The Machine

Related poetry:

1. Falling Asleep Voices moving about in the quiet house: Thud of feet and a muffled shutting of doors: Everyone yawning. Only the clocks are alert. Out in the night there’s autumn-smelling gloom Crowded with whispering trees; across the park A hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells: And I know that the clouds are moving across the […]...
2. I've a Secret to Tell Thee I’ve a secret to tell thee, but hush! not here Oh! not where the world its vigil keeps: I’ll seek, to whisper it in thine ear, Some shore where the Spirit of Silence sleeps; Where Summer’s wave unmurmuring dies, Nor fay can hear the fountain’s gush; Where, if but a note her night-bird sighs, The […]...
3. Autumn River Song The moon shimmers in green water. White herons fly through the moonlight. The young man hears a girl gathering water-chestnuts: Into the night, singing, they paddle home together....
4. The Egg and the Machine He gave the solid rail a hateful kick. From far away there came an answering tick And then another tick. He knew the code: His hate had roused an engine up the road. He wished when he had had the track alone He had attacked it with a club or stone And bent some rail […]...
5. The Man In The Dead Machine High on a slope in New Guinea The Grumman Hellcat Lodges among bright vines As thick as arms. In 1943, The clenched hand of a pilot Glided it here Where no one has ever been. In the cockpit, the helmeted Skeleton sits Upright, held By dry sinews at neck And shoulder, and webbing That straps […]...
6. No Labor-Saving Machine NO labor-saving machine, Nor discovery have I made; Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to found a hospital or library, Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage, for America, Nor literary success, nor intellect-nor book for the book-shelf; Only a few carols, vibrating through the air, I leave, For […]...
7. Welsh Landscape To live in Wales is to be conscious At dusk of the spilled blood That went into the making of the wild sky, Dyeing the immaculate rivers In all their courses. It is to be aware, Above the noisy tractor And hum of the machine Of strife in the strung woods, Vibrant with sped arrows. […]...
8. The Universal Language Of Love There is a universal language that is spoken by all – Both on earth and in the heavens above. It’s a beautiful language that flows from the heart And it’s universal name is love. The language of love uses thoughts and feelings To express what it wants to say, It’s the language that God uses […]...
9. Curriculum Vitae 1992 1) I was born in a Free City, near the North Sea. 2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into Confetti. A loaf of bread cost a million marks. Of Course I do not remember this. 3) Parents and grandparents hovered around me. The World I lived in had a soft […]...
10. The Divine Image To Mercy Pity Peace and Love. All pray in their distress: And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness. For Mercy Pity Peace and Love, Is God our Father dear: And Mercy Pity Peace and Love, Is Man his child and care. For Mercy has a human heart Pity, a human face: And Love, […]...
11. To One In Paradise Thou wast all that to me, love, For which my soul did pine- A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine. Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise But to be overcast! A […]...
12. All Ye Joyful Sing all ye joyful, now sing all together! The wind’s in the tree-top, the wind’s in the heather; The stars are in blossom, the moon is in flower, And bright are the windows of night in her tower. Dance all ye joyful, now dance all together! Soft is the grass, and let foot be like […]...
13. On the Beach at Night, Alone ON the beach at night alone, As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining-I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of the future. A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all, All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, comets, asteroids, […]...
14. The Origin of the Harp Tis believed that this Harp, which I wake now for thee Was a Siren of old, who sung under the sea; And who often, at eve, through the bright waters roved, To meet, on the green shore, a youth whom she loved. But she loved him in vain, for he left her to weep, And […]...
15. End Of The World When I was young in school in Switzerland, about the time of the Boer War, We used to take it for known that the human race Would last the earth out, not dying till the planet died. I wrote a schoolboy poem About the last man walking in stoic dignity along the dead shore Of […]...
16. Beginning my Studies BEGINNING my studies, the first step pleas’d me so much, The mere fact, consciousness-these forms-the power of motion, The least insect or animal-the senses-eyesight-love; The first step, I say, aw’d me and pleas’d me so much, I have hardly gone, and hardly wish’d to go, any farther, But stop and loiter all the time, to […]...
17. A London Plane-Tree Green is the plane-tree in the square, The other trees are brown; They droop and pine for country air; The plane-tree loves the town. Here from my garret-pane, I mark The plane-tree bud and blow, Shed her recuperative bark, And spread her shade below. Among her branches, in and out, The city breezes play; The […]...
18. THE FISHERMAN THE waters rush’d, the waters rose, A fisherman sat by, While on his line in calm repose He cast his patient eye. And as he sat, and hearken’d there, The flood was cleft in twain, And, lo! a dripping mermaid fair Sprang from the troubled main. She sang to him, and spake the while: “Why […]...
19. The Poet Only on me, the lonely one, The unending stars of the night shine, The stone fountain whispers its magic song, To me alone, to me the lonely one The colorful shadows of the wandering clouds Move like dreams over the open countryside. Neither house nor farmland, Neither forest nor hunting privilege is given to me, […]...
20. Farewell Farewell to thee! but not farewell To all my fondest thoughts of thee: Within my heart they still shall dwell; And they shall cheer and comfort me. O, beautiful, and full of grace! If thou hadst never met mine eye, I had not dreamed a living face Could fancied charms so far outvie. If I […]...
21. The Stolen Child Where dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water-rats; There we’ve hid our faery vats, Full of berries And of reddest stolen cherries. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For […]...
22. The plane and the blackbird a cold bright sun Two days to christmas A first-quarter moon At a good vantage-point A small white coffin Driven slowly uphill From the cemetery gate To the minimal grave Fifty people attending Unexpected collection Of nettle-stung hearts At a barely-lived dying A shuffling past yews Thoughts finding rhythm A lightness that bred From a […]...
23. To A Beautiful Quaker Sweet girl! though only once we met, That meeting I shall ne’er forget; And though we ne’er may meet again, Remembrance will thy form retain. I would not say, “I love,” but still My senses struggle with my will: In vain, to drive thee from my breast, My thoughts are more and more represt; In […]...
24. Pity Me Not Because The Light Of Day Pity me not because the light of day At close of day no longer walks the sky; Pity me not for beauties passed away From field and thicket as the the year goes by; Pity me not the waning of the moon, Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea, Nor that a man’s […]...
25. The Sun-Dial at Wells College The shadow by my finger cast Divides the future from the past: Before it, sleeps the unborn hour In darkness, and beyond thy power: Behind its unreturning line, The vanished hour, no longer thine: One hour alone is in thy hands, The NOW on which the shadow stands....
26. At the Window I have not always had this certainty, this pessimism which reassures the best among us. There was A time when my friends laughed at me. I was not the master of my words. A certain indifference, I Have not always known well what I wanted to say, but most often it was because I had […]...
27. Lover's Gifts LVIII: Things Throng and Laugh Things throng and laugh loud in the sky; the sands and dust dance And whirl like children. Man’s mind is aroused by their shouts; his Thoughts long to be the playmates of things. Our dreams, drifting in the stream of the vague, stretch their Arms to clutch the earth, – their efforts stiffen into bricks […]...
28. National Trust Bottomless pits. There’s on in Castleton, And stout upholders of our law and order One day thought its depth worth wagering on And borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder And winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb. Not even a good flogging made him holler! O gentlemen, a better way to plumb […]...
29. To Music Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps: Silence of paintings. You language where all language Ends. You time Standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts. Feelings for whom? O you the transformation Of feelings into what? : into audible landscape. You stranger: music. You heart-space Grown out of us. The deepest space in us, Which, rising […]...
30. Long Guns THEN came, Oscar, the time of the guns. And there was no land for a man, no land for a country, Unless guns sprang up And spoke their language. The how of running the world was all in guns. The law of a God keeping sea and land apart, The law of a child sucking […]...
31. Predawn In Health The stars are filtering through a tree Outside in the moon’s silent era. Reality is moving layer over layer Like crystal spheres now called laws. The future is right behind your head; Just over all horizons is the past. The soul sits looking at its offer....
32. Dreamland By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule- From a wild clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE – out of TIME. Bottomless vales and boundless floods, And chasms, […]...
33. Myself was formed a Carpenter Myself was formed a Carpenter An unpretending time My Plane and I, together wrought Before a Builder came To measure our attainments Had we the Art of Boards Sufficiently developed He’d hire us At Halves My Tools took Human Faces The Bench, where we had toiled Against the Man persuaded We Temples build I said...
34. Betrayal If a man says half himself in the light, adroit Way a tune shakes into equilibrium, Or approximates to a note that never comes: Says half himself in the way two pencil-lines Flow to each other and softly separate, In the resolute way plane lifts and leaps from plane: Who knows what intimacies our eyes […]...
35. The Rest The rest of us watch from beyond the fence As the woman moves with her jagged stride Into her pain as if into a slow race. We see her body in motion But hear no sounds, or we hear Sounds but no language; or we know It is not a language we know Yet. We […]...
36. I would to heaven that I were so much clay I would to heaven that I were so much clay, As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling – Because at least the past were passed away – And for the future – (but I write this reeling, Having got drunk exceedingly today, So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling) I say – […]...
37. What Fifty Said When I was young my teachers were the old. I gave up fire for form till I was cold. I suffered like a metal being cast. I went to school to age to learn the past. Now when I am old my teachers are the young. What can’t be molded must be cracked and sprung. […]...
38. AT MIDNIGHT HOUR [Goethe relates that a remarkable situation He was in one bright moonlight night led to the composition of this Sweet song, which was “the dearer to him because he could not say Whence it came and whither it would.”] AT midnight hour I went, not willingly, A little, little boy, yon churchyard past, To Father […]...
39. Jabberers I RISE out of my depths with my language. You rise out of your depths with your language. Two tongues from the depths, Alike only as a yellow cat and a green parrot are alike, Fling their staccato tantalizations Into a wildcat jabber Over a gossamer web of unanswerables. The second and the third silence, […]...
40. Hear the Voice HEAR the voice of the Bard, Who present, past, and future, sees; Whose ears have heard The Holy Word That walk’d among the ancient trees; Calling the lapsed soul, And weeping in the evening dew; That might control The starry pole, And fallen, fallen light renew! ‘O Earth, O Earth, return! Arise from out the […]...