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Thread: A poem a day

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    Rondel
    ---- by Kevin N. Roberts

    Our time has passed on swift and careless feet,
    With sighs and smiles and songs both sad and sweet.
    Our perfect hours have grown and gone so fast,
    And these are things we never can repeat.
    Though we might plead and pray that it would last,
    Our time has passed.

    Like shreds of mist entangled in a tree,
    Like surf and sea foam on a foaming sea,
    Like all good things we know can never last,
    Too soon we'll see the end of you and me.
    Despite the days and realms that we amassed,
    Our time has passed.

    Kevin Nicholas Roberts [1969-2008] was a poet, fiction writer and professor of English Literature. He died on December 10, 2008. Kevin had lived and studied all over the United States and had also spent three years in the English countryside of Suffolk writing Romantic poetry and studying the Romantic Masters beside the North Sea. His poetry has been compared to that of Swinburne, one of his major influences. Kevin was born on the 4th of April in the United States, which, accounting for the hour of his birth and the time zone difference, just happened to be Swinburne's birthdate, April the 5th, in England. And he told me once that he believed he was the reincarnation of Swinburne.
    I always love to go to the link shown above and read in early morning hours.
    Such depth of talent, and so many unrewarded, as these poets and their works should be read in schools and have far greater praise heaped upon them, IMHO. TYR
    Last edited by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot; 09-04-2017 at 05:51 AM.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

  2. #662
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    Samuel Taylor Coleridge
    English poet
    Image result for samuel taylor coleridge poems
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. Wikipedia
    Born: October 21, 1772, Ottery St Mary, United Kingdom
    Died: July 25, 1834, Highgate, United Kingdom
    Movies: The Ancient Mariner, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, The Albatross, Christabel, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
    Poems: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge, Kubla Khan, MORE

    ************************************************** *******


    The Good, Great Man
    - Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

    'How seldom, friend! a good great man inherits
    Honour or wealth with all his worth and pains!
    It sounds like stories from the land of spirits
    If any man obtain that which he merits
    Or any merit that which he obtains.'

    Reply to the Above

    For shame, dear friend, renounce this canting strain!
    What would'st thou have a good great man obtain?
    Place? titles? salary? a gilded chain?
    Or throne of corses which his sword had slain?
    Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!
    Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
    The good great man? three treasures, LOVE, and LIGHT,
    And CALM THOUGHTS, regular as infant's breath:
    And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,
    HIMSELF, his MAKER, and the ANGEL DEATH!
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge
    One of my favorites by Coleridge..-Tyr
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    A Ballad Of The Trees And The Master
    - Poem by Sidney Lanier


    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 Master went,
    And He was well content.
    Out of the woods my Master came,
    Content with death and shame.
    When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
    From under the trees they drew Him last:
    'Twas on a tree they slew Him - last
    When out of the woods He came.
    Sidney Lanier
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Hardy
    --By Robert Mezey



    Thrown away at birth, he was recovered,

    Plucked from the swaddling-shroud, and chafed and slapped,

    The crone implacable. At last he shivered,

    Drew the first breath, and howled, and lay there, trapped

    In a world from which there is but one escape

    And that forestalled now almost ninety years.

    In such a scene as he himself might shape,

    The maker of a thousand songs appears.



    From this it follows, all the ironies

    Life plays on one whose fate it is to follow

    The way of things, the suffering one sees,

    The many cups of bitterness he must swallow

    Before he is permitted to be gone

    Where he was headed in that early dawn.



    Robert Mezey
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    There Was One Who Walked In Shadow
    - Poem by Digby Mackworth Dolben

    There was one who walked in shadow,
    There was one who walked in light:
    But once their way together lay,
    Where sun and shade unite,


    In the meadow of the lotus,
    In the meadow of the rose,
    Where fair with youth and clear with truth
    The Living River flows.


    Scarcely summer stillness breaking,
    Questions, answers, soft and low-
    The words they said, the vows they made,
    None but the willows know.


    Both have passed away for ever
    From the meadow and the stream;
    Past their waking, past their breaking
    The sweetness of that dream.


    One along the dusty highway
    Toiling counts the weary hours,
    And one among its shining throng
    The world has crowned with flowers.


    Sometimes perhaps amid the gardens,
    Where the noble have their part,
    Though noon's o'erhead, a dew-drop's shed
    Into a lily's heart.


    This I know, till one heart reaches
    Labour's sum, the restful grave,
    Will still be seen the willow-green,
    And heard the rippling wave.

    Digby Mackworth Dolben
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Full Moon
    ------ by Robert Hayden

    No longer throne of a goddess to whom we pray,
    no longer the bubble house of childhood's
    tumbling Mother Goose man,

    The emphatic moon ascends--
    the brilliant challenger of rocket experts,
    the white hope of communications men.

    Some I love who are dead
    were watchers of the moon and knew its lore;
    planted seeds, trimmed their hair,

    Pierced their ears for gold hoop earrings
    as it waxed or waned.
    It shines tonight upon their graves.

    And burned in the garden of Gethsemane,
    its light made holy by the dazzling tears
    with which it mingled.

    And spread its radiance on the exile's path
    of Him who was The Glorious One,
    its light made holy by His holiness.

    Already a mooted goal and tomorrow perhaps
    an arms base, a livid sector,
    the full moon dominates the dark.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Sonnets Pour Helene Book I: VI
    -- Pierre Ronsard,

    Among love’s pounding seas, for me there’s no support,

    And I can see no light, and yet have no desires

    (O desire too bold!) except, as my vessel tires,

    That after such dangers I may still reach port.

    Alas! Before I can offer my prayers ashore,

    Shipwrecked, I die: for I only see one fire

    Burning above me, one Helen who inspires

    My vessel to seek its death on reefs so dire.

    Drowning I am alone, my own self-murderer,

    Choosing a child, a blind boy, as my leader,

    So, I ought to shed tears, and blush for shame.

    I don’t know if my reason or senses guide me,

    Steering my boat, but I still know it grieves me

    To see so fair a harbour yet not attain.

    --- Pierre Ronsard



    Note: Ronsard’s Helene, was Hélène de Surgères, a lady in waiting to Catherine de Médicis.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    To Help the Monkey Cross the River,

    which he must
    cross, by swimming, for fruits and nuts,
    to help him
    I sit with my rifle on a platform
    high in a tree, same side of the river
    as the hungry monkey. How does this assist
    him? When he swims for it
    I look first upriver: predators move faster with
    the current than against it.
    If a crocodile is aimed from upriver to eat the monkey
    and an anaconda from downriver burns
    with the same ambition, I do
    the math, algebra, angles, rate-of-monkey,
    croc- and snake-speed, and if, if
    it looks as though the anaconda or the croc
    will reach the monkey
    before he attains the river’s far bank,
    I raise my rifle and fire
    one, two, three, even four times into the river
    just behind the monkey
    to hurry him up a little.
    Shoot the snake, the crocodile?
    They’re just doing their jobs,
    but the monkey, the monkey
    has little hands like a child’s,
    and the smart ones, in a cage, can be taught to smile.

    —Thomas Lux
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Nevertheless
    - Poem by Marianne Moore


    you've seen a strawberry
    that's had a struggle; yet
    was, where the fragments met,

    a hedgehog or a star-
    fish for the multitude
    of seeds. What better food

    than apple seeds - the fruit
    within the fruit - locked in
    like counter-curved twin

    hazelnuts? Frost that kills
    the little rubber-plant -
    leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can't

    harm the roots; they still grow
    in frozen ground. Once where
    there was a prickley-pear -

    leaf clinging to a barbed wire,
    a root shot down to grow
    in earth two feet below;

    as carrots from mandrakes
    or a ram's-horn root some-
    times. Victory won't come

    to me unless I go
    to it; a grape tendril
    ties a knot in knots till

    knotted thirty times - so
    the bound twig that's under-
    gone and over-gone, can't stir.

    The weak overcomes its
    menace, the strong over-
    comes itself. What is there

    like fortitude! What sap
    went through that little thread
    to make the cherry red!


    Marianne Moore
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    From Sunset to Star Rise
    -------by Christina Rossetti
    Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:
    I am no summer friend, but wintry cold,
    A silly sheep benighted from the fold,
    A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot.
    Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,
    Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;
    Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,
    Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.
    For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,
    I live alone, I look to die alone:
    Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,
    Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,
    My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
    On sometime summer's unreturning track
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Chanson Un Peu Naïve
    by Louise Bogan
    What body can be ploughed,
    Sown, and broken yearly?
    But she would not die, she vowed,
    But she has, nearly.
    Sing, heart sing;
    Call and carol clearly.

    And, since she could not die,
    Care would be a feather,
    A film over the eye
    Of two that lie together.
    Fly, song, fly,
    Break your little tether.

    So from strength concealed
    She makes her pretty boast:
    Plain is a furrow healed
    And she may love you most.
    Cry, song, cry,
    And hear your crying lost.
    This poet, tho' not as prolific as was Emily Dickinson, rates right up there with her in quality, depth and poetic genius, IMHO..--Tyr
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    My Firstborn Picks an Apple



    One day in apple country

    on a small hill

    dappled with afternoon,

    the light stood still.



    Windfall about our steps

    dimpled the grass

    eloquent in praise

    of things that pass



    while overhead the season

    moved without haste

    teaching a kind of patience

    sweet to the taste.



    Four of us linked together

    combed that hillside,

    your father and I,

    you and your bride



    sharing your single apple

    down to the core,

    ourselves whole as good fruit.

    Who could ask more



    than such an hour,

    such hands to hold,

    walking in apple weather,

    harvesting gold?



    Rhina P. Espaillat
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Away, haunt thou me not,

    In A Lecture Room

    - Poem by Arthur Hugh Clough

    Thou vain Philosophy!
    Little hast thou bestead,
    Save to perplex the head,
    And leave the spirit dead.
    Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go,
    While from the secret treasure-depths below,
    Fed by the skyey shower,
    And clouds that sink and rest on hilltops high,
    Wisdom at once, and Power,
    Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly?
    Why labor at the dull mechanic oar,
    When the fresh breeze is blowing,
    And the strong current flowing,
    Right onward to the Eternal Shore?
    Arthur Hugh Clough

    ----------------------------------------------


    Qua Cursum Ventus (As The Winds Blows)
    - Poem by Arthur Hugh Clough

    As ships, becalm'd at eve, that lay
    With canvas drooping, side by side,
    Two towers of sail at dawn of day
    Are scarce long leagues apart descried;

    When fell the night, upsprung the breeze,
    And all the darkling hours they plied,
    Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas
    By each was cleaving, side by side:

    E'en so--but why the tale reveal
    Of those whom, year by year unchang'd,
    Brief absence join'd anew, to feel,
    Astounded, soul from soul estrang'd?

    At dead of night their sails were fill'd,
    And onward each rejoicing steer'd--
    Ah, neither blame, for neither will'd,
    Or wist, what first with dawn appear'd!

    To veer, how vain! On, onward strain,
    Brave barks! In light, in darkness too,
    Through winds and tides one compass guides--
    To that, and your own selves, be true.

    But O blithe breeze! and O great seas,
    Though ne'er, that earliest parting past,
    On your wide plain they join again,
    Together lead them home at last.

    One port, methought, alike they sought,
    One purpose hold where'er they fare,--
    O bounding breeze, O rushing seas!
    At last, at last, unite them there!
    Arthur Hugh Clough
    Last edited by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot; 10-02-2017 at 07:01 AM.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    In After Days
    - Poem by Henry Austin Dobson

    IN after days when grasses high
    O'er-top the stone where I shall lie,
    Though ill or well the world adjust
    My slender claim to honour'd dust,
    I shall not question nor reply.

    I shall not see the morning sky;
    I shall not hear the night-wind sigh;
    I shall be mute, as all men must
    In after days!

    But yet, now living, fain would I
    That some one then should testify,
    Saying--'He held his pen in trust
    To Art, not serving shame or lust.'
    Will none?--Then let my memory die
    In after days!
    Henry Austin Dobson
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Sunday Morning
    - Poem by Wallace Stevens

    1

    Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
    Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
    And the green freedom of a cockatoo
    Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
    The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
    She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
    Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
    As a calm darkens among water-lights.
    The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
    Seem things in some procession of the dead,
    Winding across wide water, without sound.
    The day is like wide water, without sound,
    Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
    Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
    Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

    2

    Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
    What is divinity if it can come
    Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
    Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
    In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else
    In any balm or beauty of the earth,
    Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
    Divinity must live within herself:
    Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
    Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
    Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
    Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
    All pleasures and all pains, remembering
    The bough of summer and the winter branch.
    These are the measure destined for her soul.

    3

    Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
    No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
    Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
    He moved among us, as a muttering king,
    Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
    Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
    With heaven, brought such requital to desire
    The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
    Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
    The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
    Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
    The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
    A part of labor and a part of pain,
    And next in glory to enduring love,
    Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

    4

    She says, 'I am content when wakened birds,
    Before they fly, test the reality
    Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
    But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
    Return no more, where, then, is paradise?'
    There is not any haunt of prophecy,
    Nor any old chimera of the grave,
    Neither the golden underground, nor isle
    Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
    Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
    Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
    As April's green endures; or will endure
    Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
    Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
    By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

    5

    She says, 'But in contentment I still feel
    The need of some imperishable bliss.'
    Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
    Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
    And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
    Of sure obliteration on our paths,
    The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
    Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
    Whispered a little out of tenderness,
    She makes the willow shiver in the sun
    For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
    Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
    She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
    On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
    And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

    6

    Is there no change of death in paradise?
    Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
    Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
    Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
    With rivers like our own that seek for seas
    They never find, the same receding shores
    That never touch with inarticulate pang?
    Why set pear upon those river-banks
    Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
    Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
    The silken weavings of our afternoons,
    And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
    Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
    Within whose burning bosom we devise
    Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

    7

    Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
    Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
    Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
    Not as a god, but as a god might be,
    Naked among them, like a savage source.
    Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
    Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
    And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
    The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
    The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
    That choir among themselves long afterward.
    They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
    Of men that perish and of summer morn.
    And whence they came and whither they shall go
    The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

    8

    She hears, upon that water without sound,
    A voice that cries, 'The tomb in Palestine
    Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
    It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.'
    We live in an old chaos of the sun,
    Or old dependency of day and night,
    Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
    Of that wide water, inescapable.
    Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
    Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
    Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
    And, in the isolation of the sky,
    At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
    Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
    Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

    Wallace Stevens
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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