Variations on the Word Love

Related poetry:

1. Variations on ‘The short night Below are eleven Buson haiku Beginning with the phrase ‘The short night ‘ The short night On the hairy caterpillar Beads of dew. The short night Patrolmen Washing in the river. The short night Bubbles of crab froth Among the river reeds. The short night A broom thrown away On the beach. The short night […]...
2. O Word I Love to Sing O word I love to sing! thou art too tender For all the passions agitating me; For all my bitterness thou art too tender, I cannot pour my red soul into thee. O haunting melody! thou art too slender, Too fragile like a globe of crystal glass; For all my stormy thoughts thou art too […]...
3. 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 […]...
4. Variations of Greek Themes I A HAPPY MAN (Carphyllides) When these graven lines you see, Traveler, do not pity me; Though I be among the dead, Let no mournful word be said. Children that I leave behind, And their children, all were kind; Near to them and to my wife, I was happy all my life. My three sons […]...
5. Afflictions Sanctified by the Word Oh how I love Thy holy Word, Thy gracious covenant, O Lord! It guides me in the peaceful way; I think upon it all the day. What are the mines of shining wealth, The strength of youth, the bloom of health! What are all joys compared with those Thine everlasting Word bestows! Long unafflicted, undismay’d, […]...
6. 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 […]...
7. Escape is such a thankful Word Escape is such a thankful Word I often in the Night Consider it unto myself No spectacle in sight Escape it is the Basket In which the Heart is caught When down some awful Battlement The rest of Life is dropt ‘Tis not to sight the savior It is to be the saved And that […]...
8. Variations on an Elizabethan Theme Long days, short nights, this Southern summer Fixes the mind within its timeless place. Athwart pale limbs the brazen hummer Hangs and is gone, warm sound its quickened space. Butterfly weed and cardinal flower, Orange and red, with indigo the band, Perfect themselves unto the hour. And blood suffused within the sunlit hand, Within the […]...
9. I don't remember the word I wished to say I don’t remember the word I wished to say. The blind swallow returns to the hall of shadow, On shorn wings, with the translucent ones to play. The song of night is sung without memory, though. No birds. No blossoms on the dried flowers. The manes of night’s horses are translucent. An empty boat drifts […]...
10. A Word made Flesh is seldom A Word made Flesh is seldom And tremblingly partook Nor then perhaps reported But have I not mistook Each one of us has tasted With ecstasies of stealth The very food debated To our specific strength A Word that breathes distinctly Has not the power to die Cohesive as the Spirit It may expire if […]...
11. Last Word To Childhood Ice-cold fear has slowly decreased As my bones have grown, my height increased. Though I shiver in snow of dreams, I shall never Freeze again in a noonday terror. I shall never break, my sinews crumble As God-the-headmaster’s fingers fumble At the other side of unopening doors Which I watch for a hundred thousand years. […]...
12. Variation On The Word Sleep I would like to watch you sleeping, Which may not happen. I would like to watch you, Sleeping. I would like to sleep With you, to enter Your sleep as its smooth dark wave Slides over my head And walk with you through that lucent Wavering forest of bluegreen leaves With its watery sun & […]...
13. One Word Is Too Often Profaned One word is too often profaned For me to profane it; One feeling too falsely disdained For thee to disdain it; One hope is too like despair For prudence to smother; And pity from thee more dear Than that from another. I can give not what men call love; But wilt thou accept not The […]...
14. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
15. A little overflowing word A little overflowing word That any, hearing, had inferred For Ardor or for Tears, Though Generations pass away, Traditions ripen and decay, As eloquent appears...
16. It Is Not A Word It is not a word spoken, Few words are said; Nor even a look of the eyes Nor a bend of the head, But only a hush of the heart That has too much to keep, Only memories waking That sleep so light a sleep....
17. Immortal is an ample word Immortal is an ample word When what we need is by But when it leaves us for a time ‘Tis a necessity. Of Heaven above the firmest proof We fundamental know Except for its marauding Hand It had been Heaven below....
18. The Light and Glory of the Word The Spirit breathes upon the word, And brings the truth to sight; Precepts and promises afford A sanctifying light. A glory gilds the sacred page, Majestic like the sun; It gives a light to every age, It gives, but borrows none. The hand that gave it still supplies The gracious light and heat; His truths […]...
19. One-word garments Waves of circumflexes Storms of adverbs, Windmills of verbs, Shells of signs of ellipsis, On the island of poems Of soul, Of mind, Of thought, One-word garments You wear To endure!...
20. Proud Word You Never Spoke Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak Four not exempt from pride some future day. Resting on one white hand a warm wet cheek, Over my open volume you will say, ‘This man loved me’-then rise and trip away....
21. Lies About Love We are a liars, because The truth of yesterday becomes a lie tomorrow, Whereas letters are fixed, And we live by the letter of truth. The love I feel for my friend, this year, Is different from the love I felt last year. If it were not so, it would be a lie. Yet we […]...
22. A Word dropped careless on a Page A Word dropped careless on a Page May stimulate an eye When folded in perpetual seam The Wrinkled Maker lie Infection in the sentence breeds We may inhale Despair At distances of Centuries From the Malaria...
23. "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 […]...
24. There is a word There is a word Which bears a sword Can pierce an armed man It hurls its barbed syllables And is mute again But where it fell The saved will tell On patriotic day, Some epauletted Brother Gave his breath away. Wherever runs the breathless sun Wherever roams the day There is its noiseless onset There […]...
25. Theme with Variations I never loved a dear Gazelle Nor anything that cost me much: High prices profit those who sell, But why should I be fond of such? To glad me with his soft black eye My son comes trotting home from school; He’s had a fight but can’t tell why He always was a little fool! […]...
26. The Last Word of a Blue Bird As told to a child As I went out a Crow In a low voice said, “Oh, I was looking for you. How do you do? I just came to tell you To tell Lesley (will you?) That her little Bluebird Wanted me to bring word That the north wind last night That made the […]...
27. 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 […]...
28. The Truth of Woman Woman’s faith, and woman’s trust – Write the characters in the dust; Stamp them on the running stream, Print them on the moon’s pale beam, And each evanescent letter Shall be clearer, firmer, better, And more permanent, I ween, Than the thing those letters mean. I have strain’d the spider’s thread ‘Gainst the promise of […]...
29. The Beautiful American Word, Sure The beautiful American word, Sure, As I have come into a room, and touch The lamp’s button, and the light blooms with such Certainty where the darkness loomed before, As I care for what I do not know, and care Knowing for little she might not have been, And for how little she would be […]...
30. Sonnet 31 – Thou comest! all is said without a word Thou comest! all is said without a word. I sit beneath thy looks, as children do In the noon-sun, with souls that tremble through Their happy eyelids from an unaverred Yet prodigal inward joy. Behold, I erred In that last doubt! and yet I cannot rue The sin most, but the occasion-that we two Should […]...
31. 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 […]...
32. The Word There are so many things I have forgot, That once were much to me, or that were not, All lost, as is a childless woman’s child And its child’s children, in the undefiled Abyss of what can never be again. I have forgot, too, names of the mighty men That fought and lost or won […]...
33. Variations of an Air Old King Cole Was a merry old soul And a merry old soul was he He called for his pipe And he called for his bowl And he called for his fiddlers three After Lord Tennyson Cole, that unwearied prince of Colchester, Growing more gay with age and with long days Deeper in laughter and […]...
34. A Woman's Last Word I. Let’s contend no more, Love, Strive nor weep: All be as before, Love, -Only sleep! II. What so wild as words are? I and thou In debate, as birds are, Hawk on bough! III. See the creature stalking While we speak! Hush and hide the talking, Cheek on cheek! IV. What so false as […]...
35. Home And Love Just Home and Love! the words are small Four little letters unto each; And yet you will not find in all The wide and gracious range of speech Two more so tenderly complete: When angels talk in Heaven above, I’m sure they have no words more sweet Than Home and Love. Just Home and Love! […]...
36. Sometimes with One I Love SOMETIMES with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn’d love; But now I think there is no unreturn’d love-the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return’d; Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)...
37. Love came back at Fall o’ Dew Love came back at fall o’ dew, Playing his old part; But I had a word or two That would break his heart. “He who comes at candlelight, That should come before, Must betake him to the night From a barred door.” This the word that made us part In the fall o’ dew; This […]...
38. Dream Song 117: Disturbed, when Henry's love returned with a hubby Disturbed, when Henry’s love returned with a hubby, — I see that, Henry, I don’t put that down, — He thought he had to think Or with a razor like a skating-rink Have more to say or more to them downtown In the Christmas season, like a hobby. Their letters will, released, shake the mapped […]...
39. Love After Love The time will come When, with elation You will greet yourself arriving At your own door, in your own mirror And each will smile at the other’s welcome, And say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart To itself, to the […]...
40. Dream Variations To fling my arms wide In some place of the sun, To whirl and to dance Till the white day is done. Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree While night comes on gently, Dark like me- That is my dream! To fling my arms wide In the face of the sun, Dance! […]...