The Wise Brothers

Related poetry:

1. Wise Men In Their Bad Hours Wise men in their bad hours have envied The little people making merry like grasshoppers In spots of sunlight, hardly thinking Backward but never forward, and if they somehow Take hold upon the future they do it Half asleep, with the tools of generation Foolishly reduplicating Folly in thirty-year periods; the eat and laugh too, […]...
2. Born Brothers Equality is absolute or no. Nothing between can stand. We are the sons Of the same sire, or madness breaks and runs Through the rude world. Ridiculous our woe If single pity does not love it. So Our separate fathers love us. No man shuns His poorest child’s embrace. We are the sons Of such, […]...
3. My Brothers While I make rhymes my brother John Makes shiny shoes which dames try on, And finding to their fit and stance They buy and wear with elegance; But mine is quite another tale, For song there is no sale. My brother Tom a tailor shop Is owner of, and ladies stop To try the models […]...
4. Thinking of My Brothers in Shantung on the Ninth Day of the Ninth Month Alone now in a strange country, Feeling myself a stranger, On this bright festival day I doubly pine for my kinsfolk. Far away, I know my brothers Will be climbing the heights With dogwood sprays in their jackets, And one man missing!...
5. But Wise Men Perceive Approaching Things Because gods perceive future things, men what is happening now, but wise men perceive approaching things. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, VIII, 7. Men know what is happening now. The gods know the things of the future, The full and sole possessors of all lights. Of the future things, wise men perceive Approaching things. […]...
6. Lord when the wise men came from farr LORD when the wise men came from farr Ledd to thy Cradle by A Starr, Then did the shepheards too rejoyce, Instructed by thy Angells voyce, Blest were the wisemen in their skill, 5 And shepheards in their harmelesse will. Wisemen in tracing natures lawes Ascend unto the highest cause, Shepheards with humble fearefulnesse Walke […]...
7. The Four Brothers MAKE war songs out of these; Make chants that repeat and weave. Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns; Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns. Make a marching song of swinging arms and swinging legs, Going along, Going along, On the roads from San Antonio to […]...
8. Brothers, let us glorify freedom's twilight Brothers, let us glorify freedom’s twilight – The great, darkening year. Into the seething waters of the night Heavy forests of nets disappear. O Sun, judge, people, your light Is rising over sombre years Let us glorify the deadly weight The people’s leader lifts with tears. Let us glorify the dark burden of fate, Power’s […]...
9. To My Brothers Small, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals, And their faint cracklings o’er our silence creep Like whispers of the household gods that keep A gentle empire o’er fraternal souls. And while for rhymes I search around the poles, Your eyes are fixed, as in poetic sleep, Upon the lore so voluble and deep, That […]...
10. Sonnet 140: Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain, Lest sorrow lend me words and words express The manner of my pity-wanting pain. If I might teach thee wit, better it were, Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so, As testy sick men, when their […]...
11. The Seven Ages of Wise Parliament’s a stage, And all the Politicians merely players! They have their exits and entrances, And Wise doth in his time play many parts, His acts being seven changes. First the Runner, With spiked shoe he spurns the cinder track, And just for once runs straight. The next the Student, Burning the midnight oil with […]...
12. Still Heart When I give up the helm I know that the time has come for thee to take it. What there is to do will be instantly done. Vain is this struggle. Then take away your hands And silently put up with your defeat, my heart, And think it your good fortune to sit perfectly still […]...
13. England, My England WHAT have I done for you, England, my England? What is there I would not do, England, my own? With your glorious eyes austere, As the Lord were walking near, Whispering terrible things and dear As the Song on your bugles blown, England Round the world on your bugles blown! Where shall the watchful sun, […]...
14. To the Etruscan Poets Dream fluently, still brothers, who when young Took with your mother’s milk the mother tongue, In which pure matrix, joining world and mind, You strove to leave some line of verse behind Like still fresh tracks across a field of snow, Not reckoning that all could melt and go....
15. "Houses" so the Wise Men tell me “Houses” so the Wise Men tell me “Mansions”! Mansions must be warm! Mansions cannot let the tears in, Mansions must exclude the storm! “Many Mansions,” by “his Father,” I don’t know him; snugly built! Could the Children find the way there Some, would even trudge tonight!...
16. Brothers How lovely the elder brother’s Life all laced in the other’s, Lóve-laced!-what once I well Witnessed; so fortune fell. When Shrovetide, two years gone, Our boys’ plays brought on Part was picked for John, Young Jóhn: then fear, then joy Ran revel in the elder boy. Their night was come now; all Our company thronged […]...
17. The Wise Dead men are wisest, for they know How far the roots of flowers go, How long a seed must rot to grow. Dead men alone bear frost and rain On throbless heart and heatless brain, And feel no stir of joy or pain. Dead men alone are satiate; They sleep and dream and have no […]...
18. To a Very Wise Man I Fires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames In the huge midnight forest of the unknown. Your soul is full of cities with dead names, And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone Whose priests and kings and lust-begotten lords Watch the procession of their thundering hosts, Or guard relentless fanes with flickering […]...
19. Reading The Brothers Grimm To Jenny Jenny, your mind commands Kingdoms of black and white: You shoulder the crow on your left, The snowbird on your right; For you the cinders part And let the lentils through, And noise falls into place As screech or sweet roo-coo, While in my own, real, world Gray foxes and gray wolves Bargain eye to […]...
20. Song of the Wise Children 1902 When the darkened Fifties dip to the North, And frost and the fog divide the air, And the day is dead at his breaking-forth, Sirs, it is bitter beneath the Bear! Far to Southward they wheel and glance, The million molten spears of morn The spears of our deliverance That shine on the house […]...
21. A Forgetful Number Once upon a time there was a number Pure and round like the sun But alone very much alone It began to reckon with itself It divided multiplied itself It subtracted added itself And remained always alone It stopped reckoning with itself And shut itself up in its round And sunny purity Outside were left […]...
22. Solidarity Song Peoples of the world, together Join to serve the common cause! So it feeds us all for ever See to it that it’s now yours. Forward, without forgetting Where our strength can be seen now to be! When starving or when eating Forward, not forgetting Our solidarity! Black or white or brown or yellow Leave […]...
23. The Rowers The banked oars fell an hundred strong, And backed and threshed and ground, But bitter was the rowers’ song As they brought the war-boat round. They had no heart for the rally and roar That makes the whale-bath smoke When the great blades cleave and hold and leave As one on the racing stroke. They […]...
24. Caput Mortuum Not even if with a wizard force I might Have summoned whomsoever I would name, Should anyone else have come than he who came, Uncalled, to share with me my fire that night; For though I should have said that all was right, Or right enough, nothing had been the same As when I found […]...
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. Wonder For failure I was well equipped And should have come to grief, By atavism grimly gripped, A fool beyond belief. But lo! the Lord was good to me, And with a heart to sing, He gave me to a rare degree The Gift of Wondering. I could not play a stalwart part My shoddy soul […]...
27. A Whispered Tale I’d heard fool-heroes brag of where they’d been, With stories of the glories that they’d seen. But you, good simple soldier, seasoned well In woods and posts and crater-lines of hell, Who dodge remembered ‘crumps’ with wry grimace, Endured experience in your queer, kind face, Fatigues and vigils haunting nerve-strained eyes, And both your brothers […]...
28. The Town Down by the River I Said the Watcher by the Way To the young and the unladen, To the boy and to the maiden, “God be with you both to-day. First your song came ringing, Now you come, you two Knowing naught of what you do, Or of what your dreams are bringing. “O you children who go singing […]...
29. Godwin James Harry Wilmans! You who fell in a swamp Near Manila, following the flag, You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream, Or destroyed by ineffectual work, Or driven to madness by Satanic snags; You were not torn by aching nerves, Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age. You did not […]...
30. 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 […]...
31. Loss And Gain When I compare What I have lost with what I have gained, What I have missed with what attained, Little room do I find for pride. I am aware How many days have been idly spent; How like an arrow the good intent Has fallen short or been turned aside. But who shall dare To […]...
32. THE LIVING FLAME THEY pass before me, these Eyes full of light, Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise; The holy brothers pass before my sight, And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes. They keep me from all sin and error grave, They set me in the path whence Beauty came; They are my servants, and […]...
33. 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 […]...
34. To Clementina Black More blest than was of old Diogenes, I have not held my lantern up in vain. Not mine, at least, this evil to complain: “There is none honest among all of these.” Our hopes go down that sailed before the breeze; Our creeds upon the rock are rent in twain; Something it is, if at […]...
35. The Pilot From the Past and Unavailing Out of cloudland we are steering: After groping, after fearing, Into starlight we come trailing, And we find the stars are true. Still, O comrade, what of you? You are gone, but we are sailing, And the old ways are all new. For the Lost and Unreturning We have drifted, […]...
36. My Suicide I’ve often wondered why Old chaps who choose to die In evil passes, Before themselves they slay, Invariably they Take off their glasses? As I strolled by the Castle cliff An oldish chap I set my eyes on, Who stood so singularly stiff And stark against the blue horizon; A poet fashioning a sonnet, I […]...
37. Justice October, 1918 Across a world where all men grieve And grieving strive the more, The great days range like tides and leave Our dead on every shore. Heavy the load we undergo, And our own hands prepare, If we have parley with the foe, The load our sons must bear. Before we loose the word […]...
38. Demos I All you that are enamored of my name And least intent on what most I require, Beware; for my design and your desire, Deplorably, are not as yet the same. Beware, I say, the failure and the shame Of losing that for which you now aspire So blindly, and of hazarding entire The gift […]...
39. Exhortation: Summer 1919 Through the pregnant universe rumbles life’s terrific thunder, And Earth’s bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break, Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder: Africa! long ages sleeping, O my motherland, awake! In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking, And its golden glory fills […]...
40. Sorry There is much in life that makes me sorry as I journey Down life’s way. And I seem to see more pathos in poor human Lives each day. I’m sorry for the strong brave men, who shield The weak from harm, But who, in their own troubled hours find no Protecting arm. I’m sorry for […]...