The Woman and the Wife

Related poetry:

1. The Hill Wife I. LONELINESS Her Word One ought not to have to care So much as you and I Care when the birds come round the house To seem to say good-bye; Or care so much when they come back With whatever it is they sing; The truth being we are as much Too glad for the […]...
2. An Epitaph upon Husband and Wife TO these whom death again did wed This grave ‘s the second marriage-bed. For though the hand of Fate could force ‘Twixt soul and body a divorce, It could not sever man and wife, Because they both lived but one life. Peace, good reader, do not weep; Peace, the lovers are asleep. They, sweet turtles, […]...
3. The Wife of the Mind Sharecroppers’ child, she was more schooled In slaughtering pigs and coaxing corn out of The ground than in the laws of Math, the rules Of Grammar. Seventeen, she fell in love With the senior quarterback, and nearly Married him, but-the wedding just a week Away-drove her trousseau back to Penney’s, Then drove on past sagging […]...
4. TO MY WIFE I You buy my freedom with your love. With every book you catalogue or stamp My imagination hacks a strand from the hawser That for three years has held it In the grubbing estuary of mud and time. Your early waking with tired eyes And late return at evening, all Contribute to the store of […]...
5. A Woman Homer Sung If any man drew near When I was young, I thought, ‘He holds her dear,’ And shook with hate and fear. But O! ’twas bitter wrong If he could pass her by With an indifferent eye. Whereon I wrote and wrought, And now, being grey, I dream that I have brought To such a pitch […]...
6. The Dream Dear love, for nothing less than thee Would I have broke this happy dream; It was a theme For reason, much too strong for phantasy: Therefore thou waked’st me wisely; yet My dream thou brok’st not, but continued’st it. Thou art so truth that thoughts of thee suffice To make dreams truths, and fables histories. […]...
7. A Woman's Last Word I. Let’s contend no more, Love, Strive nor weep: All be as before, Love, -Only sleep! II. What so wild as words are? I and thou In debate, as birds are, Hawk on bough! III. See the creature stalking While we speak! Hush and hide the talking, Cheek on cheek! IV. What so false as […]...
8. The Wife's Will SIT still­a word­a breath may break (As light airs stir a sleeping lake,) The glassy calm that soothes my woes, The sweet, the deep, the full repose. O leave me not! for ever be Thus, more than life itself to me! Yes, close beside thee, let me kneel­ Give me thy hand that I may […]...
9. Longing Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For so the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day. Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times, A messenger from radiant climes, And smile on thy new world, and be As kind to others as to […]...
10. The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter After Li Po While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead I played at the front gate, pulling flowers. You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse, You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums. And we went on living in the village of Chokan: Two small people, without dislike or suspicion. […]...
11. A Spiritual Woman Close your eyes, my love, let me make you blind; They have taught you to see Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things, A cunning algebra in the faces of men, And God like geometry Completing his circles, and working cleverly. I’ll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind; If […]...
12. 511. Song-O aye my wife she dang me Chorus-O aye my wife she dang me, An’ aft my wife she bang’d me, If ye gie a woman a’ her will, Gude faith! she’ll soon o’er-gang ye. ON peace an’ rest my mind was bent, And, fool I was! I married; But never honest man’s intent Sane cursedly miscarried. O aye my wife, &c. […]...
13. Paul's Wife To drive Paul out of any lumber camp All that was needed was to say to him, “How is the wife, Paul?” and he’d disappear. Some said it was because be bad no wife, And hated to be twitted on the subject; Others because he’d come within a day Or so of having one, and […]...
14. Curse of the Cat Woman It sometimes happens That the woman you meet and fall in love with Is of that strange Transylvanian people With an affinity for cats. You take her to a restuarant, say, or a show, On an ordinary date, being attracted By the glitter in her slitty eyes and her catlike walk, And afterwards of course […]...
15. Any Wife To Any Husband I My love, this is the bitterest, that thou Who art all truth and who dost love me now As thine eyes say, as thy voice breaks to say – Shouldst love so truly and couldst love me still A whole long life through, had but love its will, Would death that leads me from […]...
16. The Having To Love Something Else There was a man who would marry his mother, and asked his Father for his mother’s hand in marriage, and was told he could Not marry his mother’s hand because it was attached to all The rest of mother, which was all married to his father; that He’d have to love something else. . . […]...
17. Place for a Third Nothing to say to all those marriages! She had made three herself to three of his. The score was even for them, three to three. But come to die she found she cared so much: She thought of children in a burial row; Three children in a burial row were sad. One man’s three women […]...
18. A Woman's Shortcomings She has laughed as softly as if she sighed, She has counted six, and over, Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried – Oh, each a worthy lover! They “give her time”; for her soul must slip Where the world has set the grooving; She will lie to none with her fair […]...
19. Letter Of Recommendation From My Father To My Future Wife During the war, I was in China. Every night we blew the world to hell. The sky was purple and yellow Like his favorite shirt. I was in India once On the Ganges in a tourist boat. There were soldiers, Some women with parasols. A dead body floated by Going in the opposite direction. My […]...
20. Lot's Wife And the just man trailed God’s shining agent, Over a black mountain, in his giant track, While a restless voice kept harrying his woman: “It’s not too late, you can still look back At the red towers of your native Sodom, The square where once you sang, the spinning-shed, At the empty windows set in […]...
21. 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 […]...
22. The Truth of Woman Woman’s faith, and woman’s trust – Write the characters in the dust; Stamp them on the running stream, Print them on the moon’s pale beam, And each evanescent letter Shall be clearer, firmer, better, And more permanent, I ween, Than the thing those letters mean. I have strain’d the spider’s thread ‘Gainst the promise of […]...
23. Never Give All The Heart Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy. Kind delight. O never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips […]...
24. Pilate's Wife's Dream I’ve quenched my lamp, I struck it in that start Which every limb convulsed, I heard it fall­ The crash blent with my sleep, I saw depart Its light, even as I woke, on yonder wall; Over against my bed, there shone a gleam Strange, faint, and mingling also with my dream. It sunk, and […]...
25. A Pretty Woman I That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers, And the blue eye Dear and dewy, And that infantine fresh air of hers! II To think men cannot take you, Sweet, And enfold you, Ay, and hold you, And so keep you what they make you, Sweet! III You like us for a glance, you know – For […]...
26. Woman In Love That is my window. Just now I have so softly wakened. I thought that I would float. How far does my life reach, And where does the night begin I could think that everything Was still me all around; Transparent like a crystal’s Depths, darkened, mute. I could keep even the stars Within me; so […]...
27. Late Summer (ALCAICS) Confused, he found her lavishing feminine Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable; And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrors Be as they were, without end, her playthings? And why were dead years hungrily telling her Lies of the dead, who told them again to her? If now she knew, there might be […]...
28. My First Affair With That Older Woman when I look back now At the abuse I took from Her I feel shame that I was so Innocent, But I must say She did match me drink for Drink, And I realized that her life Her feelings for things Had been ruined Along the way And that I was no mare than a […]...
29. Long Plighted Is it worth while, dear, now, To call for bells, and sally forth arrayed For marriage-rites discussed, decried, delayed So many years? Is it worth while, dear, now, To stir desire for old fond purposings, By feints that Time still serves for dallyings, Though quittance nears? Is it worth while, dear, when The day being […]...
30. The Wife of Flanders Low and brown barns, thatched and repatched and tattered, Where I had seven sons until to-day, A little hill of hay your spur has scattered. . . . This is not Paris. You have lost your way. You, staring at your sword to find it brittle, Surprised at the surprise that was your plan, Who, […]...
31. Our Eunuch Dreams I Our eunuch dreams, all seedless in the light, Of light and love the tempers of the heart, Whack their boys’ limbs, And, winding-footed in their shawl and sheet, Groom the dark brides, the widows of the night Fold in their arms. The shades of girls, all flavoured from their shrouds, When sunlight goes are […]...
32. The Wife of Bath's Tale THE PROLOGUE. 1 Experience, though none authority* *authoritative texts Were in this world, is right enough for me To speak of woe that is in marriage: For, lordings, since I twelve year was of age, (Thanked be God that *is etern on live),* *lives eternally* Husbands at the church door have I had five,2 For […]...
33. The Old Woman of Berkeley The Raven croak’d as she sate at her meal, And the Old Woman knew what he said, And she grew pale at the Raven’s tale, And sicken’d and went to her bed. ‘Now fetch me my children, and fetch them with speed,’ The Old Woman of Berkeley said, ‘The Monk my son, and my daughter […]...
34. White Ash THERE is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice. She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the front door. Now she is alone with a parrot and goldfish and two white mice… but these are some of her thoughts: The love […]...
35. The Married Man The bachelor ‘e fights for one As joyful as can be; But the married man don’t call it fun, Because ‘e fights for three For ‘Im an’ ‘Er an’ It (An’ Two an’ One make Three) ‘E wants to finish ‘is little bit, An’ e’ wants to go ‘ome to is tea! The bachelor pokes […]...
36. The Most Beautiful Woman In Town Cass was the youngest and most beautiful of 5 sisters. Cass was the most beautiful girl In town. 1/2 Indian with a supple and strange body, a snake-like and fiery body with eyes To go with it. Cass was fluid moving fire. She was like a spirit stuck into a form that Would not hold […]...
37. The Corridor It may have been the pride in me for aught I know, or just a patronizing whim; But call it freak of fancy, or what not, I cannot hide the hungry face of him. I keep a scant half-dozen words he said, And every now and then I lose his name; He may be living […]...
38. When A Woman Loves A Man When she says Margarita she means Daiquiri. When she says quixotic she means mercurial. And when she says, “I’ll never speak to you again,” She means, “Put your arms around me from behind As I stand disconsolate at the window.” He’s supposed to know that. When a man loves a woman he is in New […]...
39. Lord Walter's Wife I ‘But where do you go?’ said the lady, while both sat under the yew, And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue. II ‘Because I fear you,’ he answered; ‘because you are far too fair, And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your golfd-coloured hair.’ […]...
40. The Sea-Wife There dwells a wife by the Northern Gate, And a wealthy wife is she; She breeds a breed o’ rovin’ men And casts them over sea. And some are drowned in deep water, And some in sight o’ shore, And word goes back to the weary wife And ever she sends more. For since that […]...