Ecce Puer

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1. 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 […]...
2. Stans Puer ad Mensam Attend my words, my gentle knave, And you shall learn from me How boys at dinner may behave With due propriety. Guard well your hands: two things have been Unfitly used by some; The trencher for a tambourine, The table for a drum. We could not lead a pleasant life, And ‘twould be finished soon, […]...
3. 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 […]...
4. Examples of Early Piety What blest examples do I find Writ in the Word of Truth Of children that began to mind Religion in their youth! Jesus, who reigns above the sky, And keeps the world in awe, Was once a child as young as I, And kept His Father’s law. At twelve years old he talked with men, […]...
5. The Old Man's Comforts and how he gained them You are old, Father William, the young man cried, The few locks which are left you are grey; You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man, Now tell me the reason I pray. In the days of my youth, Father William replied, I remember’d that youth would fly fast, And abused not my health […]...
6. There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a Temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest. For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the World. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I Cover her against any hurt. Using the pen of rivers and […]...
7. Night Words after Juan Ramon A child wakens in a cold apartment. The windows are frosted. Outside he hears Words rising from the streets, words he cannot Understand, and then the semis gear down For the traffic light on Houston. He sleeps Again and dreams of another city On a high hill above a wide river Bathed […]...
8. Sonnet 103: Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth, That having such a scope to show her pride, The argument all bare is of more worth Than when it hath my added praise beside. O, blame me not if I no more can write! Look in your glass, and there appears a face That overgoes my blunt […]...
9. Pine Forest Let us go now into the forest. Trees will pass by your face, And I will stop and offer you to them, But they cannot bend down. The night watches over its creatures, Except for the pine trees that never change: The old wounded springs that spring Blessed gum, eternal afternoons. If they could, the […]...
10. 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 […]...
11. The Hill Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom, and Charley, The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter? All, all, are sleeping on the hill. One passed in a fever, One was burned in a mine, One was killed in a brawl, One died in jail, One fell from a bridge […]...
12. The Happy Child I saw this day sweet flowers grow thick But not one like the child did pick. I heard the packhounds in green park But no dog like the child heard bark. I heard this day bird after bird But not one like the child has heard. A hundred butterflies saw I But not one like […]...
13. Young Fellow My Lad “Where are you going, Young Fellow My Lad, On this glittering morn of May?” “I’m going to join the Colours, Dad; They’re looking for men, they say.” “But you’re only a boy, Young Fellow My Lad; You aren’t obliged to go.” “I’m seventeen and a quarter, Dad, And ever so strong, you know.” * * […]...
14. To A Sad Daughter All night long the hockey pictures Gaze down at you Sleeping in your tracksuit. Belligerent goalies are your ideal. Threats of being traded Cuts and wounds all this pleases you. O my god! you say at breakfast Reading the sports page over the Alpen As another player breaks his ankle Or assaults the coach. When […]...
15. 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 […]...
16. Nursery Rhyme For A Twenty-First Birthday You cannot see the walls that divide your hand From his or hers or mine when you think you touch it. You cannot see the walls because they are glass, And glass is nothing until you try to pass it. Beat on it if you like, but not too hard, For glass will break you […]...
17. Sonnet XVII: Stay, Speedy Time To Time Stay, speedy Time, behold, before thou pass, From age to age what thou hast sought to see, One in whom all the excellencies be, In whom Heav’n looks itself as in a glass. Time, look thyself in this tralucent glass, And thy youth past in this pure mirror see, As the world’s beauty […]...
18. Dumb Gabriel whispered in mine ear His archangelic poesie. How can I write? I only hear The sobbing murmur of the sea. Raphael breathed and bade me pass His rapt evangel to mankind; I cannot even match, alas! The ululation of the wind. The gross grey gods like gargoyles spit On every poet’s holy head; No […]...
19. Lines Written in Kensington Gardens In this lone, open glade I lie, Screen’d by deep boughs on either hand; And at its end, to stay the eye, Those black-crown’d, red-boled pine-trees stand! Birds here make song, each bird has his, Across the girdling city’s hum. How green under the boughs it is! How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come! Sometimes a […]...
20. Lilian Stewart I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins, Born in a cottage near the grist-mill, Reared in the mansion there on the hill, With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate. How proud my mother was of the mansion! How proud of father’s rise in the world! And how my father loved and watched us, And […]...
21. Boy and Father THE BOY Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer. The leather law books of Alexander’s father fill a room like hay in a barn. Alexander has asked his father to let him build a house like bricklayers build, a house with walls and roofs made of big leather law books. The rain beats […]...
22. Vull a Man No, I’m a man, I’m vull a man, You beat my manhood, if you can. You’ll be a man if you can teake All steates that household life do meake. The love-toss’d child, a-croodlen loud, The bwoy a-screamen wild in play, The tall grown youth a-steppen proud, The father staid, the house’s stay. No ; […]...
23. God Gave To Me A Child In Part GOD gave to me a child in part, Yet wholly gave the father’s heart: Child of my soul, O whither now, Unborn, unmothered, goest thou? You came, you went, and no man wist; Hapless, my child, no breast you kist; On no dear knees, a privileged babbler, clomb, Nor knew the kindly feel of home. […]...
24. The Young May Moon The young May moon is beaming, love. The glow-worm’s lamp is gleaming, love. How sweet to rove, Through Morna’s grove, When the drowsy world is dreaming, love! Then awake! the heavens look bright, my dear, ‘Tis never too late for delight, my dear, And the best of all ways To lengthen our days Is to […]...
25. Camps of Green NOT alone those camps of white, O soldiers, When, as order’d forward, after a long march, Footsore and weary, soon as the light lessen’d, we halted for the night; Some of us so fatigued, carrying the gun and knapsack, dropping asleep in our tracks; Others pitching the little tents, and the fires lit up began […]...
26. 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 […]...
27. Death Wants More Death death wants more death, and its webs are full: I remember my father’s garage, how child-like I would brush the corpses of flies From the windows they thought were escape- Their sticky, ugly, vibrant bodies Shouting like dumb crazy dogs against the glass Only to spin and flit In that second larger than hell or […]...
28. At Galway Races There where the course is, Delight makes all of the one mind, The riders upon the galloping horses, The crowd that closes in behind: We, too, had good attendance once, Hearers and hearteners of the work; Aye, horsemen for companions, Before the merchant and the clerk Breathed on the world with timid breath. Sing on: […]...
29. Cuba My eldest sister arrived home that morning In her white muslin evening dress. ‘Who the hell do you think you are Running out to dances in next to nothing? As though we hadn’t enough bother With the world at war, if not at an end.’ My father was pounding the breakfast-table. ‘Those Yankees were touch […]...
30. Losers IF I should pass the tomb of Jonah I would stop there and sit for awhile; Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark And came out alive after all. If I pass the burial spot of Nero I shall say to the wind, “Well, well!”- I who have fiddled in a world […]...
31. Cinderella Her imaginary playmate was a grown-up In sea-coal satin. The flame-blue glances, The wings gauzy as the membrane that the ashes Draw over an old ember as the mother In a jug of cider were a comfort to her. They sat by the fire and told each other stories. “What men want…” said the godmother […]...
32. "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 […]...
33. Lesson It was 1963 or 4, summer, And my father was driving our family From Ft. Hood to North Carolina in our 56 Buick. We’d been hearing about Klan attacks, and we knew Mississippi to be more dangerous than usual. Dark lay hanging from the trees the way moss did, And when it moaned light against […]...
34. Assurances I NEED no assurances-I am a man who is preoccupied, of his own Soul; I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside the hands and face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant of-calm and actual faces; I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of […]...
35. The Wandering Bard What life like that of the bard can be The wandering bard, who roams as free As the mountain lark that o’er him sings, And, like that lark a music brings, Within him, where’er he comes or goes A fount that for ever flows! The world’s to him like some playground, Where fairies dance their […]...
36. The Gift of the Sea The dead child lay in the shroud, And the widow watched beside; And her mother slept, and the Channel swept The gale in the teeth of the tide. But the mother laughed at all. “I have lost my man in the sea, And the child is dead. Be still,” she said, “What more can ye […]...
37. The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence) When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue, Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep, So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curled like a lambs back was shav’d, so I said. Hush […]...
38. Reuben Pantier Well, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted, Your love was not all in vain. I owe whatever I was in life To your hope that would not give me up, To your love that saw me still as good. Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell you the story. I pass the effect of my […]...
39. As The Sparrow To give life you must take life, And as our grief falls flat and hollow Upon the billion-blooded sea I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed With white-legged, white-bellied rotting creatures Lengthily dead and rioting against surrounding scenes. Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow Did to you; I am old when […]...
40. Sleeping at last Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over, Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past, Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover, Sleeping at last. No more a tired heart downcast or overcast, No more pangs that wring or shifting fears that hover, Sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep […]...