Gentleness Stirred

Related poetry:

1. To My Little Niece Anne Duyckinck To his charming black-eyed niece Uncle Harry wishest peace! Wishes roses over strow’d O’er her sublunary road! No rude winds around her howl, O’er her head no tempests scowl; No red lightnings flash around, No loud thunders rock the ground! Bright has been her morning sun, Brighter still be that to come! All a blue […]...
2. The Blue Scarf Pale, with the blue of high zeniths, shimmered Over with silver, brocaded In smooth, running patterns, a soft stuff, with dark knotted fringes, It lies there, Warm from a woman’s soft shoulders, and my fingers close on it, Caressing. Where is she, the woman who wore it? The scent of her Lingers and drugs me! […]...
3. See it Through When you’re up against a trouble, Meet it squarely, face to face; Lift your chin and set your shoulders, Plant your feet and take a brace. When it’s vain to try to dodge it, Do the best that you can do; You may fail, but you may conquer, See it through! Black may be the […]...
4. Munition Maker I am the Cannon King, behold! I perish on a throne of gold. With forest far and turret high, Renowned and rajah-rich am I. My father was, and his before, With wealth we owe to war on war; But let no potentate be proud. . . There are no pockets in a shroud. By nature […]...
5. Sonnet XXVII Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; But then begins a journey in my head, To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired: For then my thoughts, from far where I abide, Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, […]...
6. Sonnet 27: Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, The dear respose for limbs with travel tirèd; But then begins a journey in my head To work my mind, when body’s work’s expirèd. For then my thoughts, from far where I abide, Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, […]...
7. Mask Fling your red scarf faster and faster, dancer. It is summer and the sun loves a million green leaves, masses of green. Your red scarf flashes across them calling and a-calling. The silk and flare of it is a great soprano leading a chorus Carried along in a rouse of voices reaching for the heart […]...
8. Laughter In The Senate In the South lies a lonesome, hungry Land; He huddles his rags with a cripple’s hand; He mutters, prone on the barren sand, What time his heart is breaking. He lifts his bare head from the ground; He listens through the gloom around: The winds have brought him a strange sound Of distant merrymaking. Comes […]...
9. Truce It begins with one or two soldiers And one or two following With hampers over their shoulders. They might be off wildfowling As they would another Christmas Day, So gingerly they pick their steps. No one seems sure of what to do. All stop when one stops. A fire gets lit. Some spread Their greatcoats […]...
10. Chords IN the morning, a Sunday morning, shadows of sea and adumbrants of rock in her eyes… horseback in leather boots and leather gauntlets by the sea. In the evening, a Sunday evening, a rope of pearls on her white shoulders… and a speaking, brooding black velvet, relapsing to the voiceless… battering Russian marches on a […]...
11. Thing Language This ocean, humiliating in its disguises Tougher than anything. No one listens to poetry. The ocean Does not mean to be listened to. A drop Or crash of water. It means Nothing. It Is bread and butter Pepper and salt. The death That young men hope for. Aimlessly It pounds the shore. White and aimless […]...
12. Old Ireland FAR hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty, Crouching over a grave, an ancient, sorrowful mother, Once a queen-now lean and tatter’d, seated on the ground, Her old white hair drooping dishevel’d round her shoulders; At her feet fallen an unused royal harp, Long silent-she too long silent-mourning her shrouded hope and heir; Of all […]...
13. Crater Face is what we called her. The story was That her father had thrown Drano at her Which was probably true, given the way she slouched Through fifth grade, afraid of the world, recess Especially. She had acne scars Before she had acne-poxs and dips And bright red patches. I don’t remember Any report in the […]...
14. Demos I All you that are enamored of my name And least intent on what most I require, Beware; for my design and your desire, Deplorably, are not as yet the same. Beware, I say, the failure and the shame Of losing that for which you now aspire So blindly, and of hazarding entire The gift […]...
15. Saint Judas When I went out to kill myself, I caught A pack of hoodlums beating up a man. Running to spare his suffering, I forgot My name, my number, how my day began, How soldiers milled around the garden stone And sang amusing songs; how all that day Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone Bargained […]...
16. Jerome Each day brings its toad, each night its dragon. Der heilige Hieronymus his lion is at the zoo Listens, listens. All the long, soft, summer day Dreams affright his couch, the deep boils like a pot. As the sun sets, the last patient rises, Says to him, Father, trembles, turns away. Often, to the lion, […]...
17. Next Day Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All, I take a box And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens. The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical Food-gathering flocks Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James, Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise If that is wisdom. Yet somehow, […]...
18. Catbird He picks his pond, and the soft thicket of his world. He bids his lady come, and she does, Flirting with her tail. He begins early, and makes up his song as he goes. He does not enter a house at night, or when it rains. He is not afraid of the wind, though he […]...
19. Snake A snake came to my water-trough On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, To drink there. In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree I came down the steps with my pitcher And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before Me. […]...
20. Afraid! Of whom am I afraid? Afraid! Of whom am I afraid? Not Death for who is He? The Porter of my Father’s Lodge As much abasheth me! Of Life? ‘Twere odd I fear [a] thing That comprehendeth me In one or two existences As Deity decree Of Resurrection? Is the East Afraid to trust the Morn With her fastidious forehead? […]...
21. Summer begins to have the look Summer begins to have the look Peruser of enchanting Book Reluctantly but sure perceives A gain upon the backward leaves Autumn begins to be inferred By millinery of the cloud Or deeper color in the shawl That wraps the everlasting hill. The eye begins its avarice A meditation chastens speech Some Dyer of a distant […]...
22. It tossed and tossed It tossed and tossed A little Brig I knew o’ertook by Blast It spun and spun And groped delirious, for Morn It slipped and slipped As One that drunken stept Its white foot tripped Then dropped from sight Ah, Brig Good Night To Crew and You The Ocean’s Heart too smooth too Blue To break […]...
23. Love's Apparition and Evanishment: An Allegoric Romance Like a lone Arab, old and blind, Some caravan had left behind, Who sits beside a ruin’d well, Where the shy sand-asps bask and swell; And now he hangs his ag{‘e}d head aslant, And listens for a human sound in vain! And now the aid, which Heaven alone can grant, Upturns his eyeless face from […]...
24. Astrophel And Stella-First Song Doubt you to whom my Muse these notes intendeth, Which now my breast o’ercharged to music lendeth? To you, to you, all song of praise is due; Only in you my song begins and endeth. Who hath the eyes which marry state with pleasure? Who keeps the key of Nature’s chiefest treasure? To you, to […]...
25. Spanish Dancer As in one’s hand a lighted match blinds you before It comes aflame and sends out brilliant flickering Tongues to every side so, within the ring of the Spectators, her dance begins in hasty, heated rhythms And spreads itself darting flames around. And suddenly the dance is altogether flame! With a fierce glance she sets […]...
26. Elegy It’s not that the Muse feels like clamming up, It’s more like high time for the lad’s last nap. And the scarf-waving lass who wished him the best Drives a steamroller across his chest. And the words won’t rise either like that rod Or like logs to rejoin their old grove’s sweet rot, And, like […]...
27. Jennie M'Grew Not, where the stairway turns in the dark, A hooded figure, shriveled under a flowing cloak! Not yellow eyes in the room at night, Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray! And not the flap of a condor wing, When the roar of life in your ears begins As a sound heard never before! […]...
28. Don't talk to me of War Don’t talk to me of War or stalk the ground Our fabled soldiers died upon, I’m sound Of limb and strong of will, my mind as clear As when we learnt those gory lessons founded By our forebears; I’m whole still, my sanity intact, Wife and sanguine life extant despite The wrack of loyal Service, […]...
29. Exposure I Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us. . . Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent. . . Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient. . . Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, But nothing happens. Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on […]...
30. Gypsy I ASKED a gypsy pal To imitate an old image And speak old wisdom. She drew in her chin, Made her neck and head The top piece of a Nile obelisk And said: Snatch off the gag from thy mouth, child, And be free to keep silence. Tell no man anything for no man listens, […]...
31. Where We Differ To think my thoughts are hers, Not one of hers is mine; She laughs while I must sigh; She sighs while I must whine. She eats while I must fast; She reads while I am blind; She sleeps while I must wake; Free I no freedom find. To think the world for me Contains but […]...
32. The House Of Dust: Part 02: 04: Nightmare ‘Draw three cards, and I will tell your future. . . Draw three cards, and lay them down, Rest your palms upon them, stare at the crystal, And think of time. . . My father was a clown, My mother was a gypsy out of Egypt; And she was gotten with child in a strange […]...
33. The Punisher I have fetched the tears up out of the little wells, Scooped them up with small, iron words, Dripping over the runnels. The harsh, cold wind of my words drove on, and still I watched the tears on the guilty cheek of the boys Glitter and spill. Cringing Pity, and Love, white-handed, came Hovering about […]...
34. Symbolically concerned dodona oak (the tree of life) sheds leaves Nutritious-which feeds blood and mind today There’s not a jot (from which the present cleaves) Can be dispensed with – all life’s array From first to last has leaf-mould in its clay Eve is that apple she took her bite from The best and worst can’t thwart […]...
35. Duino Elegies: The Fourth Elegy O trees of life, oh, what when winter comes? We are not of one mind. Are not like birds In unison migrating. And overtaken, Overdue, we thrust ourselves into the wind And fall to earth into indifferent ponds. Blossoming and withering we comprehend as one. And somewhere lions roam, quite unaware, In their magnificence, of […]...
36. Time, Real And Imaginary On the wide level of a mountain’s head, (I knew not where, but ’twas some faery place) Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails out-spread, Two lovely children run an endless race, A sister and a brother! This far outstripp’d the other ; Yet ever runs she with reverted face, And looks and listens for the boy […]...
37. Spirit whose Work is Done SPIRIT whose work is done! spirit of dreadful hours! Ere, departing, fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets; Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfaltering pressing;) Spirit of many a solemn day, and many a savage scene! Electric spirit! That with muttering voice, through the war now closed, like a tireless […]...
38. The Price of Peace Peace without Justice is a low estate, A coward cringing to an iron Fate! But Peace through Justice is the great ideal, We’ll pay the price of war to make it real....
39. In Progress Ten years ago it seemed impossible That she should ever grow so calm as this, With self-remembrance in her warmest kiss And dim dried eyes like an exhausted well. Slow-speaking when she had some fact to tell, Silent with long-unbroken silences, Centered in self yet not unpleased to please, Gravely monotonous like a passing bell. […]...
40. A PARABLE I PICKED a rustic nosegay lately, And bore it homewards, musing greatly; When, heated by my hand, I found The heads all drooping tow’rd the ground. I plac’d them in a well-cool’d glass, And what a wonder came to pass The heads soon raised themselves once more. The stalks were blooming as before, And all […]...