The Lover Pleads With His Friend For Old Friends

Related poetry:

1. Soon Our Friends Perish SOON our friends perish, Soon all we cherish Fades as days darken – goes as flowers go. Soon in December Over an ember, Lonely we hearken, as loud winds blow....
2. I Have Some Friends I have some friends, some worthy friends, And worthy friends are rare: These carpet slippers on my feet, That padded leather chair; This old and shabby dressing-gown, So well the worse of wear. I have some friends, some honest friends, And honest friends are few; My pipe of briar, my open fire, A book that’s […]...
3. My Friends My friends without shields walk on the target It is late the windows are breaking My friends without shoes leave What they love Grief moves among them as a fire among Its bells My friends without clocks turn On the dial they turn They part My friends with names like gloves set out Bare handed […]...
4. Ballad of Dead Friends As we the withered ferns By the roadway lying, Time, the jester, spurns All our prayers and prying All our tears and sighing, Sorrow, change, and woe All our where-and-whying For friends that come and go. Life awakes and burns, Age and death defying, Till at last it learns All but Love is dying; Love’s […]...
5. To Friends At Home TO friends at home, the lone, the admired, the lost The gracious old, the lovely young, to May The fair, December the beloved, These from my blue horizon and green isles, These from this pinnacle of distances I, The unforgetful, dedicate....
6. Dear Friends Dear Friends, reproach me not for what I do, Nor counsel me, nor pity me; nor say That I am wearing half my life away For bubble-work that only fools pursue. And if my bubbles be too small for you, Blow bigger then your own: the games we play To fill the frittered minutes of […]...
7. Letter to My Lover After Seven Years You gave me the child That seamed my belly & stitched up my life. You gave me: one book of love poems, Five years of peace & two of pain. You gave me darkness, light, laughter & the certain knowledge That we someday die. You gave me seven years During which the cells of my […]...
8. The Gardener XLIII: No, My Friends No, my friends, I shall never be an Ascetic, whatever you may say. I shall never be and ascetic if she Does not take the vow with me. It is my firm resolve that if I Cannot find a shady shelter and a Companion for my penance, I shall Never turn ascetic. No, my friends, […]...
9. The Poet Pleads With The Elemental Powers The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows Have pulled the Immortal Rose; And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept, The Polar Dragon slept, His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep: When will he wake from sleep? Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire, […]...
10. Having each of you as friends For more than 40 years we’ve been good friends, Since 1963 in fact, from college where we met (and managed there to build a strong quartet Of campus friendship which kept those years intact, Still yet as clear as yesterday). The musketeers were we, Four sons of Nereid, or perhaps Persephone, As different each from […]...
11. The Great Lover I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love’s praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and silent content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of […]...
12. Friends Departed They are all gone into the world of light! And I alone sit ling’ring here; Their very memory is fair and bright, And my sad thoughts doth clear. It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, Like stars upon some gloomy grove, Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest After the sun’s […]...
13. To A Gentlewoman For A Friend No marvell if the Sunne’s bright eye Shower downe hott flames; that qualitie Still waytes on light; but when wee see Those sparkling balles of ebony Distil such heat, the gazer straight Stands so amazed at the sight As when the lightning makes a breach Through pitchie clouds: can lightning reach The marrowe hurting not […]...
14. To My Friends Yes, my friends! that happier times have been Than the present, none can contravene; That a race once lived of nobler worth; And if ancient chronicles were dumb, Countless stones in witness forth would come From the deepest entrails of the earth. But this highly-favored race has gone, Gone forever to the realms of night. […]...
15. Lover's Gifts XLII: Are You a Mere Picture Are you a mere picture, and not as true as those stars, true as This dust? They throb with the pulse of things, but you are Immensely aloof in your stillness, painted form. The day was when you walked with me, your breath warm, your Limbs singing of life. My world found its speech in […]...
16. The Married Lover Why, having won her, do I woo? Because her spirit’s vestal grace Provokes me always to pursue, But, spirit-like, eludes embrace; Because her womanhood is such That, as on court-days subjects kiss The Queen’s hand, yet so near a touch Affirms no mean familiarness; Nay, rather marks more fair the height Which can with safety […]...
17. Sonnet 104: To me, fair friend, you never can be old To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed, Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride, Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned In process of the seasons have I seen, Three April perfumes in three […]...
18. My Friends The man above was a murderer, the man below was a thief; And I lay there in the bunk between, ailing beyond belief; A weary armful of skin and bone, wasted with pain and grief. My feet were froze, and the lifeless toes were purple and green and gray; The little flesh that clung to […]...
19. A PARANAETICALL, OR ADVISIVE VERSETO HIS FRIEND, MR JOHN WICKS Is this a life, to break thy sleep, To rise as soon as day doth peep? To tire thy patient ox or ass By noon, and let thy good days pass, Not knowing this, that Jove decrees Some mirth, t’ adulce man’s miseries? No; ’tis a life to have thine oil Without extortion from thy […]...
20. Hiawatha's Friends Two good friends had Hiawatha, Singled out from all the others, Bound to him in closest union, And to whom he gave the right hand Of his heart, in joy and sorrow; Chibiabos, the musician, And the very strong man, Kwasind. Straight between them ran the pathway, Never grew the grass upon it; Singing birds, […]...
21. Friends Now must I these three praise Three women that have wrought What joy is in my days: One because no thought, Nor those unpassing cares, No, not in these fifteen Many-times-troubled years, Could ever come between Mind and delighted mind; And one because her hand Had strength that could unbind What none can understand, What […]...
22. The Imperfect Lover I never asked you to be perfect-did I?- Though often I’ve called you sweet, in the invasion Of mastering love. I never prayed that you Might stand, unsoiled, angelic and inhuman, Pointing the way toward Sainthood like a sign-post. Oh yes, I know the way to heaven was easy. We found the little kingdom of […]...
23. On Leaving Some Friends At An Early Hour Give me a golden pen, and let me lean On heaped-up flowers, in regions clear, and far; Bring me a tablet whiter than a star, Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen The silver strings of heavenly harp atween: And let there glide by many a pearly car Pink robes, and wavy hair, and […]...
24. Lover's Gifts IV: She Is Near to My Heart She is near to my heart as the meadow-flower to the earth; she is Sweet to me as sleep is to tired limbs. My love for her is my life Flowing in its fullness, like a river in autumn flood, running with Serene abandonment. My songs are one with my love, like the murmur Of […]...
25. Lover's Gifts LXX: Take Back Your Coins Take back your coins, King’s Councillor. I am of those women you Sent to the forest shrine to decoy the young ascetic who had never Seen a women. I failed in your bidding. Dimly day was breaking when the hermit boy came to bathe in The stream, his tawny locks crowded on his shoulders, like […]...
26. Hope in Failure THOUGH now thou hast failed and art fallen, despair not because of defeat, Though lost for a while be thy heaven and weary of earth be thy feet, For all will be beauty about thee hereafter through sorrowful years, And lovely the dews for thy chilling and ruby thy heart-drip of tears. The eyes that […]...
27. Friend, your white beard sweeps the ground Friend, your white beard sweeps the ground. Why do you stand, expectant? Do you hope to see it In one of your withered days? With your old eyes Do you hope to see The triumphal march of justice? Do not wait, friend! Take your white beard And your old eyes To more tender lands....
28. A Friend Sends Her Perfumed Carriage A friend sends her perfumed carriage And high-bred horses to fetch me. I decline the invitation of My old poetry and wine companion. I remember the happy days in the lost capital. We took our ease in the woman’s quarters. The Feast of Lanterns was elaborately celebrated – Folded pendants, emerald hairpins, brocaded girdles, New […]...
29. Sonnet XX: Fly, Fly, My Friends Fly, fly, my friends, I have my death wound; fly! See there that boy, that murthering boy I say, Who like a thief, hid in dark bush doth lie, Till bloody bullet get him wrongful prey. So tyrant he no fitter place could spy, Nor so fair level in so secret stay, As that sweet […]...
30. To His Worthy Friend Doctor Witty Upon His Translation Of The Popular Errors Sit further, and make room for thine own fame, Where just desert enrolles thy honour’d Name The good Interpreter. Some in this task Take of the Cypress vail, but leave a mask, Changing the Latine, but do more obscure That sence in English which was bright and pure. So of Translators they are Authors grown, […]...
31. HIS AGE:DEDICATED TO HIS PECULIAR FRIEND, MR JOHN WICKES, UNDER THE NAME OFPOSTUMUS Ah, Posthumus! our years hence fly And leave no sound: nor piety, Or prayers, or vow Can keep the wrinkle from the brow; But we must on, As fate does lead or draw us; none, None, Posthumus, could e’er decline The doom of cruel Proserpine. The pleasing wife, the house, the ground Must all be […]...
32. A Door just opened on a street A Door just opened on a street I lost was passing by An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed And Wealth and Company. The Door as instant shut And I I lost was passing by Lost doubly but by contrast most Informing misery...
33. Dream Song 14: Life, friends, is boring Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, We ourselves flash and yearn, And moreover my mother told me as a boy (repeatedly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored Means you have no Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no Inner resources, because I am […]...
34. AN ODE TO MY JAILED FRIEND Unmasked – The spirits’ face is a black hole Swallowing the celestial beauty Of the stars. Caged – The sentinel is crouched Subsumed in seething pain Not pain but anger of being guiltless Yet ‘guilty’ for being in jail. The cell – No crime equals its greasy grey walls Thickly dark with no grills for […]...
35. 345. Song-Frae the friends and land I love FRAE the friends and land I love, Driv’n by Fortune’s felly spite; Frae my best belov’d I rove, Never mair to taste delight: Never mair maun hope to find Ease frae toil, relief frae care; When Remembrance wracks the mind, Pleasures but unveil despair. Brightest climes shall mirk appear, Desert ilka blooming shore, Till the […]...
36. Lover's Gifts XVIII: Your Days Your days will be full of cares, if you must give me your heart. My house by the cross-roads has its doors open and my mind is Absent, – for I sing. I shall never be made to answer for it, if you must give me Your heart. If I pledge my word to you […]...
37. Lover's Gifts LII: Tired of Waiting Tired of waiting, you burst your bonds, impatient flowers, before The winter had gone. Glimpses of the unseen comer reached your Wayside watch, and you rushed out running and panting, impulsive Jasmines, troops of riotous roses. You were the first to march to the breach of death, your Clamour of colour and perfume troubled the […]...
38. Picture Of A 23-Year-Old Youth Painted By His Friend Of The Same Age, An Amature He finished the painting yesterday noon. Now He studies it in detail. He has painted him in a Gray unbuttoned coat, a deep gray; without Any vest or any tie. With a rose-colored shirt; Open at the collar, so something might be seen Also of the beauty of his chest, of his neck. The right […]...
39. To His Noble Friend, Mr. Richard Lovelace, Upon His Poems Sir, Our times are much degenerate from those Which your sweet muse with your fair fortune chose, And as complexions alter with the climes, Our wits have drawn the infection of our times. That candid age no other way could tell To be ingenious, but by speaking well. Who best could praise had then the […]...
40. If You Had A Friend If you had a friend strong, simple, true, Who knew your faults and who understood; Who believed in the very best of you, And who cared for you as a father would; Who would stick by you to the very end, Who would smile however the world might frown: I’m sure you would try to […]...