To A Young Artist

Related poetry:

1. Song To A Fair Young Lady Going Out Of Town In The Spring Ask not the cause why sullen spring So long delays her flow’rs to bear; Why warbling birds forget to sing, And winter storms invert the year? Chloris is gone; and Fate provides To make it spring where she resides. Chloris is gone, the cruel fair; She cast not back a pitying eye: But left her […]...
2. The Artist All day with brow of anxious thought The dictionary through, Amid a million words he sought The sole one that would do. He wandered on from pub to pub Yet never ceased to seek With burning brain and pencil stub The Word Unique. Said he: ‘I’ll nail it down or die. Oh Heaven help me, […]...
3. Every day I bear a burden Every day I bear a burden, and I bear this calamity for a purpose: I bear the discomfort of cold and December’s snow in hope of spring. Before the fattener-up of all who are lean, I drag this so emaciated body; Though they expel me from two hundred cities, I bear it for the sake […]...
4. The Young British Soldier When the ‘arf-made recruity goes out to the East ‘E acts like a babe an’ ‘e drinks like a beast, An’ ‘e wonders because ‘e is frequent deceased Ere ‘e’s fit for to serve as a soldier. Serve, serve, serve as a soldier, Serve, serve, serve as a soldier, Serve, serve, serve as a soldier, […]...
5. Young Fellow My Lad “Where are you going, Young Fellow My Lad, On this glittering morn of May?” “I’m going to join the Colours, Dad; They’re looking for men, they say.” “But you’re only a boy, Young Fellow My Lad; You aren’t obliged to go.” “I’m seventeen and a quarter, Dad, And ever so strong, you know.” * * […]...
6. This night is irredeemable This night is irredeemable. Where you are, it is still bright. At the gates of Jerusalem, A black sun is alight. The yellow sun is hurting, Sleep, baby, sleep. The Jews in the Temple’s burning Buried my mother deep. Without rabbi, without blessing, Over her ashes, there, The Jews in the Temple’s burning Chanted the […]...
7. To A Young Poet Who Killed Himself When you had played with life a space And made it drink and lust and sing, You flung it back into God’s face And thought you did a noble thing. “Lo, I have lived and loved,” you said, “And sung to fools too dull to hear me. Now for a cool and grassy bed With […]...
8. What Shall I Do For the Land that Bred Me What shall I do for the land that bred me, Her homes and fields that folded and fed me?- Be under her banner and live for her honour: Under her banner I’ll live for her honour. CHORUS. Under her banner live for her honour. Not the pleasure, the pay, the plunder, But country and flag, […]...
9. Young A thousand doors ago When I was a lonely kid In a big house with four Garages and it was summer As long as I could remember, I lay on the lawn at night, Clover wrinkling over me, The wise stars bedding over me, My mother’s window a funnel Of yellow heat running out, My […]...
10. Young Man's Song ‘She will change,’ I cried. ‘Into a withered crone.’ The heart in my side, That so still had lain, In noble rage replied And beat upon the bone: ‘Uplift those eyes and throw Those glances unafraid: She would as bravely show Did all the fabric fade; No withered crone I saw Before the world was […]...
11. Song. Good Counsel to a Young Maid GAZE not on thy beauty’s pride, Tender maid, in the false tide That from lovers’ eyes doth slide. Let thy faithful crystal show How thy colours come and go : Beauty takes a foil from woe. Love, that in those smooth streams lies Under pity’s fair disguise, Will thy melting heart surprise. Nets of passion’s […]...
12. Striving Striving is life, yet life is striving; I fight to live, yet live to fight; The vital urge is in my driving, Yet I must drive with all my might: Each day a battle, and the fray Stoutly renewed the coming day. A am myself – yet when I strive I build a self that’s […]...
13. Lament for Eorl the Young Where now is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing? Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow; The days […]...
14. A Man Young And Old: XI. From Oedipus At Colonus Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span; Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man; Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain. Even from that delight memory treasures so, Death, despair, division of families, all entanglements of mankind grow, As that old wandering beggar and these God-hated children […]...
15. An Astrologer's Song To the Heavens above us O look and behold The Planets that love us All harnessed in gold! What chariots, what horses Against us shall bide While the Stars in their courses Do fight on our side? All thought, all desires, That are under the sun, Are one with their fires, As we also are […]...
16. Captivity The lion remembers the forest, The lion in chains; To the bird that is captive a vision Of woodland remains. One strains with his strength at the fetter, In impotent rage; One flutters in flights of a moment, And beats at the cage. If the lion were loosed from the fetter, To wander again; He […]...
17. Artist He gave a picture exhibition, Hiring a little empty shop. Above its window: FREE ADMISSION Cajoled the passers-by to stop; Just to admire – no need to purchase, Although his price might have been low: But no proud artist ever urges Potential buyers at his show. Of course he badly needed money, But more he […]...
18. The Artist as an Old Man If you ask him he will talk for hours How at fourteen he hammered signs, fingers Raw with cold, and later painted bowers In ladies’ boudoirs; how he played checkers For two weeks in jail, and lived on dark bread; How he fled the border to a country Which disappeared wars ago; unfriended Crossed a […]...
19. Exeunt Piecemeal the summer dies; At the field’s edge a daisy lives alone; A last shawl of burning lies On a gray field-stone. All cries are thin and terse; The field has droned the summer’s final mass; A cricket like a dwindled hearse Crawls from the dry grass....
20. The Artist The Artist and his Luckless Wife They lead a horrid haunted life, Surrounded by the things he’s made That are not wanted by the trade. The world is very fair to see; The Artist will not let it be; He fiddles with the works of God, And makes them look uncommon odd. The Artist is […]...
21. The Artist's Duty So it is the duty of the artist to discourage all traces of shame To extend all boundaries To fog them in right over the plate To kill only what is ridiculous To establish problem To ignore solutions To listen to no one To omit nothing To contradict everything To generate the free brain To […]...
22. The Recruit Leave your home behind, lad, And reach your friends your hand, And go, and luck go with you While Ludlow tower shall stand. Oh, come you home of Sunday When Ludlow streets are still And Ludlow bells are calling To farm and lane and mill, Or come you home of Monday When Ludlow market hums […]...
23. Examination at the Womb-Door Who owns those scrawny little feet? Death. Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death. Who owns these still-working lungs? Death. Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death. Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death. Who owns these questionable brains? Death. All this messy blood? Death. These minimum-efficiency eyes? Death. This wicked little tongue? Death. This […]...
24. Portrait of the Artist Oh, lead me to a quiet cell Where never footfall rankles, And bar the window passing well, And gyve my wrists and ankles. Oh, wrap my eyes with linen fair, With hempen cord go bind me, And, of your mercy, leave me there, Nor tell them where to find me. Oh, lock the portal as […]...
25. The Spider as an Artist The Spider as an Artist Has never been employed Though his surpassing Merit Is freely certified By every Broom and Bridget Throughout a Christian Land Neglected Son of Genius I take thee by the Hand...
26. Penniwit, the Artist I lost my patronage in Spoon River From trying to put my mind in the camera To catch the soul of the person. The very best picture I ever took Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law. He sat upright and had me pause Till he got his cross-eye straight. Then when he was ready […]...
27. Artist's Life Of all the waltzes the great Strauss wrote, Mad with melody, rhythm rife From the very first to the final note, Give me his “Artist’s Life!” It stirs my blood to my finger ends, Thrills me and fills me with vague unrest, And all that is sweetest and saddest blends Together within my breast. It […]...
28. Love The longer I live and the more I see Of the struggle of souls towards the heights above, The stronger this truth comes home to me – That the Universe rests on the shoulders of love, A love so limitless, deep, and broad, That men have re-named it, and called it God. And nothing that […]...
29. In An Artist's Studio One face looks out from all his canvasses, One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans; We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness. A queenin opal or in ruby dress, A nameless girl in freshest summer greens, A saint, an angel; every canvass means The same one […]...
30. I have fallen into unconsciousness I have got out of my own control, I have fallen into unconsciousness; in my utter unconsciousness how joyful I am with myself! The darling sewed up my eyes so that I might not see other than him, so that suddenly I opened my eyes on his face. My soul fought with me saying, “Do […]...
31. Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts, That all sin is divided into two parts. One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important, And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant, And the other kind of […]...
32. Young Sea The sea is never still. It pounds on the shore Restless as a young heart, Hunting. The sea speaks And only the stormy hearts Know what it says: It is the face of a rough mother speaking. The sea is young. One storm cleans all the hoar And loosens the age of it. I hear […]...
33. For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid There is a country to cross you will Find in the corner of your eye, in The quick slip of your foot air far Down, a snap that might have caught. And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing Voice that finds its way by being Afraid. That country is there, for us, Carried […]...
34. 161. Epigram Addressed to an Artist DEAR -, I’ll gie ye some advice, You’ll tak it no uncivil: You shouldna paint at angels mair, But try and paint the devil. To paint an Angel’s kittle wark, Wi’ Nick, there’s little danger: You’ll easy draw a lang-kent face, But no sae weel a stranger.-R. B....
35. 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 […]...
36. On a young Lady Whose LORD was Travelling NO sooner I pronounced Celindas name, But Troops of wing’d Pow’rs did chant the fame: Not those the Poets Bows and Arrows lend, But such as on the Altar do attend. Celinda nam’d, Flow’rs spring up from the Ground, Excited meerly with the Charming Sound. Celinda, the Courts Glory, and its fear, The gaz’d at […]...
37. Dream Song 100: How this woman came by the courage How this woman came by the courage, how she got The courage, Henry bemused himself in a frantic hot Night of the eight of July, Where it came from, did once the Lord frown down Upon her ancient cradle thinking ‘This one Will do before she die For two and seventy years of chipped indignities […]...
38. A Man Young And Old: I. First Love Though nurtured like the sailing moon In beauty’s murderous brood, She walked awhile and blushed awhile And on my pathway stood Until I thought her body bore A heart of flesh and blood. But since I laid a hand thereon And found a heart of stone I have attempted many things And not a thing […]...
39. Mickey M'Grew It was just like everything else in life: Something outside myself drew me down, My own strength never failed me. Why, there was the time I earned the money With which to go away to school, And my father suddenly needed help And I had to give him all of it. Just so it went […]...
40. Of a Woman, Dead Young If she had been beautiful, even, Or wiser than women about her, Or had moved with a certain defiance; If she had had sons at her sides, And she with her hands on their shoulders, Sons, to make troubled the Gods- But where was there wonder in her? What had she, better or eviler, Whose […]...