BURNT SHIPS

Related poetry:

1. The Burnt Child Matches among other things that were not allowed Never would be Lying high in a cool blue box That opened in other hands and there they all were Bodies clean and smooth blue heads white crowns White sandpaper on the sides of the box scoring Fire after fire gone before I could hear the scratch […]...
2. The White Ships and the Red (For Alden March) With drooping sail and pennant That never a wind may reach, They float in sunless waters Beside a sunless beach. Their mighty masts and funnels Are white as driven snow, And with a pallid radiance Their ghostly bulwarks glow. Here is a Spanish galleon That once with gold was gay, Here is […]...
3. Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton I Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been […]...
4. Looking For a Sunset Bird in Winter The west was getting out of gold, The breath of air had died of cold, When shoeing home across the white, I thought I saw a bird alight. In summer when I passed the place I had to stop and lift my face; A bird with an angelic gift Was singing in it sweet and […]...
5. Out of Town Out of town the sky was bright and blue, Never fog-cloud, lowering, thick, was seen to frown; Nature dons a garb of gayer hue, Out of town. Spotless lay the snow on field and down, Pure and keen the air above it blew; All wore peace and beauty for a crown. London sky, marred by […]...
6. On A Portrait Of Wordsworth WORDSWORTH upon Helvellyn! Let the cloud Ebb audibly along the mountain-wind, Then break against the rock, and show behind The lowland valleys floating up to crowd The sense with beauty. He with forehead bowed And humble-lidded eyes, as one inclined Before the sovran thought of his own mind, And very meek with inspirations proud, Takes […]...
7. In Cabin'd Ships at Sea 1 IN cabin’d ships, at sea, The boundless blue on every side expanding, With whistling winds and music of the waves-the large imperious waves-In such, Or some lone bark, buoy’d on the dense marine, Where, joyous, full of faith, spreading white sails, She cleaves the ether, mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or […]...
8. My Ships If all the ships I have at sea Should come a-sailing home to me, From sunny lands, and lands of cold, Ah well! the harbor could not hold So many sails as there would be If all my ships came in from sea. If half my ships came home from sea, And brought their precious […]...
9. 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 […]...
10. Hard is the Journey Gold vessels of fine wines, Thousands a gallon, Jade dishes of rare meats, Costing more thousands, I lay my chopsticks down, No more can banquet, I draw my sword and stare Wildly about me: Ice bars my way to cross The Yellow River, Snows from dark skies to climb The T’ai-hang mountains! At peace I […]...
11. The Bridge In his travels he comes to a bridge made entirely of bones. Before crossing he writes a letter to his mother: Dear mother, Guess what? the ape accidentally bit off one of his hands while Eating a banana. Just now I am at the foot of a bone bridge. I Shall be crossing it shortly. […]...
12. A City Remembered Unlovely city, to which few tourists come With squinting cameras and alien hats; Left under a cloud by those who love the sun And can afford to marry – a cloud of bits Of soot more myriad than gnats, a cloud Of smoke and rain, an insubstantial threat Whose colour is the pigment of long […]...
13. Snow SNOW took us away from the smoke valleys into white mountains, we saw velvet blue cows eating a vermillion grass and they gave us a pink milk. Snow changes our bones into fog streamers caught by the wind and spelled into many dances. Six bits for a sniff of snow in the old days bought […]...
14. THE FREEBOOTER No door has my house, No house has my door; And in and out ever I carry my store. No grate has my kitchen, No kitchen my grate; Yet roasts it and boils it Both early and late. My bed has no trestles, My trestles no bed; Yet merrier moments No mortal e’er led. My […]...
15. An Address to the New Tay Bridge Beautiful new railway bridge of the Silvery Tay, With your strong brick piers and buttresses in so grand array, And your thirteen central girders, which seem to my eye Strong enough all windy storms to defy. And as I gaze upon thee my heart feels gay, Because thou are the greatest railway bridge of the […]...
16. Celebrate Celebrate our anniversary – can’t you see Tonight the snowy night of our first winter Comes back again in every road and tree – That winter night of diamantine splendour. Steam is pouring out of yellow stables, The Moika river’s sinking under snow, The moonlight’s misted as it is in fables, And where we are […]...
17. 90 North At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe, I clambered to bed; up the globe’s impossible sides I sailed all night-till at last, with my black beard, My furs and my dogs, I stood at the northern pole. There in the childish night my companions lay frozen, The stiff fur knocked […]...
18. The Mole Said he: “I’ll dive deep in the Past, And write a book of direful days When summer skies were overcast With smoke of humble hearths ablaze; When War was rampant in the land, And poor folk cowered in the night, While ruin gaped on every hand – Of ravishing and wrath I’ll write.” Ten years […]...
19. Ships that Pass in the Night Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing; I look far out into the pregnant night, Where I can hear the solemn booming gun And catch the gleaming of a random light, That tells me that the ship I seek Is passing, passing. My tearful eyes my soul’s deep hurt are glassing; For […]...
20. Good-night MANY ways to spell good night. Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes. They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit. Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue and then go out. Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar. […]...
21. The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence Moored to the same ring: The hour, the darkness and I, Our compasses hooded like falcons. Now the memory of you comes aching in With a wash of broken bits which never left port In which once we planned voyages, They come knocking like hearts asking: What departures on this tide? Breath of land, warm […]...
22. Baltic Fog Notes (Bergen)SEVEN days all fog, all mist, and the turbines pounding through high seas. I was a plaything, a rat’s neck in the teeth of a scuffling mastiff. Fog and fog and no stars, sun, moon. Then an afternoon in fjords, low-lying lands scrawled in granite languages on a gray sky, A night harbor, blue dusk […]...
23. The Egg-Shell The wind took off with the sunset The fog came up with the tide, When the Witch of the North took an Egg-shell With a little Blue Devil inside. “Sink,” she said, “or swim,” she said, “It’s all you will bet from me. And that is the finish of him!” she said And the Egg-shell […]...
24. Hemlock and Cedar THIN sheets of blue smoke among white slabs… near the shingle mill… winter morning. Falling of a dry leaf might be heard… circular steel tears through a log. Slope of woodland… brown… soft… tinge of blue such as pansy eyes. Farther, field fires… funnel of yellow smoke… spellings of other yellow in corn stubble. Bobsled […]...
25. The Ships that Won't Go Down We hear a great commotion ‘Bout the ship that comes to grief, That founders in mid-ocean, Or is driven on a reef; Because it’s cheap and brittle A score of sinners drown. But we hear but mighty little Of the ships that won’t go down. Here’s honour to the builders – The builders of the […]...
26. The Ships of Yule When I was just a little boy, Before I went to school, I had a fleet of forty sail I called the Ships of Yule; Of every rig, from rakish brig And gallant barkentine, To little Fundy fishing boats With gunwales painted green. They used to go on trading trips Around the world for me, […]...
27. City of Ships CITY of ships! (O the black ships! O the fierce ships! O the beautiful, sharp-bow’d steam-ships and sail-ships!) City of the world! (for all races are here; All the lands of the earth make contributions here;) City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides! City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling […]...
28. The Glory of Ships The glory of ships is an old, old song, Since the days when the sea-rovers ran In their open boats through the roaring surf, And the spread of the world began; The glory of ships is a light on the sea, And a star in the story of man. When Homer sang of the galleys […]...
29. An Almost Made Up Poem I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny Blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny They are small, and the fountain is in France Where you wrote me that last letter and I answered and never heard from you again. You used to write insane poems about ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper […]...
30. The Ships of Saint John Where are the ships I used to know, That came to port on the Fundy tide Half a century ago, In beauty and stately pride? In they would come past the beacon light, With the sun on gleaming sail and spar, Folding their wings like birds in flight From countries strange and far. Schooner and […]...
31. Blue Bridge Praise the good-tempered summer And the red cardinal That jumps Like a hot coal off the track. Praise the heavy leaves, Heroines of green, frosted With silver. Praise the litter Of torn paper, mulch And sticks, the spiny holly, Its scarlet land mines. Praise the black snake that whips And shudders its way across my […]...
32. Song for All Seas, All Ships 1 TO-DAY a rude brief recitative, Of ships sailing the Seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal; Of unnamed heroes in the ships-Of waves spreading and spreading, far as the eye can reach; Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing; And out of these a chant, for the sailors of all nations, […]...
33. Regarding Art Sometimes, I, too, tell the ah’s Of my heart one by one Like the blood-red beads Of a ruby rosary strung on strands of golden hair! But my Poetry’s muse Takes to the air On wings made of steel Like the I-beams of my suspension bridges! I don’t pretend the nightingale’s lament To the rose […]...
34. Under the Violets HER hands are cold; her face is white; No more her pulses come and go; Her eyes are shut to life and light; Fold the white vesture, snow on snow, And lay her where the violets blow. But not beneath a graven stone, To plead for tears with alien eyes; A slender cross of wood […]...
35. Taking Leave of a Friend Blue mountains to the north of the walls, White river winding about them; Here we must make separation And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass. Mind like a floating wide cloud, Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance. Our horses neigh to each […]...
36. The face that launch'd a thousand ships Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies! Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, And all is […]...
37. At the Melting of the Snow There’s a sunny Southern land, And it’s there that I would be Where the big hills stand, In the South Countrie! When the wattles bloom again, Then it’s time for us to go To the old Monaro country At the melting of the snow. To the East or to the West, Or wherever you may […]...
38. The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay! With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array And your central girders, which seem to the eye To be almost towering to the sky. The greatest wonder of the day, And a great beautification to the River Tay, Most beautiful to be seen, Near by Dundee […]...
39. On a Lady Throwing Snow-Balls at Her Lover [From the Latin of Petronious Ascanius.] When, wanton fair, the snowy orb you throw, I feel a fire before unknown in snow. E’en coldest snow I find has pow’r to warm My breast, when flung by Julia’s lovely arm. T’elude love’s pow’rful arts I strive in vain, If ice and snow can latent fires contain. […]...
40. It seldom snowed – Part III It seldom snowed they said, and they were nearly right. In all of nine eventful Seasons crystal white on average graced the place just twice a year. A smaller Fall, an over-night preceded heavy snow. And heavy snow remained a week, Blocked drains and closed the Desert Road; but no complaints, our children Played in […]...