July 2011
31 posts
2 tags
To the Ladies
by Lady Mary Chudleigh
Wife and servant are the same, But only differ in the name: For when that fatal knot is ty’d, Which nothing, nothing can divide: When she the word obey has said, And man by law supreme has made, Then all that’s kind is laid aside, And nothing left but state and pride: Fierce as an eastern prince he grows And all his innate rigor shows: Then but to look, to laugh, or speak,...
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Andromeda
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Now Time’s Andromeda on this rock rude, With not her either beauty’s equal or Her injury’s, looks off by both horns of shore, Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon’s food. Time past she has been attempted and pursued By many blows and banes but now hears roar A wilder beast from West than all were, more Rife in her wrongs, more lawless, and...
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Steps
by Frank O’Hara
How funny you are today New York like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left
here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days (I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still accepts me foolish and free all I want is a room up there and you in it and even the traffic halt so thick is a way for people to rub up against each...
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The Bacchic Song
by Alexander Pushkin
Why hushed you, O gaiety’s voice? Resound, the hymns of the Bacchus! Long live they, who ever had loved us— The beautiful women and sweet, gentle girls! Let glasses be full with wines’ gold! To bottom, that rings, The sacred gold rings Let fall through the wine, sweet and cold. Raise higher your glasses, and move them right now! Long live airy muses and brightness of...
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A Birthday
by Christina Rossetti
My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Care it in doves and pomegranates,...
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The Owl
by Wendy Videlock
Beneath her nest, a shrew’s head, a finch’s beak and the bones of a quail attest the owl devours the hour, and disregards the rest.
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Lines Written in a Blank Leaf of the ‘Prometheus...
by Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Write it in gold— a Spirit of the sun, An Intellect ablaze with heavenly thoughts, A soul with all the dews of pathos shining, Odorous with love, and sweet to silent woe With the dark glories of concentrate song, Was sphered in mortal earth. Angelic sounds Alive with panting thoughts sunned the dim world. The bright creations of an human heart Wrought magic in the...
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Near Avalon
by William Morris
A ship with shields before the sun, Six maidens ‘round the mast, A red-gold crown on every one, A green gown on the last.
The fluttering green banners there Are wrought with ladies’ heads most fair, And a portraiture of Guenevere The middle of each sail doth bear.
A ship with sails before the wind, And ‘round the helm six knights, Their heaumes are on,...
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A Sailor's Song
by Joanna Baillie
While clouds on high are riding, The wintry moonshine hiding, The raging blast abiding, O’er mountain waves we go, We go, we go, we go, Bravely we go, we go. With hind, the dry land reaping, With townsman, shelter keeping, With lord on soft down sleeping, Change we our lot? O no! O no! O no! O no! Change we our lot? O no!
On stormy main careering, Each seamate, seamate...
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Selecting a Reader
by Ted Kooser
First, I would have her be beautiful, and walking carefully up on my poetry at the loneliest moment of an afternoon, her hair still damp at the neck from washing it. She should be wearing a raincoat, an old one, dirty from not having money enough for the cleaners. She will take out her glasses, and there in the bookstore, she will thumb over my poems, then put the book back up on...
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It Is Not Beauty I Demand
by George Darley
It is not Beauty I demand, A crystal brow, the moon’s despair, Nor the snow’s daughter, a white hand, Nor mermaid’s yellow pride of hair.
Tell me not of your starry eyes, Your lips that seem on roses fed, Your breasts where Cupid trembling lies, Nor sleeps for kissing of his bed.
A bloomy pair of vermeil cheeks, ...
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Incomparable Verse Valley
by Muso Soseki The sounds of the stream splash out the Buddha’s sermon.
Don’t say that the deepest meaning comes only from one’s mouth.
Day and night eighty thousand poems arise, one after the other, and in fact, not a single word has ever been spoken.
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The Catch
by Kelcy Wilburn
The skin along my thumbnails is hard, torn, dirty with dried blood. My nails’ constant picking ticks as a metronome not hushed by song. Association
is the debt collector that calls, calls, calls despite the change of address, phone number, last name. Despite the debt paid. There is no place to go that is not you, she said.
My skin, torn fresh from my thumb, rolls and splits...
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Last Lines
by Emily Bronte
No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere; I see Heaven’s glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from Ffear.
O God within my breast, Almighty, ever-present Deity! Life— that in me hast rest, As I— undying Life— have power in Thee!
Vain are the thousand creeds That move men’s hearts—...
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A Vision
by John Clare
I lost the love of heaven above, I spurned the lust of earth below, I felt the sweets of fancied love And hell itself my only foe.
I lost earth’s joys but felt the glow Of heaven’s flame abound in me Till loveliness and I did grow The bard of immortality.
I loved but woman fell away, I hid me from her faded fame, I snatched the sun’s eternal ray And wrote till...
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The Walrus and the Carpenter
by Lewis Carroll
The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright— And this was odd, because it was The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily, Because she thought the sun Had got no business to be there After the day was done— “It’s very rude of him,” she said, “To come and spoil...
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Tree
by Jane Hirshfield
It is foolish To let a young redwood Grow next to a house. Even in this One lifetime, You will have to choose. That great calm being, This clutter of soup pots and books— Already the first branch-tips brush at the window Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
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Everything Is Not Memorable
by Bailey Olsen
But the moon light low in the midday sky, White and pock-marked while turtle shells bleach in bright sun. Brown speckled crawdads creep under surfaces. Berries still green ripen blue beneath leaves. Feet squelch prints into ground Crushing cottonwood pollen in their wake. Teeth dig into licked lips And girls wonder. Tendons, bones, sinews, Muscle her back upright as She,...
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The War-song of Dinas Vawr
by Thomas Love Peacock
The mountain sheep are sweeter, But the valley sheep are fatter; We therefore deem’d it meeter To carry off the latter. We made an expedition; We met an host and quell’d it; We forced a strong position And kill’d the men who held it.
On Dyfed’s richest valley, Where herds of kine were browsing, We made a mighty sally, To furnish our carousing. Fierce warriors rush’d to...
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Your Way
by Olav H. Hauge
No-one has marked out the road You are to take Out in the unknown Out in the blue. This is your road. Only you Will take it. And there’s no Turning back. And you haven’t marked your road Either. And the wind smooths out your tracks On desolate hills.
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Apparition (Favorite Poem)
by Mark Doty
The old words are dying, Everyone forgets them, Pages falling into sleep and dust,
Dust and sleep, burning so slowly You wouldn’t even know there’s a fire. Or that’s what I think half the time.
Then, at the bookstore, a young man reciting, Slight for fourteen, blond, without irony But not self-important either;
His loping East Texas vowels threaten To escape the...
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22.
by Sam Anderson
The holy pieces of my eyes Where everything is
Are as watery gray, Gravel blue as Morning is In the same place As before But I turned the mirror Into stars:
Sometimes I wake up Too poor for words So I pray to the god of Bananas Or oranges With small poems I cn/ Hold in my hands
Or Give
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Fragment 1
by Sappho (translated by Anne Carson)
Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind, Child of Zeus, who twists lures, I beg you Do not break with hard pains, O lady, my heart
But come here if ever before You caught my voice far off And listening left you father’s Golden house and came,
Yoking your car. And fine birds brought you, Quick sparrows over the black earth Whipping their wings down...
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A Ballad of Past Meridian
by George Meredith
Last night returning from my twilight walk I met the gray mist Death, whose eyeless brow Was bent on me, and from his hand of chalk He reached me flowers as from a withered bough. O Death, what bitter nosegays givest thou!
Death said, “I gather,” and pursued his way. Another stood by me, a shape in stone, Sword-hacked and iron-stained, with breasts of clay. And...
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On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday
by Walter Savage Landor
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife; Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art: I warmed both hands before the fire of Life; It sinks; and I am ready to depart.
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In the Land of Words
by Eloise Greenfield
In the land Of words, I stand as still As a tree, And let the words Rain down on me. Come, rain, bring Your knowledge and your Music. Sing While I grow green And full. I’ll stand as still As a tree, And let your blessings Fall on me.
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Evening
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Slowly the evening puts on the garments Held for it by a rim of ancient trees; You watch: and the lands divide from you, One going heavenward, one that falls; And leave you, to neither quite belonging, Not quite so dark as the house sunk in silence, Not quite so surely pledging the eternal As that which grows star each night and climbs— And leave you (inexpressibly...
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To Walt Whitman in America
by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Send but a song oversea for us, Heart of their hearts who are free, Heart of their singer, to be for us More than our singing can be; Ours, in the tempest at error, With no light but the twilight of terror; Send us a song oversea! Sweet-smelling of pine-leaves and grasses, And blown as a tree through and through With the winds of the keen mountain-passes, And tender...
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Psalm of the Explanation-Dwellers
by April Bernard
“See, here’s how it is, there’s two different ways we look at the world. Man sees a woman, he thinks, Could I do it to her? and it doesn’t Seem mysterious, he knows already pretty well What he can and can’t do, so it’s a matter of aesthetics: Like, do I like a big ass? the man will say. Like, do I prefer dark meat near the bone? And then it’s a matter of finesse and luck, but all...
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Ode
by Arthur O’Shaughnessy
We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams. World-losers and world-forsakers, Upon whom the pale moon gleams; Yet we are the movers and shakers, Of the world forever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the world’s great cities, And out of a fabulous story We...
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Bright Star
by John Keats
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art— Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution ‘round earth’s human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors— No— yet...
