The Apple Orchard
Come let us watch the sun go down
And walk in twilight through the orchard’s green.
Does it not seem as if we had for long
Collected, saved and harbored within us
Old memories? To find releases and seek
New hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys,
Mingled with darkness coming from within,
As we randomly voice our thoughts aloud
Wandering beneath these harvest-laden trees
Reminiscent of Durer woodcuts, branches
Which, bent under the fully ripened fruit,
Wait patiently, trying to outlast, to
Serve another season’s hundred days of toil,
Straining, uncomplaining, by not breaking
But succeeding, even though the burden
Should at times seem almost past endurance.
Not to falter! Not to be found wanting!
Thus must it be, when willingly you strive
Throughout a long and uncomplaining life,
Committed to one goal: to give yourself!
And silently to grow and to bear fruit.
Related poetry:
- The Crossed Apple I’ve come to give you fruit from out my orchard, Of wide report. I have trees there that bear me many apples. Of every sort: Clear, streaked; red and russet; green and golden; Sour and sweet. This apple’s from a tree yet unbeholden, Where two kinds meet,- So that this side is red without a […]...
- Song of Fairies Robbing an Orchard We, the Fairies, blithe and antic, Of dimensions not gigantic, Though the moonshine mostly keep us, Oft in orchards frisk and peep us. Stolen sweets are always sweeter, Stolen kisses much completer, Stolen looks are nice in chapels, Stolen, stolen, be your apples. When to bed the world are bobbing, Then’s the time for orchard-robbing; […]...
- The White Man's Burden Take up the White man’s burden Send forth the best ye breed Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness On fluttered folk and wild Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half devil and half child. Take up the White Man’s burden In patience to abide, To veil the […]...
- The Cow In Apple-Time Something inspires the only cow of late To make no more of a wall than an open gate, And think no more of wall-builders than fools. Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit, She scorns a pasture withering to the root. She runs from tree to tree […]...
- After Apple-Picking My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I […]...
- Apple-Pie and Cheese Full many a sinful notion Conceived of foreign powers Has come across the ocean To harm this land of ours; And heresies called fashions Have modesty effaced, And baleful, morbid passions Corrupt our native taste. O tempora! O mores! What profanations these That seek to dim the glories Of apple-pie and cheese! I’m glad my […]...
- Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard His beak could open a bottle, And his eyes – when he lifts their soft lids – Go on reading something Just beyond your shoulder – Blake, maybe, Or the Book of Revelation. Never mind that he eats only The black-smocked crickets, And the dragonflies if they happen To be out late over the ponds, […]...
- Evening in a Sugar Orchard From where I lingered in a lull in march Outside the sugar-house one night for choice, I called the fireman with a careful voice And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch: ‘O fireman, give the fire another stoke, And send more sparks up chimney with the smoke.’ I thought a few might […]...
- Orchard Trees, January It’s not the case, though some might wish it so Who from a window watch the blizzard blow White riot through their branches vague and stark, That they keep snug beneath their pelted bark. They take affliction in until it jells To crystal ice between their frozen cells, And each of them is inwardly a […]...
- The Wind didn't come from the Orchard today The Wind didn’t come from the Orchard today Further than that Nor stop to play with the Hay Nor joggle a Hat He’s a transitive fellow very Rely on that If He leave a Bur at the door We know He has climbed a Fir But the Fir is Where Declare Were you ever there? […]...
- Growing Old In some summers there is so much fruit, The peasants decide not to reap any more. Not having reaped you, oh my days, My nights, have I let the slow flames Of your lovely produce fall into ashes? My nights, my days, you have borne so much! All your branches have retained the gesture Of […]...
- Sonnet LIX If there be nothing new, but that which is Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled, Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss The second burden of a former child! O, that record could with a backward look, Even of five hundred courses of the sun, Show me your image in some antique book, Since […]...
- The Star-Apple Kingdom There were still shards of an ancient pastoral In those shires of the island where the cattle drank Their pools of shadow from an older sky, Surviving from when the landscape copied such objects as “Herefords at Sunset in the valley of the Wye.” The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheel Sprinkling […]...
- Five-Per-Cent Because I have ten thousand pounds I sit upon my stern, And leave my living tranquilly for other folks to earn. For in some procreative way that isn’t very clear, Ten thousand pounds will breed, they say, five hundred every year. So as I have a healthy hate of economic strife, I mean to stand […]...
- A Ballad of Burdens The burden of fair women. Vain delight, And love self-slain in some sweet shameful way, And sorrowful old age that comes by night As a thief comes that has no heart by day, And change that finds fair cheeks and leaves them grey, And weariness that keeps awake for hire, And grief that says what […]...
- The Unlucky Apple ‘Twas the apple that in Eden Caused our father’s primal fall; And the Trojan War, remember ‘Twas an apple caused it all. So for weeks I’ve hesitated, You can guess the reason why, For I want to tell my darling She’s the apple of my eye....
- An Apple-Gathering I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple tree And wore them all that evening in my hair: Then in due season when I went to see I found no apples there. With dangling basket all along the grass As I had come I went the selfsame track: My neighbours mocked me while they saw me […]...
- Archimedes To Archimedes once a scholar came, “Teach me,” he said, “the art that won thy fame; The godlike art which gives such boons to toil, And showers such fruit upon thy native soil; The godlike art that girt the town when all Rome’s vengeance burst in thunder on the wall!” “Thou call’st art godlike it […]...
- The Apple-Tree Old John had an apple-tree, healthy and green, Which bore the best codlins that ever were seen, So juicy, so mellow, and red; And when they were ripe, he disposed of his store, To children or any who pass’d by his door, To buy him a morsel of bread. Little Dick, his next neighbour, one […]...
- The Apple Tree When first we saw the apple tree The boughs were dark and straight, But never grief to give had we, Though Spring delayed so late. When last I came away from there The boughs were heavy hung, But little grief had I to spare For Summer, perished young....
- FLOWER-SALUTE THIS nosegay, ’twas I dress’d it, Greets thee a thousand times! Oft stoop’d I, and caress’d it, Ah! full a thousand times, And ‘gainst my bosom press’d it A hundred thousand times! 1815.*...
- All That's Not Love All that’s not love is the dearth of my days, The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, The temple in times without prayer, without praise, The altar unset and the candle unlit. Let me survive not the lovable sway Of early desire, nor see when it goes The courts of Life’s abbey in ivied […]...
- Exiled Searching my heart for its true sorrow, This is the thing I find to be: That I am weary of words and people, Sick of the city, wanting the sea; Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness Of the strong wind and shattered spray; Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound Of the big surf that […]...
- A Drop Fell on the Apple Tree A Drop Fell on the Apple Tree Another on the Roof A Half a Dozen kissed the Eaves And made the Gables laugh A few went out to help the Brook That went to help the Sea Myself Conjectured were they Pearls What Necklace could be The Dust replaced, in Hoisted Roads The Birds jocoser […]...
- Dream Song 33: An apple arc'd toward Kleitos; whose great King An apple arc’d toward Kleitos; whose great King Wroth & of wine did study where his sword, Sneaked away, might be. . . With swollen lids staggered up and clung Dim to the cloth of gold. An un-Greek word Blister, to him guard, And the trumpeter would not sound, fisted. Ha, They hustle Clitus out; […]...
- Eugene Carman Rhodes’ slave! Selling shoes and gingham, Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long For fourteen hours a day for three hundred and thirteen days For more than twenty years. Saying “Yes’m” and “Yes, sir”, and “Thank you” A thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month. Living in this stinking room […]...
- Self-Portrait The steadfastness of generations of nobility Shows in the curving lines that form the eyebrows. And the blue eyes still show traces of childhood fears And of humility here and there, not of a servant’s, Yet of one who serves obediantly, and of a woman. The mouth formed as a mouth, large and accurate, Not […]...
- Stone Breaking March wind rough Clashed the trees, Flung the snow; Breaking stones, In the cold, Germans slow Toiled and toiled; Arrowy sun Glanced and sprang, One right blithe German sang: Songs of home, Fatherland: Syenite hard, Weary lot, Callous hand, All forgot: Hammers pound, Ringing round; Rise the heaps, To his voice, Bounds and leaps Toise […]...
- The Philosopher And what are you that, wanting you, I should be kept awake As many nights as there are days With weeping for your sake? And what are you that, missing you, As many days as crawl I should be listening to the wind And looking at the wall? I know a man that’s a braver […]...
- The Clinging Vine “Be calm? And was I frantic? You’ll have me laughing soon. I’m calm as this Atlantic, And quiet as the moon; I may have spoken faster Than once, in other days; For I’ve no more a master, And now-‘Be calm,’ he says. “Fear not, fear no commotion,- I’ll be as rocks and sand; The moon […]...
- Sonnet XCVII How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December’s bareness every where! And yet this time removed was summer’s time, The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widow’d […]...
- Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December’s bareness everywhere! And yet this time removed was summer’s time, The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widowed wombs […]...
- Modern Love XX: I Am Not of Those I am not of those miserable males Who sniff at vice and, daring not to snap, Do therefore hope for heaven. I take the hap Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails Propels; but I am helmsman. Am I wrecked, I know the devil has sufficient weight To bear: I lay it […]...
- Quiet Work One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, One lesson which in every wind is blown, One lesson of two duties kept at one Though the loud world proclaim their enmity Of toil unsever’d from tranquility! Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplish’d in repose, Too great for haste, too high […]...
- Nevertheless you’ve seen a strawberry That’s had a struggle; yet Was, where the fragments met, A hedgehog or a star- Fish for the multitude Of seeds. What better food Than apple seeds – the fruit Within the fruit – locked in Like counter-curved twin Hazelnuts? Frost that kills The little rubber-plant – Leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can’t […]...
- Wasted Love What shall be done for sorrow With love whose race is run? Where help is none to borrow, What shall be done? In vain his hands have spun The web, or drawn the furrow: No rest their toil hath won. His task is all gone thorough, And fruit thereof is none: And who dare say […]...
- Life's Progress How gayly is at first begun Our Life’s uncertain Race! Whilst yet that sprightly Morning Sun, With which we just set out to run Enlightens all the Place. How smiling the World’s Prospect lies How tempting to go through! Not Canaan to the Prophet’s Eyes, From Pisgah with a sweet Surprize, Did more inviting shew. […]...
- Robin Hood to a friend No! those days are gone away And their hours are old and gray, And their minutes buried all Under the down-trodden pall Of the leaves of many years: Many times have winter’s shears, Frozen North, and chilling East, Sounded tempests to the feast Of the forest’s whispering fleeces, Since men knew nor […]...
- Old Times Friend of my youth, let us talk of old times; Of the long lost golden hours. When “Winter” meant only Christmas chimes, And “Summer” wreaths of flowers. Life has grown old, and cold, my friend, And the winter now, means death. And summer blossoms speak all too plain Of the dear, dead forms beneath. But […]...
- Bad for ears the song wasn’t up to the task Of getting through the double-glazing Into the ears pressed on the outside pane The rest of their bodies had faded away but The ears were straining still towards the music In order to know the good times being had in the room Night fell the cold grew and […]...