Misgivings

Related poetry:

1. Well I Remember How You Smiled Well I remember how you smiled To see me write your name upon The soft sea-sand. . . “O! what a child! You think you’re writing upon stone!” I have since written what no tide Shall ever wash away, what men Unborn shall read o’er ocean wide And find Ianthe’s name again....
2. Introduction to the Songs of Innocence Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’ So I piped: he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy […]...
3. Reeds of Innocence Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’ So I piped: he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy […]...
4. Piping Down the Valleys Wild Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again.’ So I piped: he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy […]...
5. Misgivings “Perhaps you’ll tire of me,” muses My love, although she’s like a great city To me, or a park that finds new Ways to wear each flounce of light And investiture of weather. Soil doesn’t tire of rain, I think, But I know what she fears: plans warp, Planes explode, topsoil gets peeled away By […]...
6. Take Back the Virgin Page Written on Returning a Blank Book Take back the virgin page, White and unwritten still; Some hand, more calm and sage, The leaf must fill. Thoughts come, as pure as light Pure as even you require; But, oh! each word I write Love turns to fire. Yet let me keep the book: Oft shall my […]...
7. A still Volcano Life A still Volcano Life That flickered in the night When it was dark enough to do Without erasing sight A quiet Earthquake Style Too subtle to suspect By natures this side Naples The North cannot detect The Solemn Torrid Symbol The lips that never lie Whose hissing Corals part and shut And Cities ooze away...
8. A Tragedy Among his books he sits all day To think and read and write; He does not smell the new-mown hay, The roses red and white. I walk among them all alone, His silly, stupid wife; The world seems tasteless, dead and done – An empty thing is life. At night his window casts a square […]...
9. 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 […]...
10. Poetry it Takes A lot of Desperation Dissatisfaction And Disillusion To Write A Few Good Poems. It’s not For Everybody Either to Write It Or even to Read It....
11. Lines Inscribed on The Wall of a Dungeon in The Southern P of I Though not a breath can enter here, I know the wind blows fresh and free; I know the sun is shining clear, Though not a gleam can visit me. They thought while I in darkness lay, ‘Twere pity that I should not know How all the earth is smiling gay; How fresh the vernal breezes […]...
12. 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 […]...
13. A Child of the Snows There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim, And never before or again, When the nights are strong with a darkness long, And the dark is alive with rain. Never we know but in sleet and in snow, The place where the great fires are, That the midst of the earth is a […]...
14. John Horace Burleson I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I was twenty-five. I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; There married the banker’s daughter, And later became president of the bank- Always looking forward to some leisure To write an epic novel of […]...
15. Autumn Whoever has no house now will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening And wander on the boulevards, up and down… – from Autumn Day, Rainer Maria Rilke Its stain is everywhere. The sharpening air Of late afternoon Is now the colour of tea. […]...
16. Against Writing about Children When I think of the many people Who privately despise children, I can’t say I’m completely shocked, Having been one. I was not Exceptional, uncomfortable as that is To admit, and most children are not Exceptional. The particulars of Cruelty, sizes Large and X-Large, Memory gnawing it like A fat dog, are ordinary: Mean Miss […]...
17. Lost Anchors Like a dry fish flung inland far from shore, There lived a sailor, warped and ocean-browned, Who told of an old vessel, harbor-drowned, And out of mind a century before, Where divers, on descending to explore A legend that had lived its way around The world of ships, in the dark hulk had found Anchors, […]...
18. 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 […]...
19. Don't Cheer Don’t cheer, damn you! Don’t cheer! Silence! Your bitterest tear Is fulsomely sweet to-day. . . . Down on your knees and pray. See, they sing as they go, Marching row upon row. Who will be spared to return, Sombre and starkly stern? Chaps whom we knew – s0 strange, Distant and dark with change; […]...
20. To the Reader As you read, a white bear leisurely Pees, dyeing the snow Saffron, And as you read, many gods Lie among lianas: eyes of obsidian Are watching the generations of leaves, And as you read The sea is turning its dark pages, Turning Its dark pages....
21. 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 […]...
22. Some time Last night, my darling, as you slept, I thought I heard you sigh, And to your little crib I crept, And watched a space thereby; And then I stooped and kissed your brow, For oh! I love you so You are too young to know it now, But some time you shall know! Some time […]...
23. Prelude They say that rhyme and rhythm are Outmoded now. I do not know, for I am far From high of brow. But if the twain you take away, Since basely bred, Proud Poetry, I dare to say, Would scarce be read. With humble heart I thus define My rôle in rhyme: Oh may I never […]...
24. Seascape With Sun And Eagle Freer Than most birds An eagle flies up Over San Francisco Freer than most places Soars high up Floats and glides high up In the still Open spaces Flown from the mountains Floated down Far over ocean Where the sunset has begun A mirror of itself He sails high over Turning and turning Where seaplanes […]...
25. Magellanic Penguin Neither clown nor child nor black Nor white but verticle And a questioning innocence Dressed in night and snow: The mother smiles at the sailor, The fisherman at the astronaunt, But the child child does not smile When he looks at the bird child, And from the disorderly ocean The immaculate passenger Emerges in snowy […]...
26. Still Falls the Rain Still falls the Rain – Dark as the world of man, black as our loss – Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails Upon the Cross. Still falls the Rain With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat In the Potter’s Field, and the sound of the […]...
27. The Parting of Ways THE SKIES from black to pearly grey Had veered without a star or sun; Only a burning opal ray Fell on your brow when all was done. Aye, after victory, the crown; Yet through the fight no word of cheer; And what would win and what go down No word could help, no light make […]...
28. Sonnet I: Loving In Truth Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That she (dear She) might take some pleasure of my pain: Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain; I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, Studying inventions fine, her […]...
29. Loving In Truth, And Fain In Verse My Love To Show Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That She, dear She, might take some pleasure of my pain, -Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain – I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, Studying inventions fine, […]...
30. Songs Of Innocence: Introduction Piping down the valleys wild Piping songs of pleasant glee On a cloud I saw a child. And he laughing said to me. Pipe a song about a Lamb: So I piped with merry chear, Piper, pipe that song again So I piped, he wept to hear. Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe Sing thy […]...
31. Astrophel and Stella: I ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: I Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain, Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain, I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe; […]...
32. West London Crouch’d on the pavement close by Belgrave Square A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied; A babe was in her arms, and at her side A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare. Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there, Pass’d opposite; she touch’d her girl, who hied Across, and begg’d […]...
33. III. O Thou, whose stern command and precepts pure O THOU, whose stern command and precepts pure (Tho’ agony in every vein should start, And slowly drain the blood-drops from the heart) Have bade the patient spirit still endure; Thou, who to sorrow hast a beauty lent, On the dark brow, with resolution clad, Illumining the dreary traces sad, Like the cold taper on […]...
34. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
35. Two Rivulets TWO Rivulets side by side, Two blended, parallel, strolling tides, Companions, travelers, gossiping as they journey. For the Eternal Ocean bound, These ripples, passing surges, streams of Death and Life, Object and Subject hurrying, whirling by, The Real and Ideal, Alternate ebb and flow the Days and Nights, (Strands of a Trio twining, Present, Future, […]...
36. Psalm Three On the day when my words Were earth… I was a friend to stalks of wheat. On the day when my words Were wrath I was a friend to chains. On the day when my words Were stones I was a friend to streams. On the day when my words Were a rebellion I was […]...
37. The Passing Of The Year My glass is filled, my pipe is lit, My den is all a cosy glow; And snug before the fire I sit, And wait to feel the old year go. I dedicate to solemn thought Amid my too-unthinking days, This sober moment, sadly fraught With much of blame, with little praise. Old Year! upon the […]...
38. The Child Is Father To The Man ‘The child is father to the man.’ How can he be? The words are wild. Suck any sense from that who can: ‘The child is father to the man.’ No; what the poet did write ran, ‘The man is father to the child.’ ‘The child is father to the man!’ How can he be? The […]...
39. 235. Song-The Fall of the Leaf THE LAZY mist hangs from the brow of the hill, Concealing the course of the dark-winding rill; How languid the scenes, late so sprightly, appear! As Autumn to Winter resigns the pale year. The forests are leafless, the meadows are brown, And all the gay foppery of summer is flown: Apart let me wander, apart […]...
40. Partnership Yes, you have it; I can see. Beautiful?… Dear, look at me! Look and let my shame confess Triumph after weariness. Beautiful? Ah, yes. Lift it where the beams are bright; Hold it where the western light, Shining in above my bed, Throws a glory on your head. Now it is all said. All there […]...