The Wish to be Generous

Related poetry:

1. Brother of All, with Generous Hand 1 BROTHER of all, with generous hand, Of thee, pondering on thee, as o’er thy tomb, I and my Soul, A thought to launch in memory of thee, A burial verse for thee. What may we chant, O thou within this tomb? What tablets, pictures, hang for thee, O millionaire? -The life thou lived’st we […]...
2. Patience Be patient with you? When the stooping sky Leans down upon the hills And tenderly, as one who soothing stills An anguish, gathers earth to lie Embraced and girdled. Do the sun-filled men Feel patience then? Be patient with you? When the snow-girt earth Cracks to let through a spurt Of sudden green, and from […]...
3. The Ever-Patient Woman In the flowing sap In her growing fever Parting her veils Cracking out of her shells Sliding out of her skins The ever-patient woman Slowly Gives herself Life In her volcanoes In her orchards Seeking solidity and measure Clasping her most tender flesh Straining every fine-honed fiber The ever-patient woman Slowly Gives herself Light....
4. A Ballad Of The Trees And The Master Into the woods my Master went, Clean forspent, forspent. Into the woods my Master came, Forspent with love and shame. But the olives they were not blind to Him, The little gray leaves were kind to Him: The thorn-tree had a mind to Him When into the woods He came. Out of the woods my […]...
5. Leisure What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full […]...
6. Man My God, I heard this day, That none doth build a stately habitation, But he that means to dwell therein. What house more stately hath there been, Or can be, than is Man? to whose creation All things are in decay. For Man is ev’ry thing, And more: He is a tree, yet bears no […]...
7. Church Monuments While that my soul repairs to her devotion, Here I intomb my flesh, that it betimes May take acquaintance of this heap of dust; To which the blast of death’s incessant motion, Fed with the exhalation of our crimes, Drives all at last. Therefore I gladly trust My body to this school, that it may […]...
8. TO HIS BOOK Make haste away, and let one be A friendly patron unto thee; Lest, rapt from hence, I see thee lie Torn for the use of pastery; Or see thy injured leaves serve well To make loose gowns for mackarel; Or see the grocers, in a trice, Make hoods of thee to serve out spice....
9. Down By The Salley Gardens Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree. In a field by the river my love and I did […]...
10. This Compost 1 SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest; I withdraw from the still woods I loved; I will not go now on the pastures to walk; I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea; I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other […]...
11. Conrad Siever Not in that wasted garden Where bodies are drawn into grass That feeds no flocks, and into evergreens That bear no fruit There where along the shaded walks Vain sighs are heard, And vainer dreams are dreamed Of close communion with departed souls But here under the apple tree I loved and watched and pruned […]...
12. Parang Man, I suck me tooth when I hear How dem croptime fiddlers lie, And de wailing, kiss-me-arse flutes That bring water to me eye! Oh, when I t’ink how from young I wasted time at de fetes, I could bawl in a red-eyed rage For desire turned to regret, Not knowing the truth that I […]...
13. Nostos There was an apple tree in the yard This would have been Forty years ago behind, Only meadows. Drifts Of crocus in the damp grass. I stood at that window: Late April. Spring Flowers in the neighbor’s yard. How many times, really, did the tree Flower on my birthday, The exact day, not Before, not […]...
14. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
15. Masses AMONG the mountains I wandered and saw blue haze and Red crag and was amazed; On the beach where the long push under the endless tide Maneuvers, I stood silent; Under the stars on the prairie watching the Dipper slant Over the horizon’s grass, I was full of thoughts. Great men, pageants of war and […]...
16. What mystery pervades a well! What mystery pervades a well! That water lives so far A neighbor from another world Residing in a jar Whose limit none have ever seen, But just his lid of glass Like looking every time you please In an abyss’s face! The grass does not appear afraid, I often wonder he Can stand so close […]...
17. Ignorant Before The Heavens Of My Life Ignorant before the heavens of my life, I stand and gaze in wonder. Oh the vastness Of the stars. Their rising and descent. How still. As if I didn’t exist. Do I have any Share in this? Have I somehow dispensed with Their pure effect? Does my blood’s ebb and flow Change with their changes? […]...
18. In Progress Ten years ago it seemed impossible That she should ever grow so calm as this, With self-remembrance in her warmest kiss And dim dried eyes like an exhausted well. Slow-speaking when she had some fact to tell, Silent with long-unbroken silences, Centered in self yet not unpleased to please, Gravely monotonous like a passing bell. […]...
19. By the Earth's Corpse I “O Lord, why grievest Thou? – Since Life has ceased to be Upon this globe, now cold As lunar land and sea, And humankind, and fowl, and fur Are gone eternally, All is the same to Thee as ere They knew mortality.” II “O Time,” replied the Lord, “Thou read’st me ill, I ween; […]...
20. 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....
21. The chatter of a death-demon from a tree-top The chatter of a death-demon from a tree-top Blood blood and torn grass Had marked the rise of his agony This lone hunter. The grey-green woods impassive Had watched the threshing of his limbs. A canoe with flashing paddle, A girl with soft searching eyes, A call: “John!” . . . . . Come, arise, […]...
22. The Song of the Oak The Druids waved their golden knives And danced around the Oak When they had sacrificed a man; But though the learned search and scan No single modern person can Entirely see the joke. But though they cut the throats of men They cut not down the tree, And from the blood the saplings spring Of […]...
23. Sonnet 16 XVI When I consider how my light is spent, E’re half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one Talent which is death to hide, Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, least he returning chide, Doth God exact day-labour, […]...
24. Sonnet 19 XIX When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He returning chide, “Doth God exact day-labour, […]...
25. On His Blindness When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodg’d with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide, “Doth God exact day-labour, light […]...
26. All Woods Must Fail O! Wanderers in the shadowed land Despair not! For though dark they stand, All woods there be must end at last, And see the open sun go past: The setting sun, the rising sun, The day’s end, or the day begun. For east or west all woods must fail....
27. I robbed the Woods I robbed the Woods The trusting Woods. The unsuspecting Trees Brought out their Burs and mosses My fantasy to please. I scanned their trinkets curious I grasped I bore away What will the solemn Hemlock What will the Oak tree say?...
28. The Rose Sweet serene sky-like flower, Haste to adorn her bower; From thy long cloudy bed Shoot forth thy damask head! New-startled blush of Flora, The grief of pale Aurora, Who will contest no more, Haste, haste to strew her floor! Vermilion ball that’s given From lip to lip in heaven, Love’s couch’s coverlet, Haste, haste to […]...
29. Ships that Pass in the Night Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing; I look far out into the pregnant night, Where I can hear the solemn booming gun And catch the gleaming of a random light, That tells me that the ship I seek Is passing, passing. My tearful eyes my soul’s deep hurt are glassing; For […]...
30. The Breathing An absolute Patience. Trees stand Up to their knees in Fog. The fog Slowly flows Uphill. White Cobwebs, the grass Leaning where deer Have looked for apples. The woods From brook to where The top of the hill looks Over the fog, send up Not one bird. So absolute, it is No other than Happiness […]...
31. Yes! No! How necessary it is to have opinions! I think the spotted trout Lilies are satisfied, standing a few inches above the earth. I Think serenity is not something you just find in the world, Like a plum tree, holding up its white petals. The violets, along the river, are opening their blue faces, like Small […]...
32. Trees In The Garden Ah in the thunder air How still the trees are! And the lime-tree, lovely and tall, every leaf silent Hardly looses even a last breath of perfume. And the ghostly, creamy coloured little tree of leaves White, ivory white among the rambling greens How evanescent, variegated elder, she hesitates on the green grass As if, […]...
33. On A March Day Here in the teeth of this triumphant wind That shakes the naked shadows on the ground, Making a key-board of the earth to strike From clattering tree and hedge a separate sound, Bear witness for me that I loved my life, All things that hurt me and all things that healed, And that I swore […]...
34. Another Phoebus make haste, the day’s too long, be gone, The silent night’s the fittest time for moan; But stay this once, unto my suit give ear, And tell my griefs in either hemisphere. (And if the whirling of thy wheels don’t drown’d) The woeful accents of my doleful sound, If in thy swift carrier thou […]...
35. I Do Not Fear To Own Me Kin I DO not fear to own me kin To the glad clods in which spring flowers begin; Or to my brothers, the great trees, That speak with pleasant voices in the breeze, Loud talkers with the winds that pass; Or to my sister, the deep grass. Of such I am, of such my body is, […]...
36. Testament 1. Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath Grows large and free in air, don’t call it death A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire His surly art of imitating life; conspire Against him. Say that my body cannot now Be improved upon; it has no fault to show To the sly cosmetician. […]...
37. Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me Last night The rain Spoke to me Slowly, saying, What joy To come falling Out of the brisk cloud, To be happy again In a new way On the earth! That’s what it said As it dropped, Smelling of iron, And vanished Like a dream of the ocean Into the branches And the grass below. […]...
38. She is Overheard Singing OH, Prue she has a patient man, And Joan a gentle lover, And Agatha’s Arth’ is a hug-the-hearth,­ But my true love’s a rover! Mig, her man’s as good as cheese And honest as a briar, Sue tells her love what he’s thinking of,­ But my dear lad’s a liar! Oh, Sue and Prue and […]...
39. A Passing Glimpse To Ridgely Torrence On Last Looking into His ‘Hesperides’ I often see flowers from a passing car That are gone before I can tell what they are. I want to get out of the train and go back To see what they were beside the track. I name all the flowers I am sure they […]...
40. Suttee LAMP of my life, the lips of Death Hath blown thee out with their sudden breath; Naught shall revive thy vanished spark. . . Love, must I dwell in the living dark? Tree of my life, Death’s cruel foot Hath crushed thee down to thy hidden root; Nought shall restore thy glory fled. . . […]...