Discrimination

Related poetry:

1. The Bibliomaniac's Bride The women-folk are like to books, Most pleasing to the eye, Whereon if anybody looks He feels disposed to buy. I hear that many are for sale, Those that record no dates, And such editions as regale The view with colored plates. Of every quality and grade And size they may be found, Quite often […]...
2. TO SIR CLIPSBY CREW Since to the country first I came, I have lost my former flame; And, methinks, I not inherit, As I did, my ravish’d spirit. If I write a verse or two, ‘Tis with very much ado; In regard I want that wine Which should conjure up a line. Yet, though now of Muse bereft, I […]...
3. As Sleigh Bells seem in summer As Sleigh Bells seem in summer Or Bees, at Christmas show So fairy so fictitious The individuals do Repealed from observation A Party that we knew More distant in an instant Than Dawn in Timbuctoo....
4. Pullman Porter The porter in the Pullman car Was charming, as they sometimes are. He scanned my baggage tags: “Are you The man who wrote of Lady Lou?” When I said “yes” he made a fuss – Oh, he was most assiduous; And I was pleased to think that he Enjoyed my brand of poetry. He was […]...
5. The Bell From Europe The tower bell in the Tenth Street Church Rang out nostalgia for the refugee Who knew the source of bells by sound. We liked it, but in ignorance. One meets authorities on bells infrequently. Europe alone made bells with such a tone, Herr Mannheim said. The bell Struck midnight, and it shook the room. He […]...
6. My Masters Of Poetry I’ve been accused, But much more often I have not; Oh, I have been so much amused By those who’ve put me on the spot, And measured me by rules above Those I observe with equal love. An artisan of verse am I, Of simple sense and humble tone; My Thesaurus is handy […]...
7. A Tragedy Among his books he sits all day To think and read and write; He does not smell the new-mown hay, The roses red and white. I walk among them all alone, His silly, stupid wife; The world seems tasteless, dead and done – An empty thing is life. At night his window casts a square […]...
8. Vanity My tangoing seemed to delight her; With me it was love at first sight. I mentioned That I was a writer: She asked me: “What is it you write?” “Oh, only best-sellers,” I told her. Their titles? . . . She shook her blonde head; The atmosphere seemed to grow colder: Not one of my […]...
9. Sunshine FOR A VERY LITTLE GIRL, NOT A YEAR OLD. CATHARINE FRAZEE WAKEFIELD. The sun gives not directly The coal, the diamond crown; Not in a special basket Are these from Heaven let down. The sun gives not directly The plough, man’s iron friend; Not by a path or stairway Do tools from Heaven descend. Yet […]...
10. Poor Poet ‘A man should write to please himself,’ He proudly said. Well, see his poems on the shelf, Dusty, unread. When he came to my shop each day, So peaked and cold, I’d sneak one of his books away And say ’twas sold. And then by chance he looked below, And saw a stack Of his […]...
11. Four-Foot Shelf ‘Come, see,’ said he, ‘my four-foot shelf, A forty volume row; And every one I wrote myself, But that, of course, you know.’ I stared, I searched a memory dim, For though an author too, Somehow I’d never heard of him, None of his books I knew. Said I: ‘I’d like to borrow one, Fond […]...
12. Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
13. My Hundred Books A thousand books my library Contains; And all are primed, it seems to me With brains. Mine are so few I scratch in thought My head; For just a hundred of the lot I’ve read. A hundred books, but of the best, I can With wisdom savour and digest And scan. Yet when afar from […]...
14. Poem (The lump of coal my parents teased) The lump of coal my parents teased I’d find in my Christmas stocking Turned out each year to be an orange, For I was their sunshine. Now I have one C. gave me, A dense node of sleeping fire. I keep it where I read and write. “You’re on chummy terms with dread,” It reminds […]...
15. Poetry For Supper ‘Listen, now, verse should be as natural As the small tuber that feeds on muck And grows slowly from obtuse soil To the white flower of immortal beauty.’ ‘Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer Said once about the long toil That goes like blood to the poem’s making? Leave it to nature and the verse […]...
16. Farewell To Verse In youth when oft my muse was dumb, My fancy nighly dead, To make my inspiration come I stood upon my head; And thus I let the blood down flow Into my cerebellum, And published every Spring or so Slim tomes in vellum. Alas! I am rheumatic now, Grey is my crown; I can no […]...
17. My Cross I wrote a poem to the moon But no one noticed it; Although I hoped that late or soon Someone would praise a bit Its purity and grace forlone, Its beauty tulip-cool… But as my poem died still-born, I felt a fool. I wrote a verse of vulgar trend Spiced with an oath or two; […]...
18. He Came To Read He came to read. Two or three books Are open; historians and poets. But he only read for ten minutes, And gave them up. He is dozing On the sofa. He is fully devoted to books But he is twenty-three years old, and he’s very handsome; And this afternoon love passed Through his ideal flesh, […]...
19. Ernie Pyle I wish I had a simple style In writing verse, As in his prose had Ernie Pyle, So true and terse; Springing so forthright from the heart With guileless art. I wish I could put back a dram As Ernie could; I wish that I could cuss and damn As soldier should; And fain with […]...
20. 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 […]...
21. Poetics You know the old story Ann Landers tells About the houseife in her basement doing the wash? She’s wearing her nightie, and she thinks, “Well, hell, I might’s well put this in as well,” and then Being dripped on by a leaky pipe puts on Her son’s football helmet; whereupon The meter reader happens to […]...
22. Poetry it Takes A lot of Desperation Dissatisfaction And Disillusion To Write A Few Good Poems. It’s not For Everybody Either to Write It Or even to Read It....
23. THE DAYS GO BY for Daniel Weissbort Some poems meant only for my eyes About a grief I can’t let go But I want to, want to throw It away like an old worn-out cloak Or screw up like a ball of over-written Trash and toss into the corner bin. I said it must come up or out I […]...
24. To Chloe Jealous Dear Chloe, how blubber’d is that pretty face; Thy cheek all on fire, and thy hair all uncurl’d: Prythee quit this caprice; and (as old Falstaff says) Let us e’en talk a little like folks of this world. How canst thou presume, thou hast leave to destroy The beauties, which Venus but lent to thy […]...
25. A Better Answer Dear Chloe, how blubbered is that pretty face; Thy cheek all on fire, and thy hair all uncurled! Prithee quit this caprice, and (as old Falstaff says) Let us e’en talk a little like folks of this world. How canst thou presume thou hast leave to destroy The beauties which Venus but lent to thy […]...
26. The Missal Makers To visit the Escurial We took a motor bus, And there a guide mercurial Took charge of us. He showed us through room after room, And talked hour after hour, Of place, crypt and royal tomb, Of pomp and power. But in bewilderment of grace What pleased me most of all Were ancient missals proud […]...
27. To His Honoured and Most Ingenious Friend Mr. Charles Cotton For brave comportment, wit without offence, Words fully flowing, yet of influence: Thou art that man of men, the man alone, Worthy the public admiration: Who with thine own eyes read’st what we do write, And giv’st our numbers euphony, and weight. Tell’st when a verse springs high, how understood To be, or not born […]...
28. Hyla Brook By June our brook’s run out of song and speed. Sought for much after that, it will be found Either to have gone groping underground (And taken with it all the Hyla breed That shouted in the mist a month ago, Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow) Or flourished and come up […]...
29. The Past is the Present If external action is effete And rhyme is outmoded, I shall revert to you, Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class The teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse. He said – and I think I repeat his exact words – “Hebrew poetry is prose With a sort of heightened consciousness.” Ecstasy affords The occasion and […]...
30. The Triple Fool I am two fools, I know – For loving, and for saying so In whining poetry; But where’s that wiseman that would not be I, If she would not deny? Then, as th’ earths inward narrow crooked lanes Do purge sea waters fretful salt away, I thought, if I could draw my pains Through rhymes […]...
31. Poet's Path My garden hath a slender path With ivy overgrown, A secret place where once would pace A pot all alone; I see him now with fretted brow, Plunged deep in thought; And sometimes he would write maybe, And sometimes he would not. A verse a day he used to say Keeps worry from the door; […]...
32. A slant of sun on dull brown walls A slant of sun on dull brown walls, A forgotten sky of bashful blue. Toward God a mighty hymn, A song of collisions and cries, Rumbling wheels, hoof-beats, bells, Welcomes, farewells, love-calls, final moans, Voices of joy, idiocy, warning, despair, The unknown appeals of brutes, The chanting of flowers, The screams of cut trees, The […]...
33. Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
34. Prelude They say that rhyme and rhythm are Outmoded now. I do not know, for I am far From high of brow. But if the twain you take away, Since basely bred, Proud Poetry, I dare to say, Would scarce be read. With humble heart I thus define My rôle in rhyme: Oh may I never […]...
35. Know, Celia, Since Thou Art So Proud Know, Celia, since thou art so proud, ‘Twas I that gave thee thy renown. Thou hadst in the forgotten crowd Of common beauties lived unknown Had not my verse extolled thy name, And with it imped the wings of Fame. That killing power is none of thine; I gave it to thy voice and eyes. […]...
36. 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 […]...
37. Book Lover I keep collecting books I know I’ll never, never read; My wife and daughter tell me so, And yet I never head. “Please make me,” says some wistful tome, “A wee bit of yourself.” And so I take my treasure home, And tuck it in a shelf. And now my very shelves complain; They jam […]...
38. I Heard You, Solemn-sweet Pipes of the Organ I HEARD you, solemn-sweet pipes of the organ, as last Sunday morn I pass’d the church; Winds of autumn!-as I walk’d the woods at dusk, I heard your long-stretch’d sighs, up above, so mournful; I heard the perfect Italian tenor, singing at the opera-I heard the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing; … […]...
39. Sonnet 86: Was it the proud full sail of his great verse Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew? Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? No, neither he, nor […]...
40. Joy-Bells Ring your sweet bells; but let them be farewells To the green-vista’d gladness of the past That changed us into soldiers; swing your bells To a joyful chime; but let it be the last. What means this metal in windy belfries hung When guns are all our need? Dissolve these bells Whose tones are tuned […]...