Portrait and Reality

Related poetry:

1. Portrait d'Une Femme Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea, London has swept about you this score years And bright ships left you this or that in fee: Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things, Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price. Great minds have sought you – lacking someone else. You have been second […]...
2. Love's Reality I walk, I trust, with open eyes; I’ve travelled half my worldly course; And in the way behind me lies Much vanity and some remorse; I’ve lived to feel how pride may part Spirits, tho’ matched like hand and glove; I’ve blushed for love’s abode, the heart; But have not disbelieved in love; Nor unto […]...
3. Portrait (For S. A.)TO write one book in five years Or five books in one year, To be the painter and the thing painted, … where are we, bo? Wait-get his number. The barber shop handling is here And the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist, And the flame orange scarf. Yet there is more-he sleeps […]...
4. Self-Portrait At 28 I know it’s a bad title But I’m giving it to myself as a gift On a day nearly canceled by sunlight When the entire hill is approaching The ideal of Virginia Brochured with goldenrod and loblolly And I think “at least I have not woken up With a bloody knife in my hand” By […]...
5. Portrait of a Lady Thou hast committed- Fornication: but that was in another country, And besides, the wench is dead. The Jew of Malta. I AMONG the smoke and fog of a December afternoon You have the scene arrange itself-as it will seem to do- With “I have saved this afternoon for you”; And four wax candles in the […]...
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. Portrait of a Boy After the whipping he crawled into bed, Accepting the harsh fact with no great weeping. How funny uncle’s hat had looked striped red! He chuckled silently. The moon came, sweeping A black, frayed rag of tattered cloud before In scorning; very pure and pale she seemed, Flooding his bed with radiance. On the floor Fat […]...
8. The Wicked Postman Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me, Mother dear? The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all Wet, and you don’t mind it. Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother To come home from school. What has happened […]...
9. 233. Song-O were I on Parnassus Hill O, WERE I on Parnassus hill, Or had o’ Helicon my fill, That I might catch poetic skill, To sing how dear I love thee! But Nith maun be my Muse’s well, My Muse maun be thy bonie sel’, On Corsincon I’ll glowr and spell, And write how dear I love thee. Then come, sweet […]...
10. Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts, That all sin is divided into two parts. One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important, And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant, And the other kind of […]...
11. Beyond It seemeth such a little way to me Across to that strange country – the Beyond; And yet, not strange, for it has grown to be The home of those whom I am so fond, They make it seem familiar and most dear, As journeying friends bring distant regions near. So close it lies, that […]...
12. You know that Portrait in the Moon You know that Portrait in the Moon So tell me who ’tis like The very Brow the stooping eyes A fog for Say Whose Sake? The very Pattern of the Cheek It varies in the Chin But Ishmael since we met ’tis long And fashions intervene When Moon’s at full ‘Tis Thou I say My […]...
13. The House Of Dust: Part 04: 03: Palimpsest: A Deceitful Portrait Well, as you say, we live for small horizons: We move in crowds, we flow and talk together, Seeing so many eyes and hands and faces, So many mouths, and all with secret meanings,- Yet know so little of them; only seeing The small bright circle of our consciousness, Beyond which lies the dark. Some […]...
14. "I Love You Sweatheart&quot A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
15. On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People A Brother and Sister O I admire and sorrow! The heart’s eye grieves Discovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years. A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves, And beauty’s dearest veriest vein is tears. Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast: Not that, but thus far, all with frailty, blest In one fair […]...
16. The wanderer Upon a mountain height, far from the sea, I found a shell, And to my listening ear the lonely thing Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing, Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell. How came the shell upon that mountain height? Ah, who can say Whether there dropped by some too careless […]...
17. Portrait of a Baby He lay within a warm, soft world Of motion. Colors bloomed and fled, Maroon and turquoise, saffron, red, Wave upon wave that broke and whirled To vanish in the grey-green gloom, Perspectiveless and shadowy. A bulging world that had no walls, A flowing world, most like the sea, Compassing all infinity Within a shapeless, ebbing […]...
18. Before Her Portrait In Youth As lovers, banished from their lady’s face And hopeless of her grace, Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place, Fondly adore Some stealth-won cast attire she wore, A kerchief or a glove: And at the lover’s beck Into the glove there fleets the hand, Or at impetuous command Up from the kerchief floats the virgin […]...
19. Passport They did not recognize me in the shadows That suck away my color in this Passport And to them my wound was an exhibit For a tourist Who loves to collect photographs They did not recognize me, Ah. . . Don’t leave The palm of my hand without the sun Because the trees recognize me […]...
20. 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!...
21. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror As Parmigianino did it, the right hand Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer And swerving easily away, as though to protect What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams, Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together In a movement supporting the face, which swims Toward and away like the hand Except […]...
22. Song (Go And Catch A Falling Star) Go and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the Devil’s foot, Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy’s stinging, And find What wind Serves to advance an honest mind. If thou be’st born to strange sights, Things […]...
23. How To Kill Under the parabola of a ball, A child turning into a man, I looked into the air too long. The ball fell in my hand, it sang In the closed fist: Open Open Behold a gift designed to kill. Now in my dial of glass appears The soldier who is going to die. He smiles, […]...
24. TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING The pages of thy book I read, And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, “Servant of God! well done!” Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me, Like Luther’s, in the days of old, Half-battles for the free. Go on, until this land revokes The […]...
25. 484. Song-Saw you my dear, my Philly O SAW ye my Dear, my Philly? O saw ye my Dear, my Philly, She’s down i’ the grove, she’s wi’ a new Love, She winna come hame to her Willy. What says she my dear, my Philly? What says she my dear, my Philly? She lets thee to wit she has thee forgot, And […]...
26. Words Out of us all That make rhymes Will you choose Sometimes – As the winds use A crack in a wall Or a drain, Their joy or their pain To whistle through – Choose me, You English words? I know you: You are light as dreams, Tough as oak, Precious as gold, As poppies and […]...
27. Portrait A child draws the outline of a body. She draws what she can, but it is white all through, She cannot fill in what she knows is there. Within the unsupported line, she knows That life is missing; she has cut One background from another. Like a child, She turns to her mother. And you […]...
28. Portrait She has no need to fear the fall Of harvest from the laddered reach Of orchards, nor the tide gone ebbing From the steep beach. Nor hold to pain’s effrontery Her body’s bulwark, stern and savage, Nor be a glass, where to forsee Another’s ravage. What she has gathered, and what lost, She will not […]...
29. The Portrait My mother never forgave my father For killing himself, Especially at such an awkward time And in a public park, That spring When I was waiting to be born. She locked his name In her deepest cabinet And would not let him out, Though I could hear him thumping. When I came down from the […]...
30. A Portrait Because my love is quick to come and go- A little here, and then a little there- What use are any words of mine to swear My heart is stubborn, and my spirit slow Of weathering the drip and drive of woe? What is my oath, when you have but to bare My little, easy […]...
31. Self-Portrait The steadfastness of generations of nobility Shows in the curving lines that form the eyebrows. And the blue eyes still show traces of childhood fears And of humility here and there, not of a servant’s, Yet of one who serves obediantly, and of a woman. The mouth formed as a mouth, large and accurate, Not […]...
32. Fog Portrait RINGS of iron gray smoke; a woman’s steel face… looking… looking. Funnels of an ocean liner negotiating a fog night; pouring a taffy mass down the wind; layers of soot on the top deck; a taffrail… and a woman’s steel face… looking… looking. Cliffs challenge humped; sudden arcs form on a gull’s wing in the […]...
33. Sonnet XXXV: Some, Misbelieving To Miracle Some, misbelieving and profane in love, When I do speak of miracles by thee, May say, that thou art flattered by me, Who only write my skill in verse to prove. See miracles, ye unbelieving, see A dumb-born Muse made t’express the mind, A cripple hand to write, yet lame by kind, One […]...
34. The Elixir Teach me, my God and King, In all things Thee to see, And what I do in anything To do it as for Thee. Not rudely, as a beast, To run into an action; But still to make Thee prepossest, And give it his perfection. A man that looks on glass, On it may stay […]...
35. Doom and She I There dwells a mighty pair – Slow, statuesque, intense – Amid the vague Immense: None can their chronicle declare, Nor why they be, nor whence. ,h II Mother of all things made, Matchless in artistry, Unlit with sight is she. – And though her ever well-obeyed Vacant of feeling he. III The Matron mildly […]...
36. Portrait Because life’s passing show Is little to his mind, There is a man I know Indrawn from human kind. His dearest friends are books; Yet oh how glad he talks To birds and trees and brooks On lonely walks. He takes the same still way By grove and hill and sea; He lives that each […]...
37. The Portrait The portrait there above my bed They tell me is a work of art; My Wife, since twenty years she’s dead: Her going nearly broke my heart. Alas! No little ones we had To light our hearth with joy and glee; Yet as I linger lone and sad I know she’s waiting me. The picture? […]...
38. Sonnet 43 – How do I love thee? Let me count the ways How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee […]...
39. Portrait Of A Lady Your thighs are appletrees Whose blossoms touch the sky. Which sky? The sky Where Watteau hung a lady’s Slipper. Your knees Are a southern breeze-or A gust of snow. Agh! what Sort of man was Fragonard? -As if that answered Anything.-Ah, yes. Below The knees, since the tune Drops that way, it is One of […]...
40. Portrait of the Artist Oh, lead me to a quiet cell Where never footfall rankles, And bar the window passing well, And gyve my wrists and ankles. Oh, wrap my eyes with linen fair, With hempen cord go bind me, And, of your mercy, leave me there, Nor tell them where to find me. Oh, lock the portal as […]...