The Flood

Related poetry:

1. Sonnet XXXII: Our Flood's-Queen Thames Our flood’s-queen Thames for ships and swans is crown’d, And stately Severn for her shore is prais’d, The crystal Trent for fords and fish renown’d, And Avon’s fame to Albion’s cliffs is rais’d; Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee, York many wonders of her Ouse can tell, The Peak her Dove, whose banks so fertile […]...
2. The Flood On Lolham Brigs in wild and lonely mood I’ve seen the winter floods their gambols play Through each old arch that trembled while I stood Bent o’er its wall to watch the dashing spray As their old stations would be washed away Crash came the ice against the jambs and then A shudder jarred the […]...
3. Ballad of a Ship Down by the flash of the restless water The dim White Ship like a white bird lay; Laughing at life and the world they sought her, And out she swung to the silvering bay. Then off they flew on their roystering way, And the keen moon fired the light foam flying Up from the flood […]...
4. Song of Innisfail They came from a land beyond the sea, And now o’er the western main Set sail, in their good ships, gallantly, From the sunny land of Spain. “Oh, where’s the isle we’ve seen in dreams, Our destined home or grave?” Thus sung they as, by the morning’s beams, They swept the Atlantic wave. And lo, […]...
5. Wild Dreams Of A New Beginning There’s a breathless hush on the freeway tonight Beyond the ledges of concrete Restaurants fall into dreams With candlelight couples Lost Alexandria still burns In a billion lightbulbs Lives cross lives Idling at stoplights Beyond the cloverleaf turnoffs ‘Souls eat souls in the general emptiness’ A piano concerto comes out a kitchen window A yogi […]...
6. On The Loss Of The Royal George Written when the news arrived. Toll for the brave! The brave that are no more! All sunk beneath the wave Fast by their native shore. Eight hundred of the brave, Whose courage well was tried, Had made the vessel heel, And laid her on her side. A land-breeze shook the shrouds, And she was overset; […]...
7. Defence of Fort M’Henry Tune ANACREON IN HEAVEN O! say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof […]...
8. The Smiles Of The Bathers The smiles of the bathers fade as they leave the water, And the lover feels sadness fall as it ends, as he leaves his love. The scholar, closing his book as the midnight clock strikes, is hollow and old: The pilot’s relief on landing is no release. These perfect and private things, walling us in, […]...
9. The Flood I thought my true love slept; Behind her chair I crept And pulled out a long pin; The golden flood came out, She shook it all about, With both our faces in. Ah! little wren, I know Your mossy, small nest now A windy, cold place is; No eye can see my face, Howe’er it […]...
10. Before The Flood Why did he promise me That we would build ourselves An ark all by ourselves Out in back of the house On New York Avenue In Union City New Jersey To the singing of the streetcars After the story Of Noah whom nobody Believed about the waters That would rise over everything When I told […]...
11. Flood Goldbrown upon the sated flood The rockvine clusters lift and sway; Vast wings above the lambent waters brood Of sullen day. A waste of waters ruthlessly Sways and uplifts its weedy mane Where brooding day stares down upon the sea In dull disdain. Uplift and sway, O golden vine, Your clustered fruits to love’s full […]...
12. Flood-Tide of Flowers IN HOLLAND The laggard winter ebbed so slow With freezing rain and melting snow, It seemed as if the earth would stay Forever where the tide was low, In sodden green and watery gray. But now from depths beyond our sight, The tide is turning in the night, And floods of color long concealed Come […]...
13. Noah's Flood (excerpts) Eternal and all-working God, which wast Before the world, whose frame by Thee was cast, And beautified with beamful lamps above, By thy great wisdom set how they should move To guide the seasons, equally to all, Which come and go as they do rise and fall. My mighty Maker, O do thou infuse Such […]...
14. Berket And The Stars A day on the boulevards chosen out of ten years of Student poverty! One best day out of ten good ones. Berket in high spirits-“Ha, oranges! Let’s have one!” And he made to snatch an orange from the vender’s cart. Now so clever was the deception, so nicely timed To the full sweep of certain […]...
15. Mr Flood's Party Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night Over the hill between the town below And the forsaken upland hermitage That held as much as he should ever know On earth again of home, paused warily. The road was his with not a native near; And Eben, having leisure, said aloud, For no man else in […]...
16. October O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; Tomorrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow. Make the day seem to us less brief. Hearts […]...
17. Sonnet LXVI: The Night-Flood Rakes The night-flood rakes upon the stony shore; Along the rugged cliffs and chalky caves Mourns the hoarse Ocean, seeming to deplore All that are buried in his restless waves- Mined by corrosive tides, the hollow rock Falls prone, and rushing from its turfy height, Shakes the broad beach with long-resounding shock, Loud thundering on the […]...
18. XIV. On a Distant View of England AH! from my eyes the tears unbidden start, Albion! as now thy cliffs (that bright appear Far o’er the wave, and their proud summits rear To meet the beams of morn) my beating heart, With eager hope, and filial transport hails! Scenes of my youth, reviving gales ye bring. As when, ere while, the tuneful […]...
19. The Kingfisher The kingfisher rises out of the black wave Like a blue flower, in his beak He carries a silver leaf. I think this is The prettiest world so long as you don’t mind A little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life That doesn’t have its splash of happiness? There are […]...
20. John Ericsson Day Memorial, 1918 INTO the gulf and the pit of the dark night, the cold night, there is a man goes into the dark and the cold and when he comes back to his people he brings fire in his hands and they remember him in the years afterward as the fire bringer-they remember or forget-the man whose […]...
21. Felixstowe, or The Last of Her Order With one consuming roar along the shingle The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down To where its backwash and the next wave mingle, A mounting arch of water weedy-brown Against the tide the off-shore breezes blow. Oh wind and water, this is Felixstowe. In winter when the sea winds chill and shriller Than […]...
22. Sonnet 109: O, never say that I was false of heart O, never say that I was false of heart, Though absence seemed my flame to qualify. As easy might I from my self depart As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie. That is my home of love; if I have ranged, Like him that travels I return again, Just to the time, […]...
23. Hohenlinden 1 On Linden, when the sun was low, 2 All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, 3 And dark as winter was the flow 4 Of Iser, rolling rapidly. 5 But Linden saw another sight 6 When the drum beat at dead of night, 7 Commanding fires of death to light 8 The darkness of her […]...
24. I Am There I come from there and remember, I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother And a house with many windows, I have brothers, friends and a prison. I have a wave that sea-gulls snatched away. I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass. I have a moon […]...
25. No ladder needs the bird but skies No ladder needs the bird but skies To situate its wings, Nor any leader’s grim baton Arraigns it as it sings. The implements of bliss are few As Jesus says of Him, “Come unto me” the moiety That wafts the cherubim....
26. Justice Arnett It is true, fellow citizens, That my old docket lying there for years On a shelf above my head and over The seat of justice, I say it is true That docket had an iron rim Which gashed my baldness when it fell (Somehow I think it was shaken loose By the heave of the […]...
27. The Weed I dreamed that dead, and meditating, I lay upon a grave, or bed, (at least, some cold and close-built bower). In the cold heart, its final thought Stood frozen, drawn immense and clear, Stiff and idle as I was there; And we remained unchanged together For a year, a minute, an hour. Suddenly there was […]...
28. The Eye The Atlantic is a stormy moat; and the Mediterranean, The blue pool in the old garden, More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice Of ships and blood, and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific Our ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant. Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs Nor any future […]...
29. A Passing Hail Let us rest ourselves a bit! Worry? wave your hand to it Kiss your finger-tips and smile It farewell a little while. Weary of the weary way We have come from Yesterday, Let us fret not, instead, Of the wary way ahead. Let us pause and catch our breath On the hither side of death, […]...
30. The house where I was born (04) Another time. It was still night. Water slid Silently on the black ground, And I knew that my only task would be To remember, and I laughed, I bent down, I took from the mud A pile of branches and leaves, I lifted up the whole dripping mass In arms I held close to my […]...
31. The Wilderness I came too late to the hills: they were swept bare Winters before I was born of song and story, Of spell or speech with power of oracle or invocation, The great ash long dead by a roofless house, its branches rotten, The voice of the crows an inarticulate cry, And from the wells and […]...
32. Parable Of The Dove A dove lived in a village. When it opened its mouth Sweetness came out, sound Like a silver light around The cherry bough. But The dove wasn’t satisfied. It saw the villagers Gathered to listen under The blossoming tree. It didn’t think: I Am higher that they are. It wanted to wealk among them, To […]...
33. Queen Elizabeth Speaks My hands were stained with blood, my heart was Proud and cold, My soul is black with shame. . . but I gave Shakespeare gold. So after aeons of flame, I may, by grace of God, Rise up to kiss the dust that Shakespeare’s feet have trod....
34. The Curse of Kehama I charm thy life, From the weapons of strife, From stone and from wood, From fire and from flood, From the serpent’s tooth, And the beast of blood. From sickness I charm thee, And time shall not harm thee; But earth, which is mine, Its fruits shall deny thee; And water shall hear me, And […]...
35. 189. Verses on Castle Gordon STREAMS that glide in orient plains, Never bound by Winter’s chains; Glowing here on golden sands, There immix’d with foulest stains From Tyranny’s empurpled hands; These, their richly gleaming waves, I leave to tyrants and their slaves; Give me the stream that sweetly laves The banks by Castle Gordon. Spicy forests, ever gray, Shading from […]...
36. A Kiss One wave falling forward meets another wave falling Forward. Well-water, Hand-hauled, mineral, cool, could be A kiss, or pastures Fiery green after rain, before The grazers. The kiss like a shoal of fish whipped One way, another way, like the fever dreams Of a million monkeys the kiss Carry me closer than your carotid artery […]...
37. The Clepington Catastrophe ‘Twas on a Monday morning, and in the year of 1884, That a fire broke out in Bailie Bradford’s store, Which contained bales of jute and large quantities of waste, Which the brave firemen ran to extinguish in great haste. They left their wives that morning without any dread, Never thinking, at the burning pile, […]...
38. Leaves Compared With Flowers A tree’s leaves may be ever so good, So may its bar, so may its wood; But unless you put the right thing to its root It never will show much flower or fruit. But I may be one who does not care Ever to have tree bloom or bear. Leaves for smooth and bark […]...
39. War Song Remember the Glories of Brien the Brave Remember the glories of Brien the brave, Though the days of the hero are o’er, Though lost to Mononia and cold to the grave, He returns to Kinkora no more. That star of the field, which so often hath pour’d Its beam on the battle, is set; But […]...
40. Child Moon The child’s wonder At the old moon Comes back nightly. She points her finger To the far silent yellow thing Shining through the branches Filtering on the leaves a golden sand, Crying with her little tongue, “See the moon!” And in her bed fading to sleep With babblings of the moon on her little mouth....