Architectural Masks

Related poetry:

1. Masks These tales of old disguisings, are they not Strange myths of souls that found themselves among Unwonted folk that spake an hostile tongue, Some soul from all the rest who’d not forgot The star-span acres of a former lot Where boundless mid the clouds his course he swung, Or carnate with his elder brothers sung […]...
2. Lilian Stewart I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins, Born in a cottage near the grist-mill, Reared in the mansion there on the hill, With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate. How proud my mother was of the mansion! How proud of father’s rise in the world! And how my father loved and watched us, And […]...
3. The Masks of Love I come in from a walk With you And they ask me If it is raining. I didn’t notice But I’ll have to give them The right answer Or they’ll think I’m crazy....
4. A Postcard From The Volcano Children picking up our bones Will never know that these were once As quick as foxes on the hill; And that in autumn, when the grapes Made sharp air sharper by their smell These had a being, breathing frost; And least will guess that with our bones We left much more, left what still is […]...
5. My Masterpiece It’s slim and trim and bound in blue; Its leaves are crisp and edged with gold; Its words are simple, stalwart too; Its thoughts are tender, wise and bold. Its pages scintillate with wit; Its pathos clutches at my throat: Oh, how I love each line of it! That Little Book I Never Wrote. In […]...
6. Curriculum Vitae As though it were reluctant to be day, …….Morning deploys a scale …….Of rarities in gray, And winter settles down in its chain-mail, Victorious over legions of gold and red. ……The smokey souls of stones, ……Blunt pencillings of lead, Pare down the world to glintless monotones Of graveyard weather, vapors of a fen …….We reckon […]...
7. To A Lady Offended by a Book of the Writer’s NOW that my page upcloses, doomed, maybe, Never to press thy cosy cushions more, Or wake thy ready Yeas as heretofore, Or stir thy gentle vows of faith in me: Knowing thy natural receptivity, I figure that, as flambeaux banish eve, My sombre image, warped by insidious heave […]...
8. Bards of Passion and of Mirth, written on the Blank Page before Beaumont and Fletcher's Tragi-Comedy 'The Fair Maid of the Inn&#039 BARDS of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too, Doubled-lived in regions new? Yes, and those of heaven commune With the spheres of sun and moon; With the noise of fountains wondrous, And the parle of voices thund’rous; With the whisper of heaven’s trees And […]...
9. The House Of Hospitalities Here we broached the Christmas barrel, Pushed up the charred log-ends; Here we sang the Christmas carol, And called in friends. Time has tired me since we met here When the folk now dead were young, And the viands were outset here And quaint songs sung. And the worm has bored the viol That used […]...
10. Calamity in London ‘Twas in the year of 1897, and on the night of Christmas day, That ten persons’ lives were taken sway, By a destructive fire in London, at No. 9 Dixie Street, Alas! so great was the fire, the victims couldn’t retreat. In Dixie Street, No. 9, if was occupied by two families, Who were all […]...
11. Ida Frickey Nothing in life is alien to you: I was a penniless girl from Summum Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River. All the houses stood before me with closed doors And drawn shades I was barred out; I had no place or part in any of them. And I walked past the old […]...
12. Rhyme Builder I envy not those gay galoots Who count on dying in their boots; For that, to tell the sober truth Sould be the privilege of youth; But aged bones are better sped To heaven from a downy bed. So prop me up with pillows two, And serve me with the barley brew; And put a […]...
13. Passers-By PASSERS-BY, Out of your many faces Flash memories to me Now at the day end Away from the sidewalks Where your shoe soles traveled And your voices rose and blend To form the city’s afternoon roar Hindering an old silence. Passers-by, I remember lean ones among you, Throats in the clutch of a hope, Lips […]...
14. Thoughts in a Tranquil Night Athwart the bed I watch the moonbeams cast a trail So bright, so cold, so frail, That for a space it gleams Like hoar-frost on the margin of my dreams. I raise my head, The splendid moon I see: Then droop my head, And sink to dreams of thee My Fatherland, of thee!...
15. All Roads That Lead To God Are Good All roads that lead to God are good. What matters it, your faith, or mine? Both centre at the goal divine Of love’s eternal Brotherhood. The kindly life in house or street – The life of prayer and mystic rite – The student’s search for truth and light – These paths at one great Junction […]...
16. The Story Of Our Lives 1 We are reading the story of our lives Which takes place in a room. The room looks out on a street. There is no one there, No sound of anything. The tress are heavy with leaves, The parked cars never move. We keep turning the pages, hoping for something, Something like mercy or change, […]...
17. I Go Back To The House For A Book I turn around on the gravel And go back to the house for a book, Something to read at the doctor’s office, And while I am inside, running the finger Of inquisition along a shelf, Another me that did not bother To go back to the house for a book Heads out on his own, […]...
18. Bus Stop Lights are burning In quiet rooms Where lives go on Resembling ours. The quiet lives That follow us – These lives we lead But do not own – Stand in the rain So quietly When we are gone, So quietly. . . And the last bus Comes letting dark Umbrellas out – Black flowers, black […]...
19. Memoir of a Proud Boy HE lived on the wings of storm. The ashes are in Chihuahua. Out of Ludlow and coal towns in Colorado Sprang a vengeance of Slav miners, Italians, Scots, Cornishmen, Yanks. Killings ran under the spoken commands of this boy With eighty men and rifles on a hogback mountain. They killed swearing to remember The shot […]...
20. The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm. The words were spoken as if there was no book, Except that the reader leaned above the page, Wanted to lean, […]...
21. Psalm 119 part 4 Instruction from scripture. Ver. 9 How shall the young secure their hearts, And guard their lives from sin? Thy word the choicest rules imparts To keep the conscience clean. Ver. 130 When once it enters to the mind, It spreads such light abroad, The meanest souls instruction find, And raise their thoughts to God. Ver. […]...
22. Sonnet XXXVI: Lead Me, Sicilian Maids Lead me, Sicilian Maids, to haunted bow’rs, While yon pale moon displays her faintest beams O’er blasted woodlands, and enchanted streams, Whose banks infect the breeze with pois’nous flow’rs. Ah! lead me, where the barren mountain tow’rs, Where no sounds echo, but the night-owl’s screams, Where some lone spirit of the desart gleams, And lurid […]...
23. Crimson Rambler NOW that a crimson rambler begins to crawl over the house of our two lives- Now that a red curve winds across the shingles- Now that hands washed in early sunrises climb and spill scarlet on a white lattice weave- Now that a loop of blood is written on our roof and reaching around a […]...
24. The Poet's Thought It came to him in rainbow dreams, Blent with the wisdom of the sages, Of spirit and of passion born; In words as lucent as the morn He prisoned it, and now it gleams A jewel shining through the ages....
25. Sonnet 32 – The first time that the sun rose on thine oath The first time that the sun rose on thine oath To love me, I looked forward to the moon To slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon And quickly tied to make a lasting troth. Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe; And, looking on myself, I seemed not one For such man’s love!-more […]...
26. Fancies Surely the flowers of a hundred springs Are simply the souls of beautiful things! The poppies aflame with gold and red Were the kisses of lovers in days that are fled. The purple pansies with dew-drops pearled Were the rainbow dreams of a youngling world. The lily, white as a star apart, Was the first […]...
27. A Life-Lesson There! little girl; don’t cry! They have broken your doll, I know; And your tea-set blue, And your play-house, too, Are things of the long ago; But childish troubles will soon pass by. There! little girl; don’t cry! There! little girl; don’t cry! They have broken your slate, I know; And the glad, wild ways […]...
28. The Snowman in the Yard (For Thomas Augustine Daly) The Judge’s house has a splendid porch, with pillars And steps of stone, And the Judge has a lovely flowering hedge that came from across The seas; In the Hales’ garage you could put my house and everything I own, And the Hales have a lawn like an emerald and a […]...
29. Her Voice The wild bee reels from bough to bough With his furry coat and his gauzy wing, Now in a lily-cup, and now Setting a jacinth bell a-swing, In his wandering; Sit closer love: it was here I trow I made that vow, Swore that two lives should be like one As long as the sea-gull […]...
30. My Great Great Etc. Uncle Patrick Henry There’s a fortune to be made in just about everything In this country, somebody’s father had to invent Everything baby food, tractors, rat poisoning. My family’s obviously done nothing since the beginning Of time. They invented poverty and bad taste And getting by and taking it from the boss. O my mother goes around chewing […]...
31. The Shepherd's Brow, Fronting Forked Lightning, Owns The shepherd’s brow, fronting forked lightning, owns The horror and the havoc and the glory Of it. Angels fall, they are towers, from heaven-a story Of just, majestical, and giant groans. But man-we, scaffold of score brittle bones; Who breathe, from groundlong babyhood to hoary Age gasp; whose breath is our memento mori – What […]...
32. Southern Pacific HUNTINGTON sleeps in a house six feet long. Huntington dreams of railroads he built and owned. Huntington dreams of ten thousand men saying: Yes, sir. Blithery sleeps in a house six feet long. Blithery dreams of rails and ties he laid. Blithery dreams of saying to Huntington: Yes, sir. Huntington, Blithery, sleep in houses six […]...
33. Kingdom of Love In the dawn of the day when the sea and the earth Reflected the sunrise above, I set forth with a heart full of courage and mirth To seek for the Kingdom of Love. I asked of a Poet I met on the way Which cross-road would lead me aright. And he said: “Follow me, […]...
34. The Houses ‘Twixt my house and thy house the pathway is broad, In thy house or my house is half the world’s hoard; By my house and thy house hangs all the world’s fate, On thy house and my house lies half the world’s hate. For my house and thy house no help shall we find Save […]...
35. All In a Family Way My banks are all furnished with rags, So thick, even Freddy can’t thin ’em; I’ve torn up my old money-bags, Having little or nought to put in ’em. My tradesman are smashing by dozens, But this is all nothing, they say; For bankrupts, since Adam, are cousins, So, it’s all in the family way. My […]...
36. A Creation Of Our Love We didn’t give birth to you – that is true, But you are still a creation of our love. For many years we prayed to the Heavens above To bless our lives with a new soul. With a precious new soul who Would make our family whole. And then one day – along you came […]...
37. Alfred Moir Why was I not devoured by self-contempt, And rotted down by indifference And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones? Why, with all of my errant steps Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke? And why, though I stood at Burchard’s bar, As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys To buy the […]...
38. Dream Song 75: Turning it over, considering Turning it over, considering, like a madman Henry put forth a book. No harm resulted from this. Neither the menstruating stars (nor man) was moved At once. Bare dogs drew closer for a second look And performed their friendly operations there. Refreshed, the bark rejoiced. Seasons went and came. Leaves fell, but only a few. […]...
39. Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop I met the Bishop on the road And much said he and I. ‘Those breasts are flat and fallen now, Those veins must soon be dry; Live in a heavenly mansion, Not in some foul sty.’ ‘Fair and foul are near of kin, And fair needs foul,’ I cried. ‘My friends are gone, but that’s […]...
40. Death sets a Thing significant Death sets a Thing significant The Eye had hurried by Except a perished Creature Entreat us tenderly To ponder little Workmanships In Crayon, or in Wool, With “This was last Her fingers did” Industrious until The Thimble weighed too heavy The stitches stopped by themselves And then ’twas put among the Dust Upon the Closet […]...