The Fawn

Related poetry:

1. Home's Kid (For Glenn) This time I know I will never see him again. For a time he played the game, like a child experimenting with blocks, building towers and fortresses but never bridges. Bridges are hard. Invariably his feet would slip, before he found the acceptance parents had denied and other children refused him. Acceptance he couldn’t recognise […]...
2. Threshold I was not aware of the moment When I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery Like a bud in the forest at midnight! When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no […]...
3. Fawn's Foster-Mother The old woman sits on a bench before the door and quarrels With her meagre pale demoralized daughter. Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the sun And saying that when she was first married She lived in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon. (It is empty now, the roof has fallen […]...
4. Deer Enclosure Empty hill not see person Yet hear person voice sound Return scene enter deep forest Duplicate light green moss on Hills are empty, no man is seen, Yet the sound of people’s voices is heard. Light is cast into the deep forest, And shines again on green moss....
5. Daphne Why do you follow me?- Any moment I can be Nothing but a laurel-tree. Any moment of the chase I can leave you in my place A pink bough for your embrace. Yet if over hill and hollow Still it is your will to follow, I am off;-to heel, Apollo!...
6. The Wife a-Lost Since I noo mwore do zee your feace, Up steairs or down below, I’ll zit me in the lwonesome pleace, Where flat-bough’d beech do grow; Below the beeches’ bough, my love, Where you did never come, An’ I don’t look to meet ye now, As I do look at hwome. Since you noo mwore be […]...
7. Think Not, Not For A Moment Let Your Mind Think not, not for a moment let your mind, Wearied with thinking, doze upon the thought That the work’s done and the long day behind, And beauty, since ’tis paid for, can be bought. If in the moonlight from the silent bough Suddenly with precision speak your name The nightingale, be not assured that now […]...
8. This Section is a Christmas Tree THIS section is a Christmas tree: Loaded with pretty toys for you. Behold the blocks, the Noah’s arks, The popguns painted red and blue. No solemn pine-cone forest-fruit, But silver horns and candy sacks And many little tinsel hearts And cherubs pink, and jumping-jacks. For every child a gift, I hope. The doll upon the […]...
9. The Expatriates My dear, it was a moment To clutch for a moment So that you may believe in it And believing is the act of love, I think, Even in the telling, wherever it went. In the false New England forest Where the misplanted Norwegian trees Refused to root, their thick synthetic Roots barging out of […]...
10. At Fontainebleau IT was a day of sun and rain, Uncertain as a child’s swift moods; And I shall never spend again So blithe a day among the woods. Was it because the Gods were pleased That they were awful in our eyes, Whom we in very deed appeased With barley-cakes of sacrifice? The forest knew her […]...
11. Celestial Music I have a friend who still believes in heaven. Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God. She thinks someone listens in heaven. On earth she’s unusually competent. Brave too, able to face unpleasantness. We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it. I’m always […]...
12. Friend Art thou abroad on this stormy night On thy journey of love, my friend? The sky groans like one in despair. I have no sleep tonight. Ever and again I open my door and look out on The darkness, my friend! I can see nothing before me. I wonder where lies thy path! By what […]...
13. A Widow Bird Sate Mourning For Her Love A widow bird sate mourning for her Love Upon a wintry bough; The frozen wind crept on above, The freezing stream below. There was no leaf upon the forest bare, No flower upon the ground, And little motion in the air Except the mill-wheel’s sound....
14. THE EAGLE AND DOVE IN search of prey once raised his pinions An eaglet; A huntsman’s arrow came, and reft His right wing of all motive power. Headlong he fell into a myrtle grove, For three long days on anguish fed, In torment writhed Throughout three long, three weary nights; And then was cured, Thanks to all-healing Nature’s Soft, […]...
15. Emmy Emmy’s exquisite youth and her virginal air, Eyes and teeth in the flash of a musical smile, Come to me out of the past, and I see her there As I saw her once for a while. Emmy’s laughter rings in my ears, as bright, Fresh and sweet as the voice of a mountain brook, […]...
16. The Christmas Tree In the dark and damp of the alley cold, Lay the Christmas tree that hadn’t been sold; By a shopman dourly thrown outside; With the ruck and rubble of Christmas-tide; Trodden deep in the muck and mire, Unworthy even to feed a fire… So I stopped and salvaged that tarnished tree, And thus is the […]...
17. Why do you strive for greatness, fool? Why do you strive for greatness, fool? Go pluck a bough and wear it. It is as sufficing. My Lord, there are certain barbarians Who tilt their noses As if the stars were flowers, And Thy servant is lost among their shoe-buckles. Fain would I have mine eyes even with their eyes. Fool, go pluck […]...
18. On Going Unnoticed As vain to raise a voice as a sigh In the tumult of free leaves on high. What are you in the shadow of trees Engaged up there with the light and breeze? Less than the coral-root you know That is content with the daylight low, And has no leaves at all of its own; […]...
19. Light Between the Trees Long, long, long the trail Through the brooding forest-gloom, Down the shadowy, lonely vale Into silence, like a room Where the light of life has fled, And the jealous curtains close Round the passionless repose Of the silent dead. Plod, plod, plod away, Step by step in mouldering moss; Thick branches bar the day Over […]...
20. Comparisons CHILD, when they say that others Have been or are like you, Babes fit to be your brothers, Sweet human drops of dew, Bright fruit of mortal mothers, What should one say or do? We know the thought is treason, We feel the dream absurd; A claim rebuked of reason, That withers at a word: […]...
21. Village Song HONEY, child, honey, child, whither are you going? Would you cast your jewels all to the breezes blowing? Would you leave the mother who on golden grain has fed you? Would you grieve the lover who is riding forth to wed you? Mother mine, to the wild forest I am going, Where upon the champa […]...
22. Thirst My spirit wails for water, water now! My tongue is aching dry, my throat is hot For water, fresh rain shaken from a bough, Or dawn dews heavy in some leafy spot. My hungry body’s burning for a swim In sunlit water where the air is cool, As in Trout Valley where upon a limb […]...
23. Archy's Song from Charles the First Heigho! the lark and the owl! One flies the morning, and one lulls the night: Only the nightingale, poor fond soul, Sings like the fool through darkness and light. “A widow bird sate mourning for her love Upon a wintry bough; The frozen wind crept on above, The freezing stream below. “There was no leaf […]...
24. An Appointment Being out of heart with government I took a broken root to fling Where the proud, wayward squirrel went, Taking delight that he could spring; And he, with that low whinnying sound That is like laughter, sprang again And so to the other tree at a bound. Nor the tame will, nor timid brain, Nor […]...
25. Look not in my eyes, for fear Look not in my eyes, for fear Thy mirror true the sight I see, And there you find your face too clear And love it and be lost like me. One the long nights through must lie Spent in star-defeated sighs, But why should you as well as I Perish? gaze not in my eyes. […]...
26. The Message Waking from tender sleep, My neighbour’s little child Put out his baby hand to me, Looked in my face, and smiled. It seemed as if he came Home from a happy land, To tell me something that my heart Would surely understand. Somewhere, among bright dreams, A child that once was mine Had whispered wordless […]...
27. Milano wandering around milan my father I know that (bred in the bone) i’m you I walk and think – my legs roll onwards I take in the atmosphere but not the view But now you’re dead – and i’ve been silent For the past five months since you were burned A numbness that called itself […]...
28. Memories Oft I remember those I have known In other days, to whom my heart was lead As by a magnet, and who are not dead, But absent, and their memories overgrown With other thoughts and troubles of my own, As graves with grasses are, and at their head The stone with moss and lichens so […]...
29. Pauline Barrett Almost the shell of a woman after the surgeon’s knife! And almost a year to creep back into strength, Till the dawn of our wedding decennial Found me my seeming self again. We walked the forest together, By a path of soundless moss and turf. But I could not look in your eyes, And you […]...
30. The Dance She is young. Have I the right Even to name her? Child, It is not love I offer Your quick limbs, your eyes; Only the barren homage Of an old man whom time Crucifies. Take my hand A moment in the dance, Ignoring its sly pressure, The dry rut of age, And lead me under […]...
31. If I were dead ‘IF I were dead, you’d sometimes say, Poor Child!’ The dear lips quiver’d as they spake, And the tears brake From eyes which, not to grieve me, brightly smiled. Poor Child, poor Child! I seem to hear your laugh, your talk, your song. It is not true that Love will do no wrong. Poor Child! […]...
32. Doubt No More That Oberon Doubt no more that Oberon- Never doubt that Pan Lived, and played a reed, and ran After nymphs in a dark forest, In the merry, credulous days,- Lived, and led a fairy band Over the indulgent land! Ah, for in this dourest, sorest Age man’s eye has looked upon, Death to fauns and death to […]...
33. A Light Woman I. So far as our story approaches the end, Which do you pity the most of us three?- My friend, or the mistress of my friend With her wanton eyes, or me? II. My friend was already too good to lose, And seemed in the way of improvement yet, When she crossed his path with […]...
34. Tarrant Moss I closed and drew for my love’s sake That now is false to me, And I slew the Reiver of Tarrant Moss And set Dumeny free. They have gone down, they have gone down, They are standing all arow Twenty knights in the peat-water, That never struck a blow! Their armour shall not dull nor […]...
35. THE SAME [Written at night on the Kickelhahn, a hill In the forest of Ilmenau, on the walls of a little hermitage where Goethe composed the last act of his Iphigenia.] HUSH’D on the hill Is the breeze; Scarce by the zephyr The trees Softly are press’d; The woodbird’s asleep on the bough. Wait, then, and thou […]...
36. Maidenhood Maiden! with the meek, brown eyes, In whose orbs a shadow lies Like the dusk in evening skies! Thou whose locks outshine the sun, Golden tresses, wreathed in one, As the braided streamlets run! Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet! Gazing, with a timid glance, On the […]...
37. Bastard The very skies wee black with shame, As near my moment drew; The very hour before you cam I felt I hated you. But now I see how fair you are, How divine your eyes, It seems I step upon a star To leap to Paradise. What care I who your father was: (‘Twas better […]...
38. Parable For A Certain Virgin Oh, ponder, friend, the porcupine; Refresh your recollection, And sit a moment, to define His means of self-protection. How truly fortified is he! Where is the beast his double In forethought of emergency And readiness for trouble? Recall his figure, and his shade- How deftly planned and clearly For slithering through the dappled glade Unseen, […]...
39. A Poet at Twenty Images leap with him from branch to branch. His eyes Brighten, his head cocks, he pauses under a green bough, Alert. And when I see him I want to hide him somewhere. The other wood is past the hill. But he will enter it, and find the particular maple. He will walk through the door […]...
40. The Dark House Where a faint light shines alone, Dwells a Demon I have known. Most of you had better say “The Dark House,” and go your way. Do not wonder if I stay. For I know the Demon’s eyes And their lure that never dies. Banish all your fond alarms, For I know the foiling charms Of […]...