The Lark

Related poetry:

1. Split the Lark and you'll find the Music Split the Lark and you’ll find the Music Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled Scantilly dealt to the Summer Morning Saved for your Ear when Lutes be old. Loose the Flood you shall find it patent Gush after Gush, reserved for you Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas! Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?...
2. Hummingbird Pauses at the Trumpet Vine Who doesn’t love Roses, and who Doesn’t love the lilies Of the black ponds Floating like flocks Of tiny swans, And of course, the flaming Trumpet vine Where the hummingbird comes Like a small green angel, to soak His dark tongue In happiness – And who doesn’t want To live with the brisk Motor of […]...
3. When I was a Bird I climbed up the karaka tree Into a nest all made of leaves But soft as feathers. I made up a song that went on singing all by itself And hadn’t any words, but got sad at the end. There were daisies in the grass under the tree. I said just to try them: “I’ll […]...
4. Canal Bank Walk Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal Pouring redemption for me, that I do The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal, Grow with nature again as before I grew. The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third Party to the couple kissing on an old seat, And a bird […]...
5. Poem (The spirit likes to dress up…) The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, Shoulders, and all the rest at night in the black branches, in the morning In the blue branches of the world. It could float, of course, but would rather Plumb rough matter. Airy and shapeless thing, it needs the metaphor of the body, […]...
6. The Lark From wrath-red dawn to wrath-red dawn, The guns have brayed without abate; And now the sick sun looks upon The bleared, blood-boltered fields of hate As if it loathed to rise again. How strange the hush! Yet sudden, hark! From yon down-trodden gold of grain, The leaping rapture of a lark. A fusillade of melody, […]...
7. Concord Reconciled by death’s mild hand, that giving Peace gives wisdom, not more strong than mild, Love beholds them, each without misgiving Reconciled. Each on earth alike of earth reviled, Hated, feared, derided, and forgiving, Each alike had heaven at heart, and smiled. Both bright names, clothed round with man’s thanksgiving, Shine, twin stars above the […]...
8. The Exposed Nest You were forever finding some new play. So when I saw you down on hands and knees I the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay, Trying, I thought, to set it up on end, I went to show you how to make it stay, If that was your idea, against the breeze, And, if you […]...
9. A Myth A FLOATING, a floating Across the sleeping sea, All night I heard a singing bird Upon the topmast tree. “Oh, came you from the isles of Greece Or from the banks of Seine; Or off some tree in forests free, Which fringe the western main?” “I came not off the old world Nor yet from […]...
10. Tattoo The light is like a spider. It crawls over the water. It crawls over the edges of the snow. It crawls under your eyelids And spreads its webs there Its two webs. The webs of your eyes Are fastened To the flesh and bones of you As to rafters or grass. There are filaments of […]...
11. Forgetfulness Forgetfulness is like a song That, freed from beat and measure, wanders. Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled, Outspread and motionless, A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly. Forgetfulness is rain at night, Or an old house in a forest, or a child. Forgetfulness is white, white as a blasted tree, And […]...
12. The Ambition Bird So it has come to this Insomnia at 3:15 A. M., The clock tolling its engine Like a frog following A sundial yet having an electric Seizure at the quarter hour. The business of words keeps me awake. I am drinking cocoa, That warm brown mama. I would like a simple life Yet all night […]...
13. Rest ON me to rest, my bird, my bird: The swaying branches of my heart Are blown by every wind toward The home whereto their wings depart. Build not your nest, my bird, on me; I know no peace but ever sway: O lovely bird, be free, be free, On the wild music of the day. […]...
14. The Demon In Me The demon in me’s not dead, He’s living, and well. In the body as in a hold, In the self as in a cell. The world is but walls. The exit’s the axe. (“All the world’s a stage,” The actor prates.) And that hobbling buffoon Is no joker; In the body as in glory, In […]...
15. The Cuckoo No lyric line I ever penned The praise this parasitic bird; And what is more, I don’t intend To write a laudatory word, Since in my garden robins made A nest with eggs of dainty spot, And then a callous cuckoo laid A lone on on the lot. Of course the sillies hatched it out […]...
16. Love Poem Yours is the face that the earth turns to me, Continuous beyond its human features lie The mountain forms that rest against the sky. With your eyes, the reflecting rainbow, the sun’s light Sees me; forest and flower, bird and beast Know and hold me forever in the world’s thought, Creation’s deep untroubled retrospect. When […]...
17. The Landrail How sweet and pleasant grows the way Through summer time again While Landrails call from day to day Amid the grass and grain We hear it in the weeding time When knee deep waves the corn We hear it in the summers prime Through meadows night and morn And now I hear it in the […]...
18. Dream Song 94: Ill lay he long, upon this last return Ill lay he long, upon this last return, Unvisited. The doctors put everything in the hospital Into reluctant Henry And the nurses took it out & put it back, Smiling like fiends, with their eternal ‘we.’ Henry did a slow burn, Collapsing his dialogue to their white ears & shiny on the flanges. Sanka he […]...
19. Bert Kessler I winged my bird, Though he flew toward the setting sun; But just as the shot rang out, he soared Up and up through the splinters of golden light, Till he turned right over, feathers ruffled, With some of the down of him floating near, And fell like a plummet into the grass. I tramped […]...
20. Camouflage Beside the bare and beaten track of travelling flocks and herds The woodpecker went tapping on, the postman of the birds, “I’ve got a letter here,” he said, “that no one’s understood, Addressed as follows: ‘To the bird that’s like a piece of wood.’ “The soldier bird got very cross it wasn’t meant for her; […]...
21. The Nurse Such innocent companionship Is hers, whether she wake or sleep, ‘Tis scarcely strange her face should wear The young child’s grave and innocent air. All the night long she hath by her The quiet breathing, the soft stir, Nor knows how in that tender place The children’s angels veil the face. She wakes at dawn […]...
22. Snow In the gloom of whiteness, In the great silence of snow, A child was sighing And bitterly saying: “Oh, They have killed a white bird up there on her nest, The down is fluttering from her breast!” And still it fell through that dusky brightness On the child crying for the bird of the snow....
23. Road and Hills I shall go away To the brown hills, the quiet ones, The vast, the mountainous, the rolling, Sun-fired and drowsy! My horse snuffs delicately At the strange wind; He settles to a swinging trot; his hoofs tramp the dust. The road winds, straightens, Slashes a marsh, Shoulders out a bridge, Then Again the hills. Unchanged, […]...
24. No Master Indeed this is the sweet life! my hand Is under no proud man’s command; There is no voice to break my rest Before a bird has left its nest; There is no man to change my mood, When I go nutting in the wood; No man to pluck my sleeve and say I want thy […]...
25. PLEA FOR A HISTORY OF WORKING-CLASS LEEDS I want a true history of my city FUCK THE DE LACY FAMILY AND DOUBLE FUCK JOHN OF GAUNT ESPECIALLY And all his descendants With their particular vilenesses – I met one in the sixties Who had all the coldness of Himmler So svelte and adored by the cognoscenti. I want a history responsive To […]...
26. Friends Departed They are all gone into the world of light! And I alone sit ling’ring here; Their very memory is fair and bright, And my sad thoughts doth clear. It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, Like stars upon some gloomy grove, Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest After the sun’s […]...
27. They are all Gone into the World of Light 1 They are all gone into the world of light! 2 And I alone sit ling’ring here; 3 Their very memory is fair and bright, 4 And my sad thoughts doth clear. 5 It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, 6 Like stars upon some gloomy grove, 7 Or those faint beams in which […]...
28. The Earth God loafs around heaven, Without a shape But He would like to smoke His cigar Or bite His fingernails And so forth. God owns heaven But He craves the earth, The earth with its little sleepy caves, Its bird resting at the kitchen window, Even its murders lined up like broken chairs, Even its writers […]...
29. Grass The living room is overgrown with grass. It has Come up around the furniture. It stretches through The dining room, past the swinging door into the Kitchen. It extends for miles and miles into the Walls. . . There’s treasure in grass, things dropped or put There; a stick of rust that was once a […]...
30. The Caged Skylark As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells- That bird beyond the remembering his free fells; This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life’s age. Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage, Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells, Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in […]...
31. 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 […]...
32. My Home This is the place that I love the best, A little brown house, like a ground-bird’s nest, Hid among grasses, and vines, and trees, Summer retreat of the birds and bees. The tenderest light that ever was seen Sifts through the vine-made window screen Sifts and quivers, and flits and falls On home-made carpets and […]...
33. Giant Snail The rain has stopped. The waterfall will roar like that all Night. I have come out to take a walk and feed. My body foot, That is is wet and cold and covered with sharp gravel. It is White, the size of a dinner plate. I have set myself a goal, a Certain rock, but […]...
34. A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts The difficulty to think at the end of day, When the shapeless shadow covers the sun And nothing is left except light on your fur- There was the cat slopping its milk all day, Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk And August the most peaceful month. To be, in the grass, in the […]...
35. Always I am not jealous Of what came before me. Come with a man On your shoulders, Come with a hundred men in your hair, Come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet, Come like a river Full of drowned men Which flows down to the wild sea, To the eternal surf, to […]...
36. Dream Song 49: Blind Old Pussy-cat if he won’t eat, he don’t Feel good into his tum’, old Pussy-cat. He wants to have eaten. Tremor, heaves, he sweaterings. He can’t. A dizzy swims of where is Henry at; . . . somewhere streng verboten. How come he sleeps & sleeps and sleeps, waking like death: Locate the restorations of […]...
37. O Singer in Brown O, singer in brown! O, bird o’ th’ morn! O, heart of delight In th’ deep o’ th’ thorn! Glad is thy song Thou joy o’ th’ morn, Thou palpitant throat In the heart o’ th’ thorn! Thy song of the nest, O, sweet o’ th’ morn! A nest and an egg In the thick […]...
38. Hark! Hark! The Lark Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings, And Phoebus ‘gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chalic’d flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes; With everything that pretty is, My lady sweet, arise: Arise, arise!...
39. Gannets I am watching the white gannets Blaze down into the water With the power of blunt spears And a stunning accuracy Even though the sea is riled and boiling And gray with fog And the fish Are nowhere to be seen, They fall, they explode into the water Like white gloves, Then they vanish, Then […]...
40. Once more, my now bewildered Dove Once more, my now bewildered Dove Bestirs her puzzled wings Once more her mistress, on the deep Her troubled question flings Thrice to the floating casement The Patriarch’s bird returned, Courage! My brave Columbia! There may yet be land...