Cockspur Bush

Related poetry:

1. Sitting by a Bush in Broad Sunlight When I spread out my hand here today, I catch no more than a ray To feel of between thumb and fingers; No lasting effect of it lingers. There was one time and only the one When dust really took in the sun; And from that one intake of fire All creatures still warmly suspire. […]...
2. Bag Of Mice I dreamt your suicide note Was scrawled in pencil on a brown paperbag, & in the bag were six baby mice. The bag Opened into darkness, Smoldering From the top down. The mice, Huddled at the bottom, scurried the bag Across a shorn field. I stood over it & as the burning reached each carbon […]...
3. Number Song I’ve multiplied, I’m 2. He was part of me He came out of me, He took a part of me He took me apart. I’m 2, he’s my art, No, he’s separate. He art one. I’m not Done & I’m still one. I sing of my son. I’ve Multiplied. My heart’s In 2, half to […]...
4. Crowned You came to me bearing bright roses, Red like the wine of your heart; You twisted them into a garland To set me aside from the mart. Red roses to crown me your lover, And I walked aureoled and apart. Enslaved and encircled, I bore it, Proud token of my gift to you. The petals […]...
5. Here's to the Mice! (Written with the hope that the socialists might yet dethrone Kaiser and Czar.) Here’s to the mice that scare the lions, Creeping into their cages. Here’s to the fairy mice that bite The elephants fat and wise: Hidden in the hay-pile while the elephant thunder rages. Here’s to the scurrying, timid mice Through whom the […]...
6. A Forgetful Number Once upon a time there was a number Pure and round like the sun But alone very much alone It began to reckon with itself It divided multiplied itself It subtracted added itself And remained always alone It stopped reckoning with itself And shut itself up in its round And sunny purity Outside were left […]...
7. From the Bush The Channel fog has lifted – And see where we have come! Round all the world we’ve drifted, A hundred years from “home”. The fields our parents longed for – Ah! we shall ne’er know how – The wealth that they were wronged for We’ll see as strangers now! The Dover cliffs have passed on […]...
8. Music In The Bush O’er the dark pines she sees the silver moon, And in the west, all tremulous, a star; And soothing sweet she hears the mellow tune Of cow-bells jangled in the fields afar. Quite listless, for her daily stent is done, She stands, sad exile, at her rose-wreathed door, And sends her love eternal with the […]...
9. The Bush Girl So you rode from the range where your brothers “select,” Through the ghostly grey bush in the dawn – You rode slowly at first, lest her heart should suspect That you were glad to be gone; You had scarcely the courage to glance back at her By the homestead receding from view, And you breathed […]...
10. The Barberry Bush The bush that has most briers and bitter fruit, Wait till the frost has turned its green leaves red, Its sweetened berries will thy palate suit, And thou may’st find e’en there a homely bread. Upon the hills of Salem scattered wide, Their yellow blossoms gain the eye in Spring; And straggling e’en upon the […]...
11. A Bush Christening On the outer Barcoo where the churches are few, And men of religion are scanty, On a road never cross’d ‘cept by folk that are lost, One Michael Magee had a shanty. Now this Mike was the dad of a ten year old lad, Plump, healthy, and stoutly conditioned; He was strong as the best, […]...
12. A Bush Lawyer When Ironbark the turtle came to Anthony’s lagoon The hills were hid behind a mist of equinoctal rain, The ripple of the rivulets was like a cheerful tune And wild companions waltzed among the grass as tall as grain. But Ironbark the turtle cared no whit for all of these; The ripple of the rivulets, […]...
13. In Defence of the Bush So you’re back from up the country, Mister Lawson, where you went, And you’re cursing all the business in a bitter discontent; Well, we grieve to disappoint you, and it makes us sad to hear That it wasn’t cool and shady and there wasn’t whips of beer, And the looney bullock snorted when you first […]...
14. A Singer of the Bush There is waving of grass in the breeze And a song in the air, And a murmur of myriad bees That toil everywhere. There is scent in the blossom and bough, And the breath of the Spring Is as soft as a kiss on a brow And Spring-time I sing. There is drought on the […]...
15. Santa Claus in the Bush It chanced out back at the Christmas time, When the wheat was ripe and tall, A stranger rode to the farmer’s gate A sturdy man and a small. “Rin doon, rin doon, my little son Jack, And bid the stranger stay; And we’ll hae a crack for Auld Lang Syne, For the morn is Christmas […]...
16. However grown up six…six…why only yesterday It seems that fist shot out That one eye winked…and yet Now that this day’s arrived It really is as if six years Have blinked – and you’ve sprung Through a thousand instant snaps Into this boy whose tongue Can’t help but say thought not thinked Who’s no longer to be fed […]...
17. Australian Bards And Bush Reviewers While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse The gambling and the drink which are your country’s greatest curse, While you glorify the bully and take the spieler’s part You’re a clever southern writer, scarce inferior to Bret Harte. If you sing of waving grasses when the plains are dry as bricks, And […]...
18. Song “Oh! Love,” they said, “is King of Kings, And Triumph is his crown. Earth fades in flame before his wings, And Sun and Moon bow down.” But that, I knew, would never do; And Heaven is all too high. So whenever I meet a Queen, I said, I will not catch her eye. “Oh! Love,” […]...
19. The Christmas Goose Mr. Smiggs was a gentleman, And he lived in London town; His wife she was a good kind soul, And seldom known to frown. ‘Twas on Christmas eve, And Smiggs and his wife lay cosy in bed, When the thought of buying a goose Came into his head. So the next morning, Just as the […]...
20. The Leaden-Eyed Let not young souls be smothered out before They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride. It is the world’s one crime its babes grow dull, Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed. Not that they starve; but starve so dreamlessly, Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap, Not that they serve, […]...
21. Aunt Helen MISS HELEN SLINGSBY was my maiden aunt, And lived in a small house near a fashionable square Cared for by servants to the number of four. Now when she died there was silence in heaven And silence at her end of the street. The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet- He was […]...
22. A Western Ballad When I died, love, when I died My heart was broken in your care; I never suffered love so fair As now I suffer and abide When I died, love, when I died. When I died, love, when I died I wearied in an endless maze That men have walked for centuries, As endless as […]...
23. In Memory of Anyone Unknown to Me At this particular time I have no one Particular person to grieve for, though there must Be many, many unknown ones going to dust Slowly, not remembered for what they have done Or left undone. For these, then, I will grieve Being impartial, unable to deceive. How they lived, or died, is quite unknown, And, […]...
24. 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 […]...
25. Victory comes late Victory comes late And is held low to freezing lips Too rapt with frost To take it How sweet it would have tasted Just a Drop Was God so economical? His Table’s spread too high for Us Unless We dine on tiptoe Crumbs fit such little mouths Cherries suit Robbins The Eagle’s Golden Breakfast strangles […]...
26. The Titanic Forth flashed the serpent streak of steel, Consummate crown of man’s device; Down crashed upon an immobile And brainless barrier of ice. Courage! The grey gods shoot a laughing lip: – Let not faith founder with the ship! We reel before the blows of fate; Our stout souls stagger at the shock. Oh! there is […]...
27. In the New Garden in all the Parts IN the new garden, in all the parts, In cities now, modern, I wander, Though the second or third result, or still further, primitive yet, Days, places, indifferent-though various, the same, Time, Paradise, the Mannahatta, the prairies, finding me unchanged, Death indifferent-Is it that I lived long since? Was I buried very long ago? For […]...
28. An Epicure Should you preserve white mice in honey Don’t use imported ones from China, For though they cost you less in money You’ll find the Japanese ones finer. But if Chinese, stuff them with spice, Which certainly improves their savour, And though the Canton mice are nice, The Pekinese have finer flavour. If you should pickle […]...
29. Diary of a Church Mouse Here among long-discarded cassocks, Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks, Here where the vicar never looks I nibble through old service books. Lean and alone I spend my days Behind this Church of England baize. I share my dark forgotten room With two oil-lamps and half a broom. The cleaner never bothers me, So here […]...
30. Roses (For Katherine Bregy) I went to gather roses and twine them in a ring, For I would make a posy, a posy for the King. I got an hundred roses, the loveliest there be, From the white rose vine and the pink rose bush and from the red Rose tree. But when I took my […]...
31. The Coronet When for the Thorns with which I long, too long, With many a piercing wound, My Saviours head have crown’d, I seek with Garlands to redress that Wrong: Through every Garden, every Mead, I gather flow’rs (my fruits are only flow’rs) Dismantling all the fragrant Towers That once adorn’d my Shepherdesses head. And now when […]...
32. A Confession To A Friend In Trouble Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less Here, far away, than when I tarried near; I even smile old smiles with listlessness Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere. A thought too strange to house within my brain Haunting its outer precincts I discern: That I will not show zeal again to […]...
33. Jack JACK was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun. He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day, And his hands were tougher than sole leather. He married a tough woman and they had eight children And the woman died and the children grew up and Went away and wrote the old man every two years. […]...
34. To Mrs Reynolds' Cat Cat! who hast pass’d thy grand climacteric, How many mice and rats hast in thy days Destroy’d? How many tit bits stolen? Gaze With those bright languid segments green, and prick Those velvet ears – but pr’ythee do not stick Thy latent talons in me – and upraise Thy gentle mew – and tell me […]...
35. Fawn's Foster-Mother The old woman sits on a bench before the door and quarrels With her meagre pale demoralized daughter. Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the sun And saying that when she was first married She lived in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon. (It is empty now, the roof has fallen […]...
36. 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 […]...
37. To fight aloud, is very brave To fight aloud, is very brave But gallanter, I know Who charge within the bosom The Cavalry of Woe Who win, and nations do not see Who fall and none observe Whose dying eyes, no Country Regards with patriot love We trust, in plumed procession For such, the Angels go Rank after Rank, with even […]...
38. Dow Kritt Samuel is forever talking of his elm But I did not need to die to learn about roots: I, who dug all the ditches about Spoon River. Look at my elm! Sprung from as good a seed as his, Sown at the same time, It is dying at the top: Not from lack of life, […]...
39. The Prince's Progress (excerpt) “Too late for love, too late for joy, Too late, too late! You loitered on the road too long, You trifled at the gate: The enchanted dove upon her branch Died without a mate. The enchanted princess in her tower Slept, died, behind the grate; Her heart was starving all this while You made it […]...
40. Tokens Green mwold on zummer bars do show That they’ve a-dripped in winter wet; The hoof-worn ring o’ groun’ below The tree do tell o’ storms or het; The trees in rank along a ledge Do show where woonce did bloom a hedge; An’ where the vurrow-marks do stripe The down the wheat woonce rustled ripe. […]...