To Whom Words Are Mightier

Related poetry:

1. A few kind words A few kind words, what can be bought with that? In essence just a clique of tidy prose, A verb, a noun, perhaps an adjectival phrase Offered in the form of venal praise – and be surprised at what it buys. Like a fleeting smile it’s currency outweighs The simple form, a hint of urbane […]...
2. Sonnet 16: But wherefore do not you a mightier way But wherefore do not you a mightier way Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time, And fortify your self in your decay With means more blessèd than my barren rhyme? Now stand you on the top of happy hours, And many maiden gardens yet unset, With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers, Much liker […]...
3. In soothing, sweetened words No, she said, I never knew it was your first. It doesn’t Matter anyway. I always had an inkling that we’d find A way. And then we did. I’m glad about it just for that. Whether it was good or bad, or would have happened Had we made a pact or that it should have […]...
4. On No Work Of Words On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft: To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to […]...
5. Pretty Words Poets make pets of pretty, docile words: I love smooth words, like gold-enamelled fish Which circle slowly with a silken swish, And tender ones, like downy-feathred birds: Words shy and dappled, deep-eyed deer in herds, Come to my hand, and playful if I wish, Or purring softly at a silver dish, Blue Persian kittens fed […]...
6. Words Words are like days: Coloring books or pickpockets, Signposts or scratching posts, Fakirs over hot coals. Certain words must be earned Just as emotions are suffered Before they can be uttered – clean as a kept promise. Words as witnesses Testifying their truths Squalid or rarefied Inevitable, irrefutable. But, words must not carry More than […]...
7. The Words Of Belief Three words will I name thee around and about, From the lip to the lip, full of meaning, they flee; But they had not their birth in the being without, And the heart, not the lip, must their oracle be! And all worth in the man shall forever be o’er When in those three words […]...
8. Words Be careful of words, Even the miraculous ones. For the miraculous we do our best, Sometimes they swarm like insects And leave not a sting but a kiss. They can be as good as fingers. They can be as trusty as the rock You stick your bottom on. But they can be both daisies and […]...
9. The Words Of Error Three errors there are, that forever are found On the lips of the good, on the lips of the best; But empty their meaning and hollow their sound And slight is the comfort they bring to the breast. The fruits of existence escape from the clasp Of the seeker who strives but those shadows to […]...
10. Sestina: Altaforte LOQUITUR: En Bertans de Born. Dante Alighieri put this man in hell For that he was a stirrer up of strife. Eccovi! Judge ye! Have I dug Him up again? The scene is at his castle, Altaforte. “Papiols” is his Jongleur. “The Leopard,” the device of Richard Coeur de Lion. I Damn it all! all […]...
11. Little Words When you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf, Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds; And I can only stare, and shape my grief In little words. I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown The bitter woe that racks my cords apart. The weary pen that sets my sorrow down Feeds at my […]...
12. Words I had this thought a while ago, ‘My darling cannot understand What I have done, or what would do In this blind bitter land.’ And I grew weary of the sun Until my thoughts cleared up again, Remembering that the best I have done Was done to make it plain; That every year I have […]...
13. The Dying Words Of Stonewall Jackson “Order A. P. Hill to prepare for battle.” “Tell Major Hawks to advance the Commissary train.” “Let us cross the river and rest in the shade.” The stars of Night contain the glittering Day And rain his glory down with sweeter grace Upon the dark World’s grand, enchanted face All loth to turn away. And […]...
14. Night Words after Juan Ramon A child wakens in a cold apartment. The windows are frosted. Outside he hears Words rising from the streets, words he cannot Understand, and then the semis gear down For the traffic light on Houston. He sleeps Again and dreams of another city On a high hill above a wide river Bathed […]...
15. Sonnet XLV The other two, slight air and purging fire, Are both with thee, wherever I abide; The first my thought, the other my desire, These present-absent with swift motion slide. For when these quicker elements are gone In tender embassy of love to thee, My life, being made of four, with two alone Sinks down to […]...
16. Your thoughts don't have words every day Your thoughts don’t have words every day They come a single time Like signal esoteric sips Of the communion Wine Which while you taste so native seems So easy so to be You cannot comprehend its price Nor its infrequency...
17. I found the words to every thought I found the words to every thought I ever had but One And that defies me As a Hand did try to chalk the Sun To Races nurtured in the Dark How would your own begin? Can Blaze be shown in Cochineal Or Noon in Mazarin?...
18. Madam, Withouten Many Words Madam, withouten many words Once I am sure ye will or no… And if ye will, then leave your bourds And use your wit and show it so, And with a beck ye shall me call; And if of one that burneth alway Ye have any pity at all, Answer him fair with & {.} […]...
19. What Needeth These Threat'ning Words What needeth these threnning words and wasted wind? All this cannot make me restore my prey. To rob your good, iwis, is not my mind, Nor causeless your fair hand did I display. Let love be judge or else whom next we meet That may both hear what you and I can say: She took […]...
20. 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 […]...
21. He ate and drank the precious Words He ate and drank the precious Words His Spirit grew robust He knew no more that he was poor, Nor that his frame was Dust He danced along the dingy Days And this Bequest of Wings Was but a Book What Liberty A loosened spirit brings...
22. Words If on isle of the sea I have to tarry, With one book, let it be A Dictionary. For though I love life’s scene, It seems absurd, My greatest joy has been The printed word. Though painter with delight May colours blend, They are but in his sight Means to an end. Yet while I […]...
23. Words, Wide Night Somewhere on the other side of this wide night And the distance between us, I am thinking of you. The room is turning slowly away from the moon. This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say It is sad? In one of the tenses I singing An impossible song of desire that […]...
24. Two Words ‘God’ is composed of letters three, But if you put an ‘l’ Before the last it seems to me A synonym for Hell. For all of envy, greed and hate The human heart can hold Respond unto the devil’s bait Of Gold. When God created Gold to be For our adorning fit, I little think […]...
25. She dealt her pretty words like Blades She dealt her pretty words like Blades How glittering they shone And every One unbared a Nerve Or wantoned with a Bone She never deemed she hurt That is not Steel’s Affair A vulgar grimace in the Flesh How ill the Creatures bear To Ache is human not polite The Film upon the eye Mortality’s […]...
26. One thing of it we borrow One thing of it we borrow And promise to return The Booty and the Sorrow Its Sweetness to have known One thing of it we covet The power to forget The Anguish of the Avarice Defrays the Dross of it...
27. Carol of Words 1 EARTH, round, rolling, compact-suns, moons, animals-all these are words to be said; Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances-beings, premonitions, lispings of the future, Behold! these are vast words to be said. Were you thinking that those were the words-those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots? No, those are not the words-the substantial words are in the […]...
28. A Song In Storm Be well assured that on our side The abiding oceans fight, Though headlong wind and heaping tide Make us their sport to-night. By force of weather, not of war, In jeopardy we steer. Then welcome Fate’s discourtesy Whereby it shall appear How in all time of our distress, And our deliverance too, The game is […]...
29. Sonnet XCII: Be Your Words Made Be your words made, good sir, of Indian ware, That you allow me them by so small rate? Or do you cutted Spartans imitate? Or do you mean my tender ears to spare, That to my questions you so total are? When I demand of Phœnix Stella’s state, You say, forsooth, you left her well […]...
30. Sonnet 07 (to the rainbow) Mild arch of promise! on the evening sky Thou shinest fair with many a lovely ray Each in the other melting. Much mine eye Delights to linger on thee; for the day, Changeful and many-weather’d, seem’d to smile Flashing brief splendor thro’ its clouds awhile, That deepen’d dark anon and fell in […]...
31. Words Out of us all That make rhymes Will you choose Sometimes – As the winds use A crack in a wall Or a drain, Their joy or their pain To whistle through – Choose me, You English words? I know you: You are light as dreams, Tough as oak, Precious as gold, As poppies and […]...
32. Sonnet XXI: Your Words, My Friend Your words, my friend, (right healthful caustics) blame My young mind marr’d, whom Love doth windlass so, That mine own writings like bad servants show My wits, quick in vain thoughts, in virtue lame; That Plato I read for nought, but if he tame Such doltish gyres; that to my birth I owe Nobler desires, […]...
33. A monument in words And so I had a glaring revelation, I couldn’t find the poet in the man although I read his life composed by writers true disposed To tell it with veracity. They built a monument in words And deeds, a shrine of writers’ reeds inlaid with refined And proper quotes. Those motes were hardly real; I […]...
34. Passer-By, These Are Words Passer-by, these are words. But instead of reading I want you to listen: to this frail Voice like that of letters eaten by grass. Lend an ear, hear first of all the happy bee Foraging in our almost rubbed-out names. It flits between two sprays of leaves, Carrying the sound of branches that are real […]...
35. Absent of Thee I Languish Still Absent from thee I languish still; Then ask me not, when I return? The straying fool ’twill plainly kill To wish all day, all night to mourn. Dear! from thine arms then let me fly, That my fantastic mind may prove The torments it deserves to try That tears my fixed heart from my love. […]...
36. Wildpeace Not the peace of a cease-fire Not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb, But rather As in the heart when the excitement is over And you can talk only about a great weariness. I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult. And my son plays with a […]...
37. Psalm 85 Thy Land to favour graciously Thou hast not Lord been slack, Thou hast from hard Captivity Returned Jacob back. Th’ iniquity thou didst forgive That wrought thy people woe, And all their Sin, that did thee grieve Hast hid where none shall know. Thine anger all thou hadst remov’d, And calmly didst return From thy […]...
38. Remorse That scathing word I used in scorn (Though half a century ago) Comes back to me this April morn, Like boomerang to work me woe; Comes back to me with bitter blame (Though apple boughs are blossoming), And oh! the anguish of my shame Is sharper than a serpent’s sting! Age sensitizes us to pain, […]...
39. Words For Departure Nothing was remembered, nothing forgotten. When we awoke, wagons were passing on the warm summer pavements, The window-sills were wet from rain in the night, Birds scattered and settled over chimneypots As among grotesque trees. Nothing was accepted, nothing looked beyond. Slight-voiced bells separated hour from hour, The afternoon sifted coolness And people drew together […]...
40. 27. The Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie AS Mailie, an’ her lambs thegither, Was ae day nibbling on the tether, Upon her cloot she coost a hitch, An’ owre she warsl’d in the ditch: There, groaning, dying, she did lie, When Hughoc he cam doytin by. Wi’ glowrin een, and lifted han’s Poor Hughoc like a statue stan’s; He saw her days […]...