Warning to Children

Related poetry:

1. Little Ballads Of Timely Warning; II: On Malicious Cruelty To Harmless Creatures The cruelty of P. L. Brown- (He had ten toes as good as mine) Was known to every one in town, And, if he never harmed a noun, He loved to make verbs shriek and whine. The “To be” family’s just complaints- (Brown had ten toes as good as mine) Made Brown cast off the […]...
2. Cornish Cliffs Those moments, tasted once and never done, Of long surf breaking in the mid-day sun. A far-off blow-hole booming like a gun- The seagulls plane and circle out of sight Below this thirsty, thrift-encrusted height, The veined sea-campion buds burst into white And gorse turns tawny orange, seen beside Pale drifts of primroses cascading wide […]...
3. I Remember Galileo I remember Galileo describing the mind As a piece of paper blown around by the wind, And I loved the sight of it sticking to a tree, Or jumping into the backseat of a car, And for years I watched paper leap through my cities; But yesterday I saw the mind was a squirrel caught […]...
4. Tawny THESE are the tawny days: your face comes back. The grapes take on purple: the sunsets redden early on the trellis. The bashful mornings hurl gray mist on the stripes of sunrise. Creep, silver on the field, the frost is welcome. Run on, yellow balls on the hills, and you tawny pumpkin flowers, chasing your […]...
5. To His Two Children In the land of Wu the mulberry leaves are green, And thrice the silkworms have gone to sleep. In East Luh where my family stay, I wonder who is sowing those fields of ours. I cannot be back in time for the spring doings, Yet I can help nothing, traveling on the river. The south […]...
6. Song of the Little White Girl Cabbage tree, cabbage tree, what is the matter? Why are you shaking so? Why do you chatter? Because it is just a white baby you see, And it’s the black ones you like, cabbage tree? Cabbage tree, cabbage tree, you’re a strange fellow With your green hair and your legs browny-yellow. Wouldn’t you like to […]...
7. Poetics I look for the way Things will turn Out spiralling from a center, The shape Things will take to come forth in So that the birch tree white Touched black at branches Will stand out Wind-glittering Totally its apparent self: I look for the forms Things want to come as From what black wells of […]...
8. A Paumanok Picture TWO boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still, Ten fishermen waiting-they discover a thick school of mossbonkers-they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water, The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers, The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop […]...
9. A Seed See how a Seed, which Autumn flung down, And through the Winter neglected lay, Uncoils two little green leaves and two brown, With tiny root taking hold on the clay As, lifting and strengthening day by day, It pushes red branchless, sprouts new leaves, And cell after cell the Power in it weaves Out of […]...
10. Little Ballads Of Timely Warning; III: On Laziness And Its Resultant Ills There was a man in New York City (His name was George Adolphus Knight) So soft of heart he wept with pity To see our language and its plight. He mourned to see it sorely goaded With silent letters left and right; These from his own name he unloaded And wrote it Georg Adolfus Nit. […]...
11. 1777 I The Trumpet-Vine Arbour The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are Wide open, And the clangour of brass beats against the hot sunlight. They bray and blare at the burning sky. Red! Red! Coarse notes of red, Trumpeted at the blue sky. In long streaks of sound, molten metal, The vine declares itself. Clang! […]...
12. Sublime Was the Warning Sublime was the warning that liberty spoke, And grand was the moment when Spaniards awoke Into life and revenge from the conqueror’s chain. Oh, Liberty! let not this spirit have rest, Till it move, like a breeze, o’er the waves of the west Give the light of your look to each sorrowing spot, Nor, oh, […]...
13. When Dawn Comes to the City The tired cars go grumbling by, The moaning, groaning cars, And the old milk carts go rumbling by Under the same dull stars. Out of the tenements, cold as stone, Dark figures start for work; I watch them sadly shuffle on, ‘Tis dawn, dawn in New York. But I would be on the island of […]...
14. Down on the Shore Down on the shore, on the sunny shore! Where the salt smell cheers the land; Where the tide moves bright under boundless light, And the surge on the glittering strand; Where the children wade in the shallow pools, Or run from the froth in play; Where the swift little boats with milk-white wings Are crossing […]...
15. Before the Birth of One of Her Children All things within this fading world hath end, Adversity doth still our joys attend; No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet, But with death’s parting blow are sure to meet. The sentence past is most irrevocable, A common thing, yet oh, inevitable. How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend, How […]...
16. Finistere Hurrah! I’m off to Finistere, to Finistere, to Finistere; My satchel’s swinging on my back, my staff is in my hand; I’ve twenty louis in my purse, I know the sun and sea are there, And so I’m starting out to-day to tramp the golden land. I’ll go alone and glorying, with on my lips […]...
17. For Anne Gregory ‘Never shall a young man, Thrown into despair By those great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear, Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.’ ‘But I can get a hair-dye And set such colour there, Brown, or black, or carrot, That young men in despair May love me for myself alone And not […]...
18. The Children of Lir Out upon the sand-dunes thrive the coarse long grasses; Herons standing knee-deep in the brackish pool; Overhead the sunset fire and flame amasses And the moon to eastward rises pale and cool. Rose and green around her, silver-gray and pearly, Chequered with the black rooks flying home to bed; For, to wake at daybreak, birds […]...
19. The Mowed Hollow When yellow leaves the sky They pipe it to the houses To go on making red And warm and floral and brown But gradually people tire of it, Return it inside metal, and go To be dark and breathe water colours. Some yellow hangs on outside Forlornly tethered to posts. Cars chase their own supply. […]...
20. THE PLAY HOUSE We had a new house And split the decorating. You took the piled rolls of paper, While I stacked the cans of gloss, One to each corner-white-what else? And when we began our slow labour We did not even sigh except in some relief In being there at last. There were no spaces for our […]...
21. The Dream of the Children THE CHILDREN awoke in their dreaming While earth lay dewy and still: They followed the rill in its gleaming To the heart-light of the hill. Its sounds and sights were forsaking The world as they faded in sleep, When they heard a music breaking Out from the heart-light deep. It ran where the rill in […]...
22. Cooney Potter I inherited forty acres from my Father And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters From dawn to dusk, I acquired A thousand acres. But not content, Wishing to own two thousand acres, I bustled through the years with axe and plow, Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters. Squire […]...
23. God Has Pity On Kindergarten Children God has pity on kindergarten children, He pities school children less. But adults he pities not at all. He abandons them, And sometimes they have to crawl on all fours In the scorching sand To reach the dressing station, Streaming with blood. But perhaps He will have pity on those who love truly And take […]...
24. 550. Song-A Lass wi' a Tocher AWA’ wi’ your witchcraft o’ Beauty’s alarms, The slender bit Beauty you grasp in your arms, O, gie me the lass that has acres o’ charms, O, gie me the lass wi’ the weel-stockit farms. Chorus.-Then hey, for a lass wi’ a tocher, Then hey, for a lass wi’ a tocher; Then hey, for a […]...
25. Squatter's Children On the unbreathing sides of hills They play, a specklike girl and boy, Alone, but near a specklike house. The Sun’s suspended eye Blinks casually, and then they wade Gigantic waves of light and shade. A dancing yellow spot, a pup, Attends them. Clouds are piling up; A storm piles up behind the house. The […]...
26. Happiness In the afternoon I watched The she-bear; she was looking For the secret bin of sweetness – Honey, that the bees store In the trees’ soft caves. Black block of gloom, she climbed down Tree after tree and shuffled on Through the woods. And then She found it! The honey-house deep As heartwood, and dipped […]...
27. Daybreak In Alabama When I get to be a composer I’m gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I’m gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I’m gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent […]...
28. Snap-Dragon She bade me follow to her garden where The mellow sunlight stood as in a cup Between the old grey walls; I did not dare To raise my face, I did not dare look up Lest her bright eyes like sparrows should fly in My windows of discovery and shrill ‘Sin!’ So with a downcast […]...
29. With Penne, Inke, And Paper To A Distressed Friend Here is paper, pen, and inke, That your heart and seale may sinke Into such markes as may expresse A Soule much blest in heavinesse. May your paper seeme as fayre As yourselfe when you appeare: May the Letters which you write Looke like black eye-lids on white. May your penne such fancies bring As […]...
30. Warning PURE at heart we wander now: Comrade on the quest divine, Turn not from the stars your brow That your eyes may rest on mine. Pure at heart we wander now: We have hopes beyond to-day; And our quest does not allow Rest or dreams along the way. We are, in our distant hope, One […]...
31. WARNING WAKEN not Amor from sleep! The beauteous urchin still slumbers; Go, and complete thou the task, that to the day is assign’d! Thus doth the prudent mother with care turn time to her profit, While her babe is asleep, for ’twill awake but too soon. 1785.*...
32. THE WARNING WHEN sounds the trumpet at the Judgment Day, And when forever all things earthly die, We must a full and true account supply Of ev’ry useless word we dropp’d in play. But what effect will all the words convey Wherein with eager zeal and lovingly, That I might win thy favour, labour’d I, If on […]...
33. Sonnet 28 – My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string And let them drop down on my knee to-night. This said,-he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring To come and touch […]...
34. THE WARNING Beware! The Israelite of old, who tore The lion in his path, when, poor and blind, He saw the blessed light of heaven no more, Shorn of his noble strength and forced to grind In prison, and at last led forth to be A pander to Philistine revelry, Upon the pillars of the temple laid […]...
35. The Warning For love-I would Split open your head and put A candle in Behind the eyes. Love is dead in us If we forget The virtues of an amulet And quick surprise....
36. Warning When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandles, and say we’ve no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired And gobble up […]...
37. A Warning To My Readers Do not think me gentle Because I speak in praise Of gentleness, or elegant Because I honor the grace That keeps this world. I am A man crude as any, Gross of speech, intolerant, Stubborn, angry, full Of fits and furies. That I May have spoken well At times, is not natural. A wonder is […]...
38. Fore-Warning I’d rather be the Jester than the Minstrel of the King; I’d rather jangle cap and bells than twang the stately harp; I’d rather make his royal ribs with belly-laughter ring, Than see him sitting in the suds and sulky as a carp. I’d rather be the Court buffoon than its most high-browed sage: So […]...
39. Fareweel To A'Our Scottish Fame Fareweel to a’ our Scottish fame, Fareweel our ancient glory; Fareweel ev’n to the Scottish name, Sae famed in martial story! Now Sark rins over Solway sands, And Tweed rins to the ocean, To mark where England’s province stands – Such a parcel of rogues in a nation! What force or guile could not subdue […]...
40. 346. Song-Such a parcel of Rogues in a Nation FAREWEEL to a’ our Scottish fame, Fareweel our ancient glory; Fareweel ev’n to the Scottish name, Sae fam’d in martial story. Now Sark rins over Solway sands, An’ Tweed rins to the ocean, To mark where England’s province stands- Such a parcel of rogues in a nation! What force or guile could not subdue, Thro’ […]...