What if I say I shall not wait!

Related poetry:

1. Long Guns THEN came, Oscar, the time of the guns. And there was no land for a man, no land for a country, Unless guns sprang up And spoke their language. The how of running the world was all in guns. The law of a God keeping sea and land apart, The law of a child sucking […]...
2. The Anxious Dead O guns, fall silent till the dead men hear Above their heads the legions pressing on: (These fought their fight in time of bitter fear, And died not knowing how the day had gone.) O flashing muzzles, pause, and let them see The coming dawn that streaks the sky afar; Then let your mighty chorus […]...
3. They put Us far apart They put Us far apart As separate as Sea And Her unsown Peninsula We signified “These see” They took away our Eyes They thwarted Us with Guns “I see Thee” each responded straight Through Telegraphic Signs With Dungeons They devised But through their thickest skill And their opaquest Adamant Our Souls saw just as well […]...
4. House TWO Swede families live downstairs and an Irish policeman upstairs, and an old soldier, Uncle Joe. Two Swede boys go upstairs and see Joe. His wife is dead, his only son is dead, and his two daughters in Missouri and Texas don’t want him around. The boys and Uncle Joe crack walnuts with a hammer […]...
5. How sick to wait in any place but thine How sick to wait in any place but thine I knew last night when someone tried to twine Thinking perhaps that I looked tired or alone Or breaking almost with unspoken pain And I turned ducal That right was thine One port suffices for a Brig like mine Ours be the tossing wild though the […]...
6. Wait till the Majesty of Death Wait till the Majesty of Death Invests so mean a brow! Almost a powdered Footman Might dare to touch it now! Wait till in Everlasting Robes That Democrat is dressed, Then prate about “Preferment” And “Station,” and the rest! Around this quiet Courtier Obsequious Angels wait! Full royal is his Retinue! Full purple is his […]...
7. I Wait For You I wait for you. The years in silence pass And as the image, one, I wait for you again. The distance is in flame and clear one as glass, I, silent, wait with sadness, love and pain. The distance is in flame, and you are coming fast, But I’m afraid that you will change your […]...
8. Wait Wait, for now. Distrust everything, if you have to. But trust the hours. Haven’t they Carried you everywhere, up to now? Personal events will become interesting again. Hair will become interesting. Pain will become interesting. Buds that open out of season will become lovely again. Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, Their memories are what […]...
9. While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry And blackening east that so embitters March, Well-housed must watch grey fields and meadows parch, And driven dust and withering snowflake fly; Already in glimpses of the tarnish’d sky The sun is warm and beckons to the larch, And where the covert hazels interarch Their […]...
10. The Wait It is life in slow motion, It’s the heart in reverse, It’s a hope-and-a-half: Too much and too little at once. It’s a train that suddenly Stops with no station around, And we can hear the cricket, And, leaning out the carriage Door, we vainly contemplate A wind we feel that stirs The blooming meadows, […]...
11. The Songs of the Lathes 1918Being the Words of the Tune Hummed at Her Lathe by Mrs. L. Embsay, Widow The fans and the beltings they roar round me. The power is shaking the floor round me Till the lathes pick up their duty and the midnight-shift takes over. It is good for me to be here! Guns in Flanders […]...
12. Alfonso, Dressing to Wait at Table Alfonso is a handsome bronze-hued lad Of subtly-changing and surprising parts; His moods are storms that frighten and make glad, His eyes were made to capture women’s hearts. Down in the glory-hole Alfonso sings An olden song of wine and clinking glasses And riotous rakes; magnificently flings Gay kisses to imaginary lasses. Alfonso’s voice of […]...
13. My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell I hold my honey and I store my bread In little jars and cabinets of my will. I label clearly, and each latch and lid I bid, Be firm till I return from hell. I am very hungry. I am incomplete. And none can give me any word but Wait, The puny light. I keep […]...
14. Ippolit Konovaloff I was a gun-smith in Odessa. One night the police broke in the room Where a group of us were reading Spencer. And seized our books and arrested us. But I escaped and came to New York And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River, Where I could study my Kant in peace And […]...
15. Many Inventions ‘Less you want your toes trod of you’d better get back at once, For the bullocks are walking two by two, The byles are walking two by two, And the elephants bring the guns. Ho! Yuss! Great-big-long-black-forty-pounder guns. Jiggery-jolty to and fro, Each as big as a launch in tow Blind-dumb-broad-breeched beggars o’ battering-guns! My […]...
16. Iron GUNS, Long, steel guns, Pointed from the war ships In the name of the war god. Straight, shining, polished guns, Clambered over with jackies in white blouses, Glory of tan faces, tousled hair, white teeth, Laughing lithe jackies in white blouses, Sitting on the guns singing war songs, war chanties. Shovels, Broad, iron shovels, Scooping […]...
17. Spring At the first hour, it was as if one said, “Arise.” At the second hour, it was as if one said, “Go forth.” And the winter constellations that are like patient ox-eyes Sank below the white horizon at the north. At the third hour, it was as if one said, “I thirst”; At the fourth […]...
18. The Voice Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair. Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as […]...
19. The Battle Dames should be doomed to dungeons Who masticate raw onions. She was the cuddly kind of Miss A man can love to death; But when I sought to steal a kiss I wilted from a breath With onion odour so intense I lost my loving sense. Yet she was ever in my thought Like some […]...
20. A Western Ballad When I died, love, when I died My heart was broken in your care; I never suffered love so fair As now I suffer and abide When I died, love, when I died. When I died, love, when I died I wearied in an endless maze That men have walked for centuries, As endless as […]...
21. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
22. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
23. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
24. Screw-Guns Smokin’ my pipe on the mountings, sniffin’ the mornin’ cool, I walks in my old brown gaiters along o’ my old brown mule, With seventy gunners be’ind me, an’ never a beggar forgets It’s only the pick of the Army that handles the dear little pets ‘Tss! ‘Tss! For you all love the screw-guns the […]...
25. Talk with prudence to a Beggar Talk with prudence to a Beggar Of “Potose,” and the mines! Reverently, to the Hungry Of your viands, and your wines! Cautious, hint to any Captive You have passed enfranchised feet! Anecdotes of air in Dungeons Have sometimes proved deadly sweet!...
26. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
27. The Call (France, August first, 1914) Far and near, high and clear, Hark to the call of War! Over the gorse and the golden dells, Ringing and swinging of clamorous bells, Praying and saying of wild farewells: War! War! War! High and low, all must go: Hark to the shout of War! Leave to the women the […]...
28. Good Friday O my chief good, How shall I measure out thy blood? How shall I count what thee befell, And each grief tell? Shall I thy woes Number according to thy foes? Or, since one star show’d thy first breath, Shall all thy death? Or shall each leaf, Which falls in Autumn, score a grief? Or […]...
29. The Life Beyond He wakes, who never thought to wake again, Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens. He lies; And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand, Like a dry branch. No […]...
30. First EPIGRAM. (Upon being Contented with a Little) WE deem them moderate, but Enough implore, What barely will suffice, and ask no more: Who say, (O Jove) a competency give, Neither in Luxury, or Want we’d live. But what is that, which these Enough do call? If both the Indies unto some should fall, Such Wealth would yet Enough but onely be, And […]...
31. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
32. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
33. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
34. Could I but ride indefinite Could I but ride indefinite As doth the Meadow Bee And visit only where I liked And No one visit me And flirt all Day with Buttercups And marry whom I may And dwell a little everywhere Or better, run away With no Police to follow Or chase Him if He do Till He should […]...
35. 1914 IV: The Dead These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth. The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs, And sunset, and the colours of the earth. These had seen movement, and heard music; known Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat […]...
36. Immortality Full well I trow that when I die Down drops the curtain; Another show is all my eye And Betty Martin. I know the score, and with a smile Of rueful rating, I reckon I am not worth while Perpetuating. I hope that God, if God there be Of love and glory, Will let me […]...
37. Dropped into the Ether Acre Dropped into the Ether Acre Wearing the Sod Gown Bonnet of Everlasting Laces Brooch frozen on Horses of Blonde and Coach of Silver Baggage a strapped Pearl Journey of Down and Whip of Diamond Riding to meet the Earl...
38. Channel Firing That night your great guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay, And broke the chancel window-squares, We thought it was the Judgement-day And sat upright. While drearisome Arose the howl of wakened hounds: The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, The worm drew back into the mounds, The glebe cow drooled. Till God cried, […]...
39. The Sky is low the Clouds are mean The Sky is low the Clouds are mean. A Travelling Flake of Snow Across a Barn or through a Rut Debates if it will go A Narrow Wind complains all Day How some one treated him Nature, like Us is sometimes caught Without her Diadem....
40. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...