The Oak

Related poetry:

1. Adonis 1. Each of us like you Has died once, Has passed through drift of wood-leaves, Cracked and bent And tortured and unbent In the winter-frost, The burnt into gold points, Lighted afresh, Crisp amber, scales of gold-leaf, Gold turned and re-welded In the sun; Each of us like you Has died once, Each of us […]...
2. The Haunted Oak Pray why are you so bare, so bare, Oh, bough of the old oak-tree; And why, when I go through the shade you throw, Runs a shudder over me? My leaves were green as the best, I trow, And sap ran free in my veins, But I say in the moonlight dim and weird A […]...
3. Morning (Love Sonnet XXVII) Naked you are simple as one of your hands; Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round. You’ve moon-lines, apple pathways Naked you are slender as a naked grain of wheat. Naked you are blue as a night in Cuba; You’ve vines and stars in your hair. Naked you are spacious and yellow As summer in a golden […]...
4. The Leaf And The Tree When will you learn, myself, to be A dying leaf on a living tree? Budding, swelling, growing strong, Wearing green, but not for long, Drawing sustenance from air, That other leaves, and you not there, May bud, and at the autumn’s call Wearing russet, ready to fall? Has not this trunk a deed to do […]...
5. 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 […]...
6. Webster Ford Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo, The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M’Grew Cried, “There’s a ghost,” and I, “It’s Delphic Apollo”; And the son of the banker derided us, saying, “It’s light By the flags at the water’s edge, you half-witted fools.” And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long […]...
7. The Summit Redwood Only stand high a long enough time your lightning will come; that is what blunts the peaks of redwoods; But this old tower of life on the hilltop has taken it more than twice a century, this knows in every Cell the salty and the burning taste, the shudder and the voice. The fire from […]...
8. The Palm And The Pine From the German of Heine. In the far North stands a Pine-tree, lone, Upon a wintry height; It sleeps: around it snows have thrown A covering of white. It dreams forever of a Palm That, far i’ the Morning-land, Stands silent in a most sad calm Midst of the burning sand....
9. On A Palmetto Through all that year-scarred agony of height, Unblest of bough or bloom, to where expands His wandy circlet with his bladed bands Dividing every wind, or loud or light, To termless hymns of love and old despite, Yon tall palmetto in the twilight stands, Bare Dante of these purgatorial sands That glimmer marginal to the […]...
10. Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in […]...
11. The Owners Of The Little Box Line the inside of the little box With your precious skin And make yourself cozy Just as you would in your own home Make space voyages inside her Gather stars make time squirt its milk And sleep in the clouds Just don’t go around pretending You’re more important than her length And wiser than her […]...
12. The Little Box The little box gets her first teeth And her little length Little width little emptiness And all the rest she has The little box continues growing The cupboard that she was inside Is now inside her And she grows bigger bigger bigger Now the room is inside her And the house and the city and […]...
13. The Métier of Blossoming Fully occupied with growing that’s The amaryllis. Growing especially At night: it would take Only a bit more patience than I’ve got To sit keeping watch with it till daylight; The naked eye could register every hour’s Increase in height. Like a child against a barn door, Proudly topping each year’s achievement, Steadily up Goes […]...
14. Historion No man hath dared to write this thing as yet, And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great At times pass athrough us, And we are melted into them, and are not Save reflexions of their souls. Thus am I Dante for a space and am One Francois Villon, ballad-lord and […]...
15. Four Days In Vermont Window’s tree trunk’s predominant face A single eye-leveled hole where limb’s torn off Another larger contorts to swell growing in around Imploding wound beside a clutch of thin twigs Hold to one two three four five six dry twisted Yellowish brown leaves flat against the other Gray trees in back stick upright then the glimpse […]...
16. My Book Before I drink myself to death, God, let me finish up my Book! At night, I fear, I fight for breath, And wake up whiter than a spook; And crawl off to a bistro near, And drink until my brain is clear. Rare Absinthe! Oh, it gives me strength To write and write; and so […]...
17. Fallen Leaves Why should I be the first to fall Of all the leaves on this old tree? Though sadly soon I know that all Will lose their hold and follow me. While my birth-brothers bravely blow, Why should I be first to go? Why should I be the last to cling Of all the leaves on […]...
18. LE PANNEAU Under the rose-tree’s dancing shade There stands a little ivory girl, Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl With pale green nails of polished jade. The red leaves fall upon the mould, The white leaves flutter, one by one, Down to a blue bowl where the sun, Like a great dragon, writhes in gold. The […]...
19. The Wife a-Lost Since I noo mwore do zee your feace, Up steairs or down below, I’ll zit me in the lwonesome pleace, Where flat-bough’d beech do grow; Below the beeches’ bough, my love, Where you did never come, An’ I don’t look to meet ye now, As I do look at hwome. Since you noo mwore be […]...
20. October The green elm with the one great bough of gold Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one, The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white, Harebell and scabious and tormentil, That blackberry and gorse, in dew and sun, Bow down to; and the wind travels too light To shake the fallen birch leaves […]...
21. Climbing High up in the apple tree climbing I go, With the sky above me, the earth below. Each branch is the step of a wonderful stair Which leads to the town I see shining up there. Climbing, climbing, higher and higher, The branches blow and I see a spire, The gleam of a turret, the […]...
22. Sestina I wandered o’er the vast green plains of youth, And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height Fame’s silhouette stood sharp against the skies. Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway I caught the glimmer of a golden goal, While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love. Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed […]...
23. Britannia's Pastorals Now as an angler melancholy standing Upon a green bank yielding room for landing, A wriggling yellow worm thrust on his hook, Now in the midst he throws, then in a nook: Here pulls his line, there throws it in again, Mendeth his cork and bait, but all in vain, He long stands viewing of […]...
24. The Tree: An Old Man's Story I Its roots are bristling in the air Like some mad Earth-god’s spiny hair; The loud south-wester’s swell and yell Smote it at midnight, and it fell. Thus ends the tree Where Some One sat with me. II Its boughs, which none but darers trod, A child may step on from the sod, And twigs […]...
25. 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 […]...
26. Gold Leaves Lo! I am come to autumn, When all the leaves are gold; Grey hairs and golden leaves cry out The year and I are old. In youth I sought the prince of men, Captain in cosmic wars, Our Titan, even the weeds would show Defiant, to the stars. But now a great thing in the […]...
27. Dolor of Autumn The acrid scents of autumn, Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear Everything, tear-trembling stars of autumn And the snore of the night in my ear. For suddenly, flush-fallen, All my life, in a rush Of shedding away, has left me Naked, exposed on the bush. I, on the bush of the globe, Like a […]...
28. The Naked And The Nude For me, the naked and the nude (By lexicographers construed As synonyms that should express The same deficiency of dress Or shelter) stand as wide apart As love from lies, or truth from art. Lovers without reproach will gaze On bodies naked and ablaze; The Hippocratic eye will see In nakedness, anatomy; And naked shines […]...
29. 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 […]...
30. Fatima O Love, Love, Love! O withering might! O sun, that from thy noonday height Shudderest when I strain my sight, Throbbing thro’ all thy heat and light, Lo, falling from my constant mind, Lo, parch’d and wither’d, deaf and blind, I whirl like leaves in roaring wind. Last night I wasted hateful hours Below the […]...
31. Vickery's Mountain Blue in the west the mountain stands, And through the long twilight Vickery sits with folded hands, And Vickery’s eyes are bright. Bright, for he knows what no man else On earth as yet may know: There’s a golden word that he never tells, And a gift that he will not show. He dreams of […]...
32. Pomona I am the ancient apple-queen, As once I was so am I now. For evermore a hope unseen, Betwixt the blossom and the bough. Ah, where’s the river’s hidden Gold! And where the windy grave of Troy? Yet come I as I came of old, From out the heart of Summer’s joy....
33. Pan with Us Pan came out of the woods one day, His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray, The gray of the moss of walls were they, And stood in the sun and looked his fill At wooded valley and wooded hill. He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand, On a height of naked […]...
34. Epilogue “Why can’t you say what you mean straight out in prose?” Well, say it yourself: then say “It’s that, but more, Or less perhaps, or not that way, or not That after all.” The meaning of a song Might be an undernote; this tree might mean That leaf as much as trunk, branch, other leaves. […]...
35. The Woods Entry So old is the wood, so old, Old as Fear. Wrinkled roots; great stems; hushed leaves; No sound near. Shadows retreat into shadow, Deepening, crossed. Burning light singles a low leaf, a bough, Far within, lost....
36. Samuel Gardner I who kept the greenhouse, Lover of trees and flowers, Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm, Measuring its generous branches with my eye, And listened to its rejoicing leaves Lovingly patting each other With sweet aeolian whispers. And well they might: For the roots had grown so wide and deep That the soil of […]...
37. 5.7 I don’t care if you are you and I am I. I am not some exotic flower. Whatever coat you have on, I will put it on to warm me… and the shoes however small… I will walk in them to balance our height difference. You don’t need to convert for me; I have already […]...
38. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
39. Fairy Land iv WHERE the bee sucks, there suck I: In a cowslip’s bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat’s back I do fly After summer merrily: Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough....
40. Burning Off They’re burning off at the Rampadells, The tawny flames uprise, With greedy licking around the trees; The fierce breath sears our eyes. From cores already grown furnace-hot – The logs are well alight! We fling more wood where the flameless heart Is throbbing red and white. The fire bites deep in that beating heart, The […]...