Joy-notes

Related poetry:

1. Notes for Canto CXX I have tried to write Paradise Do not move Let the wind speak That is paradise. Let the Gods forgive what I Have made Let those I love try to forgive What I have made....
2. Sonnet 17 – My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes God set between his After and Before, And strike up and strike off the general roar Of the rushing worlds a melody that floats In a serene air purely. Antidotes Of medicated music, answering for Mankind’s forlornest uses, thou canst pour From thence into their ears. […]...
3. Notes from the Other Side I divested myself of despair And fear when I came here. Now there is no more catching One’s own eye in the mirror, There are no bad books, no plastic, No insurance premiums, and of course No illness. Contrition Does not exist, nor gnashing Of teeth. No one howls as the first Clod of earth […]...
4. Blizzard Notes I DON’T blame the kettle drums-they are hungry. And the snare drums-I know what they want-they are empty too. And the harring booming bass drums-they are hungriest of all.. . . The howling spears of the Northwest die down. The lullabies of the Southwest get a chance, a mother song. A cradle moon rides out […]...
5. Baltic Fog Notes (Bergen)SEVEN days all fog, all mist, and the turbines pounding through high seas. I was a plaything, a rat’s neck in the teeth of a scuffling mastiff. Fog and fog and no stars, sun, moon. Then an afternoon in fjords, low-lying lands scrawled in granite languages on a gray sky, A night harbor, blue dusk […]...
6. Notes For The Legend Of Salad Woman Since my wife was born She must have eaten The equivalent of two-thirds Of the original garden of Eden. Not the dripping lush fruit Or the meat in the ribs of animals But the green salad gardens of that place. The whole arena of green Would have been eradicated As if the right filter had […]...
7. A Three-Part Song I’m just in love with all these three, The Weald and the Marsh and the Down country. Nor I don’t know which I love the most, The Weald or the Marsh or the white Chalk coast! I’ve buried my heart in a ferny hill, Twix’ a liddle low shaw an’ a great high gill. Oh […]...
8. My Dove, My Beautiful One My dove, my beautiful one, Arise, arise! The night-dew lies Upon my lips and eyes. The odorous winds are weaving A music of sighs: Arise, arise, My dove, my beautiful one! I wait by the cedar tree, My sister, my love, White breast of the dove, My breast shall be your bed. The pale dew […]...
9. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
10. Aubade HARK! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings, And Phoebus ‘gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chaliced flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes: With everything that pretty bin, My lady sweet, arise! Arise, arise!...
11. 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!...
12. Father My father knows the proper way The nation should be run; He tells us children every day Just what should now be done. He knows the way to fix the trusts, He has a simple plan; But if the furnace needs repairs, We have to hire a man. My father, in a day or two […]...
13. That the Science of Cartography Is Limited -and not simply by the fact that this shading of Forest cannot show the fragrance of balsam, The gloom of cypresses, Is what I wish to prove. When you and I were first in love we drove To the borders of Connacht And entered a wood there. Look down you said: this was once a […]...
14. Dead poet I’m sure it would be easier to survive as a dead poet, I mean it in the surmise that I won’t be tempted To revise or rewrite the poem I wrote last night, or the Poems I wrote last week (which make me cringe when I Read them again), or when I read poetry of […]...
15. Memorial To D. C (Vassar College, 1918) O, loveliest throat of all sweet throats, Where now no more the music is, With hands that wrote you little notes I write you little elegies!...
16. Sea Change “Goneys an’ gullies an’ all o’ the birds o’ the sea They ain’t no birds, not really”, said Billy the Dane. “Not mollies, nor gullies, nor goneys at all”, said he, “But simply the sperrits of mariners livin’ again. “Them birds goin’ fishin’ is nothin’ but the souls o’ the drowned, Souls o’ the drowned, […]...
17. Before the Battle Music of whispering trees Hushed by a broad-winged breeze Where shaken water gleams; And evening radiance falling With reedy bird-notes calling. O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams. I have no need to pray That fear may pass away; I scorn the growl and rumble of the fight That summons me from cool […]...
18. Lesson In Grammar THE SENTENCE Perhaps I can make it plain by analogy. Imagine a machine, not yet assembled, Each part being quite necessary To the functioning of the whole: if the job is fumbled And a vital piece mislaid The machine is quite valueless, The workers will not be paid. It is just the same when constructing […]...
19. Sonnet LXV Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’er-sways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out Against the wreckful siege of battering days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor […]...
20. Sonnet 65: Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’ersways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor […]...
21. Pantoum Of The Great Depression Our lives avoided tragedy Simply by going on and on, Without end and with little apparent meaning. Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes. Simply by going on and on We managed. No need for the heroic. Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes. I don’t remember all the particulars. We managed. No need for […]...
22. Dear Colette Dear Colette, I want to write to you About being a woman For that is what you write to me. I want to tell you how your face Enduring after thirty, forty, fifty. . . Hangs above my desk Like my own muse. I want to tell you how your hands Reach out from your […]...
23. Take Back the Virgin Page Written on Returning a Blank Book Take back the virgin page, White and unwritten still; Some hand, more calm and sage, The leaf must fill. Thoughts come, as pure as light Pure as even you require; But, oh! each word I write Love turns to fire. Yet let me keep the book: Oft shall my […]...
24. Aftermath When the summer fields are mown, When the birds are fledged and flown, And the dry leaves strew the path; With the falling of the snow, With the cawing of the crow, Once again the fields we mow And gather in the aftermath. Not the sweet, new grass with flowers Is this harvesting of ours; […]...
25. 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 […]...
26. To His Lute My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow With thy green mother in some shady grove, When immelodious winds but made thee move, And birds their ramage did on thee bestow. Since that dear Voice which did thy sounds approve, Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow, Is reft from Earth to […]...
27. In My Lodge at Wang Chuan,(After a Long Rain.) The woods have stored the rain, and slow comes the smoke As rice is cooked on faggots and carried to the fields; Over the quiet marsh-land flies a white egret, And mango-birds are singing in the full summer trees…. I have learned to watch in peace the mountain morningglories, To eat split dewy sunflower-seeds under […]...
28. The Benefactors Of The Little Box We’ll return the little box Into the arms Of her inconspicuously honest properties We won’t do anything Against her will We’ll simply take her apart We’ll crucify her On her own cross Piece her bloated emptiness And let ooze All the blue cosmic blood she gathered We’ll sweet her clean of stars And anti-stars And […]...
29. The Falconer of God I flung my soul to the air like a falcon flying. I said, “Wait on, wait on, while I ride below! I shall start a heron soon In the marsh beneath the moon A strange white heron rising with silver on its wings, Rising and crying Wordless, wondrous things; The secret of the stars, of […]...
30. THE HAWTHORN TREE ACROSS the shimmering meadows Ah, when he came to me! In the spring-time, In the night-time, In the starlight, Beneath the hawthorn tree. Up from the misty marsh-land Ah, when he climbed to me! To my white bower, To my sweet rest, To my warm breast, Beneath the hawthorn tree. Ask of me what the […]...
31. A Greeting Good morning, Life and all Things glad and beautiful. My pockets nothing hold, But he that owns the gold, The Sun, is my great friend His spending has no end. Hail to the morning sky, Which bright clouds measure high; Hail to you birds whose throats Would number leaves by notes; Hail to you shady […]...
32. IN THE SMALL HOURS Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze, Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes, Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins Of marooned mariners, captives Of Circe’s sultry notes. The barman Dispenses igneous potions? Somnabulist, the band plays on. Cocktail mixer, silvery fish Dances for limpet clients. […]...
33. New age (i) How new the world is Trying to find Nerve in an old rind (ii) The bread is crumbled For birds to swallow Rolled into droppings Flowers from the hair Of noseless statues Tyrants of parks Where men have cowered Too long and mistaken Unmanned by he dark (iii) When we awaken (how have we […]...
34. The School Boy I love to rise in a summer morn, When the birds sing on every tree; The distant huntsman winds his horn, And the sky-lark sings with me. O! what sweet company. But to go to school in a summer morn, O! it drives all joy away; Under a cruel eye outworn. The little ones spend […]...
35. Eastern River Do not look for the stones In water above the mud, The boat is gone. No longer with nets and baskets The river is dotted. The sun wick, The marsh marigold flickered out in rain. Only the willow still bears witness, In its roots The secrets of tramps lie hidden, Their paltry treasures, A rusty […]...
36. Song in a Minor Key There’s a place I know where the birds swing low, And wayward vines go roaming, Where the lilacs nod, and a marble god Is pale, in scented gloaming. And at sunset there comes a lady fair Whose eyes are deep with yearning. By an old, old gate does the lady wait Her own true love’s […]...
37. 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 […]...
38. April's Charms When April scatters charms of primrose gold Among the copper leaves in thickets old, And singing skylarks from the meadows rise, To twinkle like black stars in sunny skies; When I can hear the small woodpecker ring Time on a tree for all the birds that sing; And hear the pleasant cuckoo, loud and long […]...
39. Story Tired of a landscape known too well when young: The deliberate shallow hills, the boring birds Flying past rocks; tired of remembering The village children and their naughty words, He abandoned his small holding and went South, Recognised at once his wished-for lie In the inhabitants’ attractive mouth, The church beside the marsh, the hot […]...
40. I tie my Hat I crease my Shawl I tie my Hat I crease my Shawl Life’s little duties do precisely As the very least Were infinite to me I put new Blossoms in the Glass And throw the old away I push a petal from my gown That anchored there I weigh The time ’twill be till six o’clock I have so […]...