To A Snowflake

Related poetry:

1. A Flower-Piece By Fantin Heart’s ease or pansy, pleasure or thought, Which would the picture give us of these? Surely the heart that conceived it sought Heart’s ease. Surely by glad and divine degrees The heart impelling the hand that wrought Wrought comfort here for a soul’s disease. Deep flowers, with lustre and darkness fraught, From glass that gleams […]...
2. Nilsson A rose of perfect red, embossed With silver sheens of crystal frost, Yet warm, nor life nor fragrance lost. High passion throbbing in a sphere That Art hath wrought of diamond clear, A great heart beating in a tear. The listening soul is full of dreams That shape the wondrous-varying themes As cries of men […]...
3. The Snowflake Which Is Now And Hence Forever Will it last? he says. Is it a masterpiece? Will generation after generation Turn with reverence to the page? Birdseye scholar of the frozen fish, What would he make of the sole, clean, clear Leap of the salmon that has disappeared? To be, yes! whether they like it or not! But not to last when […]...
4. Laughing Blue Steel TWO fishes swimming in the sea, Two birds flying in the air, Two chisels on an anvil-maybe. Beaten, hammered, laughing blue steel to each other-maybe. Sure I would rather be a chisel with you than a fish. Sure I would rather be a chisel with you than a bird. Take these two chisel-pals, O God. […]...
5. Adonis 1. Each of us like you Has died once, Has passed through drift of wood-leaves, Cracked and bent And tortured and unbent In the winter-frost, The burnt into gold points, Lighted afresh, Crisp amber, scales of gold-leaf, Gold turned and re-welded In the sun; Each of us like you Has died once, Each of us […]...
6. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
7. Durin The world was young, the mountains green, No stain yet on the Moon was seen, No words were laid on stream or stone, When Durin woke and walked along. He named the nameless hills and delles; He drank from yet untasted wells; He stopped and looked in Mirrormere, And saw a crown of stars appear, […]...
8. Song of the Forge The forge-fire sets a glow in the heavens, The hammer thunders, showering the smoke with sparks. A ruddy smithy, the white face of the moon, And the hammer, ringing down cold dark canyons....
9. The Roundel A roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere, With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought, That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear A roundel is wrought. Its jewel of music is carven of all or of aught Love, laughter, or mourning remembrance of […]...
10. Prayers of Steel LAY me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar. Let me pry loose old walls. Let me lift and loosen old foundations. Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike. Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together. Take […]...
11. The Frog Comes to mind as another small upheaval Amongst the rubble. His eye matches exactly the bubble In my spirit-level. I set aside hammer and chisel And take him on the trowel. The entire population of Ireland Springs from a pair left to stand Overnight in a pond In the gardens of Trinity College, Two bottle […]...
12. Three Oranges first time my father overheard me listening to This bit of music he asked me, “what is it?” “it’s called Love For Three Oranges,” I informed him. “boy,” he said, “that’s getting it Cheap.” He meant sex. Listening to it I always imagined three oranges Sitting there, You know how orange they can Get, So […]...
13. The Challenge of Thor I am the God Thor, I am the War God, I am the Thunderer! Here in my Northland, My fastness and fortress, Reign I forever! Here amid icebergs Rule I the nations; This is my hammer, Miцlner the mighty; Giants and sorcerers Cannot withstand it! These are the gauntlets Wherewith I wield it, And hurl […]...
14. THE MINER BEETLING rock, with roar and smoke Break before my hammer-stroke! Deeper I must thrust and lower Till I hear the ring of ore. From the mountain’s unplumbed night, Deep amid the gold-veins bright, Diamonds lure me, rubies beckon, Treasure-hoard that none may reckon. There is peace within the deep Peace and immemorial sleep; Heavy hammer, […]...
15. Antinous Stretched on a sunny bank he lay at rest, Ferns at his elbow, lilies round his knees, With sweet flesh patterned where the cool turf pressed, Flowerlike crept o’er with emerald aphides. Single he couched there, to his circling flocks Piping at times some happy shepherd’s tune, Nude, with the warm wind in his golden […]...
16. Four Things Four things a man must learn to do If he would make his record true: To think without confusion clearly; To love his fellow man sincerely; To act from honest motives purely; To trust in God and Heaven securely....
17. Roaming Cloud I am like a remnant of a cloud of autumn Uselessly roaming in the sky, O my sun ever-glorious! Thy touch has not yet melted my vapor, Making me one with thy light, And thus I count months and years separated from thee. If this be thy wish and if this be thy play, Then […]...
18. Sonnet 44: If the dull substance of my flesh were thought If the dull substance of my flesh were thought, Injurious distance should not stop my way; For then despite of space I would be brought, From limits far remote, where thou dost stay. No matter then although my foot did stand Upon the farthest earth removed from thee; For nimble thought can jump both sea […]...
19. The wind (THE TALE) Cometh the Wind from the garden, fragrant and full of sweet singing Under my tree where I sit cometh the Wind to confession. “Out in the garden abides the Queen of the beautiful Roses Her do I love and to-night wooed her with passionate singing; Told I my love in those songs, and […]...
20. The Ballet Of The Fifth Year Where the sea gulls sleep or indeed where they fly Is a place of different traffic. Although I Consider the fishing bay (where I see them dip and curve And purely glide) a place that weakens the nerve Of will, and closes my eyes, as they should not be (They should burn like the street-light […]...
21. Dream tryst The breaths of kissing night and day Were mingled in the eastern Heaven, Throbbing with unheard melody, Shook Lyra all its star-cloud seven. When dusk shrank cold, and light trod shy, And dawn’s grey eyes were troubled grey; And souls went palely up to the sky, And mine to Lucidè, There was no change in […]...
22. Kallundborg Church ( From The Tent on the Beach) “Tie stille, barn min! Imorgen kommer Fin, Fa’er din, Og gi’er dich Esbern Snares öine og hjerte at lege med!” Zealand Rhyme. “BUILD at Kallundborg by the sea A church as stately as church may be, And there shalt thou wed my daughter fair,” Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern Snare. And the Baron […]...
23. La Belle Dame Sans Merci Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, Alone and palely loitering; The sedge is wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing. Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, So haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel’s granary is full, And the harvest’s done. I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever […]...
24. Sheltered Garden I have had enough. I gasp for breath. Every way ends, every road, Every foot-path leads at last To the hill-crest Then you retrace your steps, Or find the same slope on the other side, Precipitate. I have had enough Border-pinks, clove-pinks, wax-lilies, Herbs, sweet-cress. O for some sharp swish of a branch There is […]...
25. 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 […]...
26. Skunk Cabbage And now as the iron rinds over The ponds start dissolving, You come, dreaming of ferns and flowers And new leaves unfolding, Upon the brash Turnip-hearted skunk cabbage Slinging its bunches leaves up Through the chilling mud. You kneel beside it. The smell Is lurid and flows out in the most Unabashed way, attracting Into […]...
27. Glass Words of a poem should be glass But glass so simple-subtle its shape Is nothing but the shape of what it holds. A glass spun for itself is empty, Brittle, at best Venetian trinket. Embossed glass hides the poem of its absence. Words should be looked through, should be windows. The best word were invisible. […]...
28. The Frost-King – Song II Brighter shone the golden shadows; On the cool wind softly came The low, sweet tones of happy flowers, Singing little Violet’s name. ‘Mong the green trees was it whispered, And the bright waves bore it on To the lonely forest flowers, Where the glad news had not gone. Thus the Frost-King lost his kingdom, And […]...
29. To Outer Nature SHOW thee as I thought thee When I early sought thee, Omen-scouting, All undoubting Love alone had wrought thee Wrought thee for my pleasure, Planned thee as a measure For expounding And resounding Glad things that men treasure. O for but a moment Of that old endowment Light to gaily See thy daily Irisиd embowment! […]...
30. Wrestling Match What guts he had, the Dago lad Who fought that Frenchman grim with guile; For nigh an hour they milled like mad, And mauled the mat in rare old style. Then up and launched like catapults, And tangled, twisted, clinched and clung, Then tossed in savage somersaults, And hacked and hammered, ducked and swung; And […]...
31. Winter in Durnover Field Scene. A wide stretch of fallow ground recently sown with wheat, and Frozen to iron hardness. Three large birds walking about thereon, And wistfully eyeing the surface. Wind keen from north-east: sky a Dull grey. (Triolet) Rook. Throughout the field I find no grain; The cruel frost encrusts the cornland! Starling. Aye: patient pecking now […]...
32. The Snow Man One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound […]...
33. On The Grasshopper And Cricket The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; That is the Grasshopper’s-he takes the lead In summer luxury,-he has never done With his delights; for when tired out with […]...
34. Had I Wist Had I wist, when life was like a warm wind playing Light and loud through sundawn and the dew’s bright trust, How the time should come for hearts to sigh in saying ‘Had I wist’ – Surely not the roses, laughing as they kissed, Not the lovelier laugh of seas in sunshine swaying, Should have […]...
35. In A London Square Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane, East wind and frost are safely gone; With zephyr mild and balmy rain The summer comes serenly on; Earth, air, and sun and skies combine To promise all that’s kind and fair:- But thou, O human heart of mine, Be still, contain thyself, and bear. December days were […]...
36. Ezra on the Strike Wal, Thanksgivin’ do be comin’ round. With the price of turkeys on the bound, And coal, by gum! Thet were just found, Is surely gettin’ cheaper. The winds will soon begin to howl, And winter, in its yearly growl, Across the medders begin to prowl, And Jack Frost gettin’ deeper. By shucks! It seems to […]...
37. The Fairy Goldsmith Here’s a wonderful thing, A humming-bird’s wing In hammered gold, And store well chosen Of snowflakes frozen In crystal cold. Black onyx cherries And mistletoe berries Of chrysoprase, Jade buds, tight shut, All carven and cut In intricate ways. Here, if you please Are little gilt bees In amber drops Which look like honey, Translucent […]...
38. 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 […]...
39. The Frost Spirit He comes, – he comes, – the Frost Spirit comes! You may trace his footsteps now On the naked woods and the blasted fields And the brown hill’s withered brow. He has smitten the leaves of the gray old trees Where their pleasant green came forth, And the winds, which follow wherever he goes, Have […]...
40. E. C. Culbertson Is it true, Spoon River, That in the hall-way of the New Court House There is a tablet of bronze Containing the embossed faces Of Editor Whedon and Thomas Rhodes? And is it true that my successful labors In the County Board, without which Not one stone would have been placed on another, And the […]...