Lyric Poems
Sun
by Michael Palmer
Write this. We have burned all their villages
Write this. We have burned all the villages and the people in them
Write this. We have adopted their customs and their manner of dress
Write this. A word may be shaped like a bed, a basket of tears or an X
In the notebook it says, It is the time of mutations, laughter at jokes,
secrets beyond the boundaries of speech
......
On The Lady Elizabeth, And Count Palatine Being Married On St. Valentine's Day
by John Donne
Hail Bishop Valentine, whose day this is,
All the air is thy Diocese,
And all the chirping choristers
And other birds are thy parishioners,
Thou marryest ever year
The lyric Lark, and the grave whispering Dove,
The Sparrow that neglects his life for love,
The household bird, with the red stomacher;
Thou maks't the black bird speed as soon,
As doth the Goldfinch, or the Halycon;
......
Stony Grey Soil
by Patrick Kavanagh
O stony grey soil of Monaghan
The laugh from my love you thieved;
You took the gay child of my passion
And gave me your clod-conceived.
You clogged the feet of my boyhood
And I believed that my stumble
Had the poise and stride of Apollo
And his voice my thick tongued mumble.
......
Nostos
by Louise Gluck
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,
......
A Grammarian's Funeral Shortly After The Revival Of Learnin
by Robert Browning
Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
Cared-for till cock-crow:
Look out if yonder be not day again
Rimming the rock-row!
That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
Rarer, intenser,
......
O Stay my Lover
by Muhammad Umair
I die here, you live there;
Dolorous distance brought tears;
I'll fall apart---I have this fear;
All I see with open eyes is nightmares.
With yourself, you brought extreme ecstasy,
With myself, I saw the nature dancing;
Now with your departure, you give me melancholy;
I see myself in this lake of uncertainty---drowning.
......
Indian Summer
by Sara Teasdale
Lyric night of the lingering Indian summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.
The grasshopper's horn, and far off, high in the maples
The wheel of a locust slowly grinding the silence,
Under a moon waning and warn and broken,
Tired with summer.
......
Sappho
by Sara Teasdale
The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep,
And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,
The temples glimmer moonwise in the trees.
Twilight has veiled the little flower face
Here on my heart, but still the night is kind
And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast.
Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk
Along the surges creeping up the shore
When tides came in to ease the hungry beach,
And running, running, till the night was black,
......
The Tavern Of Last Times
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
At Box Hill, Surrey
A modern hour from London (as we spin
Into a silver thread the miles of space
Between us and our goal), there is a place
Apart from city traffic, dust, and din,
Green with great trees, where hides a quiet Inn.
Here Nelson last looked on the lovely face
Which made his world; and by its magic grace
Trailed rosy clouds across each early sin.
......
A Lyric Day
by Robert William Service
I deem that there are lyric days
So ripe with radiance and cheer,
So rich with gratitude and praise
That they enrapture all the year.
And if there is a God b\above,
(As they would tell me in the Kirk,)
How he must look with pride and love
Upon his perfect handiwork!
To-day has been a lyric day
......
