William H. Herndon

Related poetry:

1. General William Booth Enters into Heaven [To be sung to the tune of The Blood of the Lamb with indicated instrument] I [Bass drum beaten loudly.] Booth led boldly with his big bass drum (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) The Saints smiled gravely and they said: “He’s come.” (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) […]...
2. To Any Reader As from the house your mother sees You playing round the garden trees, So you may see, if you will look Through the windows of this book, Another child, far, far away, And in another garden, play. But do not think you can at all, By knocking on the window, call That child to hear […]...
3. Behind the Scenes The actor struts his little hour, Between the limelight and the band; The public feel the actor’s power, Yet nothing do they understand Of all the touches here and there That make or mar the actor’s part, They never see, beneath the glare, The artist striving after art. To them it seems a labour slight […]...
4. The Summer Rain My books I’d fain cast off, I cannot read, ‘Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large Down in the meadow, where is richer feed, And will not mind to hit their proper targe. Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too, Our Shakespeare’s life were rich to live again, What Plutarch read, that […]...
5. William Goode To all in the village I seemed, no doubt, To go this way and that way, aimlessly. But here by the river you can see at twilight The soft-winged bats fly zig-zag here and there They must fly so to catch their food. And if you have ever lost your way at night, In the […]...
6. Potomac River Mist ALL the policemen, saloonkeepers and efficiency experts in Toledo knew Bern Dailey; secretary ten years when Whitlock was mayor. Pickpockets, yeggs, three card men, he knew them all and how they flit from zone to zone, birds of wind and weather, singers, fighters, scavengers. The Washington monument pointed to a new moon for us and […]...
7. To The Memory Of My Beloved, The Author, Mr William Shakespeare, And What He Hath Left Us To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name Am I thus ample to thy book and fame; While I confess thy writings to be such As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much. ‘Tis true, and all men’s suffrage. But these ways Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise; For silliest ignorance […]...
8. The Play I am the only actor. It is difficult for one woman To act out a whole play. The play is my life, My solo act. My running after the hands And never catching up. (The hands are out of sight – That is, offstage.) All I am doing onstage is running, Running to keep up, […]...
9. The Plough Of Time Night closed my windows and The sky became a crystal house The crystal windows glowed The moon Shown through them Through the whole house of crystal A single star beamed down Its crystal cable And drew a plough through the earth Unearthing bodies clasped together Couples embracing Around the earth They clung together everywhere Emitting […]...
10. Bronzes I THE bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Lincoln Park Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr By in long processions going somewhere to keep appointment For dinner and matinees and buying and selling Though in the dusk and nightfall when high waves are piling On the slabs of […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. Botany Bay Eclogues 03 – Humphrey And William (Time, Noon.) HUMPHREY: See’st thou not William that the scorching Sun By this time half his daily race has run? The savage thrusts his light canoe to shore And hurries homeward with his fishy store. Suppose we leave awhile this stubborn soil To eat our dinner and to rest from toil! WILLIAM: Agreed. Yon tree […]...
13. Henry C. Calhoun I reached the highest place in Spoon River, But through what bitterness of spirit! The face of my father, sitting speechless, Child-like, watching his canaries, And looking at the court-house window Of the county judge’s room, And his admonitions to me to seek My own in life, and punish Spoon River To avenge the wrong […]...
14. Envoy For "A Child's Garden Of Verses&quot WHETHER upon the garden seat You lounge with your uplifted feet Under the May’s whole Heaven of blue; Or whether on the sofa you, No grown up person being by, Do some soft corner occupy; Take you this volume in your hands And enter into other lands, For lo! (as children feign) suppose You, hunting […]...
15. William Jones Once in a while a curious weed unknown to me, Needing a name from my books; Once in a while a letter from Yeomans. Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore Sometimes a pearl with a glint like meadow rue: Then betimes a letter from Tyndall in England, Stamped with the stamp of Spoon […]...
16. Light Hearted William Light hearted William twirled His November moustaches And, half dressed, looked From the bedroom window Upon the spring weather. Heigh-ya! sighed he gaily Leaning out to see Up and down the street Where a heavy sunlight Lay beyond some blue shadows. Into the room he drew His head again and laughed To himself quietly Twirling […]...
17. Common Cold Go hang yourself, you old M. D.! You shall not sneer at me. Pick up your hat and stethoscope, Go wash your mouth with laundry soap; I contemplate a joy exquisite I’m not paying you for your visit. I did not call you to be told My malady is a common cold. By pounding brow […]...
18. William Shakespeare Not if men’s tongues and angels’ all in one Spake, might the word be said that might speak thee. Streams, winds, woods, flowers, fields, mountains, yea, the sea, What power is in them all to praise the sun? His praise is this he can be praised of none. Man, woman, child, praise God for him; […]...
19. Souvenir A vanished house that for an hour I knew By some forgotten chance when I was young Had once a glimmering window overhung With honeysuckle wet with evening dew. Along the path tall dusky dahlias grew, And shadowy hydrangeas reached and swung Ferociously; and over me, among The moths and mysteries, a blurred bat flew. […]...
20. Variations On A Theme By William Carlos Williams 1 I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer. I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do And its wooden beams were so inviting. 2 We laughed at the hollyhocks together And then I sprayed them with lye. Forgive me. I simply do […]...
21. Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly, Asleep on the black trunk, Blowing like a leaf in green shadow. Down the ravine behind the empty house, The cowbells follow one another Into the distances of the afternoon. To my right, In a field of sunlight between two pines, The droppings of last year’s horses […]...
22. Benjamin Fraser Their spirits beat upon mine Like the wings of a thousand butterflies. I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating. I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes, And when they turned their heads; And when their garments clung to them, Or fell from them, in […]...
23. William and Emily There is something about Death Like love itself! If with some one with whom you have known passion, And the glow of youthful love, You also, after years of life Together, feel the sinking of the fire, And thus fade away together, Gradually, faintly, delicately, As it were in each other’s arms, Passing from the […]...
24. Low-Tide These wet rocks where the tide has been, Barnacled white and weeded brown And slimed beneath to a beautiful green, These wet rocks where the tide went down Will show again when the tide is high Faint and perilous, far from shore, No place to dream, but a place to die,- The bottom of the […]...
25. To William Wordsworth Friend of the Wise! and Teacher of the Good! Into my heart have I received that Lay More than historic, that prophetic Lay Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright) Of the foundations and the building up Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell What may be told, to the understanding mind […]...
26. There was a Child Once There was a child once. He came to play in my garden; He was quite pale and silent. Only when he smiled I knew everything about him, I knew what he had in his pockets, And I knew the feel of his hands in my hands And the most intimate tones of his voice. I […]...
27. William Rufus The reign of King William the Second Were an uninteresting affair There’s only two things that’s remembered of him That’s his sudden death and his red hair. He got his red hair from his Mother, The crown that he wore were his Dad’s, And the arrow that came at the end of his reign Were […]...
28. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
29. Queen Elizabeth Speaks My hands were stained with blood, my heart was Proud and cold, My soul is black with shame. . . but I gave Shakespeare gold. So after aeons of flame, I may, by grace of God, Rise up to kiss the dust that Shakespeare’s feet have trod....
30. The house where I was born (08) I open my eyes, yes, it’s the house where I was born, Exactly as it was and nothing more. The same small dining room whose window Gives onto a peach tree that never grows. A man and a woman are seated At this window, facing one another, They are talking, for once. And the child […]...
31. Ode To William H. Channing Though loth to grieve The evil time’s sole patriot, I cannot leave My buried thought For the priest’s cant, Or statesman’s rant. If I refuse My study for their politique, Which at the best is trick, The angry muse Puts confusion in my brain. But who is he that prates Of the culture of mankind, […]...
32. Lament for Zenocrate Black is the beauty of the brightest day, The golden belle of heaven’s eternal fire, That danced with glory on the silver waves, Now wants the fuel that inflamed his beams: And all with faintness and for foul disgrace, He binds his temples with a frowning cloud, Ready to darken earth with endless night: Zenocrate […]...
33. Hotel Insomnia I liked my little hole, Its window facing a brick wall. Next door there was a piano. A few evenings a month A crippled old man came to play “My Blue Heaven.” Mostly, though, it was quiet. Each room with its spider in heavy overcoat Catching his fly with a web Of cigarette smoke and […]...
34. Knucks IN Abraham Lincoln’s city, Where they remember his lawyer’s shingle, The place where they brought him Wrapped in battle flags, Wrapped in the smoke of memories From Tallahassee to the Yukon, The place now where the shaft of his tomb Points white against the blue prairie dome, In Abraham Lincoln’s city… I saw knucks In […]...
35. The House with Nobody in It Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black. I suppose I’ve passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for A minute And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in It. I never have seen […]...
36. Sudden Things A storm was coming, that was why it was dark. The wind was blowing the fronds of the palm trees off. They were maples. I looked out the window across the big lawn. The house was huge, full of children and old people. The lion was loose. Either because of the wind, or by malevolent […]...
37. Shakespeare Would that in body and spirit Shakespeare came Visible emperor of the deeds of Time, With Justice still the genius of his rhyme, Giving each man his due, each passion grace, Impartial as the rain from Heaven’s face Or sunshine from the heaven-enthroned sun. Sweet Swan of Avon, come to us again. Teach us to […]...
38. Spirits Angel spirits of sleep, White-robed, with silver hair, In your meadows fair, Where the willows weep, And the sad moonbeam On the gliding stream Writes her scatter’d dream: Angel spirits of sleep, Dancing to the weir In the hollow roar Of its waters deep; Know ye how men say That ye haunt no more Isle […]...
39. To Willie and Henrietta If two may read aright These rhymes of old delight And house and garden play, You too, my cousins, and you only, may. You in a garden green With me were king and queen, Were hunter, soldier, tar, And all the thousand things that children are. Now in the elders’ seat We rest with quiet […]...
40. Of Modern Poetry The poem of the mind in the act of finding What will suffice. It has not always had To find: the scene was set; it repeated what Was in the script. Then the theatre was changed To something else. Its past was a souvenir. It has to be living, to learn the speech of the […]...