to purify the new year’s will: […]...
37. Little Queen Do you remember the name I wore – The old pet-name of Little Queen – In the dear, dead days that are no more, The happiest days of our lives, I ween? For we loved with that passionate love of youth That blesses but once with its perfect bliss, – A love that, in spite […]...
38. Pine Forest Let us go now into the forest. Trees will pass by your face, And I will stop and offer you to them, But they cannot bend down. The night watches over its creatures, Except for the pine trees that never change: The old wounded springs that spring Blessed gum, eternal afternoons. If they could, the […]...
39. Song Of The Spirit Too sweet and too subtle for pen or for tongue In phrases unwritten and measures unsung, As deep and as strange as the sounds of the sea, Is the song that my spirit is singing to me. In the midnight and tempest when forest trees shiver, In the roar of the surf, and the rush […]...
40. An Autograph I write my name as one, On sands by waves o’errun Or winter’s frosted pane, Traces a record vain. Oblivion’s blankness claims Wiser and better names, And well my own may pass As from the strand or glass. Wash on, O waves of time! Melt, noons, the frosty rime! Welcome the shadow vast, The silence […]...