Warning Poems
Youth And Age
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee -
Both were mine! Life went a-maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
When I was young!
When I was young? -Ah, woeful When!
Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then!
This breathing house not built with hands,
This body that does me grievous wrong,
O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands
......
Lament
by Dylan Thomas
When I was a windy boy and a bit
And the black spit of the chapel fold,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women),
I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood,
The rude owl cried like a tell-tale tit,
I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled
Nine-pin down on donkey's common,
And on seesaw sunday nights I wooed
Whoever I would with my wicked eyes,
The whole of the moon I could love and leave
......
The Female Of The Species
by Rudyard Kipling
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail,
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When Nag, the wayside cobra, hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can,
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail -
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
......
The Artilleryman's Vision
by Walt Whitman
WHILE my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,
And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight
passes,
And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the
breath of my infant,
There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me:
The engagement opens there and then, in fantasy unreal;
The skirmishers begin--they crawl cautiously ahead--I hear the
irregular snap! snap!
I hear the sounds of the different missiles--the short t-h-t! t-h-t!
......
Superior
by Rabindranath Tagore
Mother, your baby is silly! She is so absurdly childish!
She does not know the difference between the lights in the
streets and the stars.
When we play at eating with pebbles, she thinks they are real
food, and tries to put them into her mouth.
When I open a book before her and ask her to learn her a, b,
c, she tears the leaves with her hands and roars for joy at
nothing; this is your baby's way of doing her lesson.
When I shake my head at her in anger and scold her and call
her naughty, she laughs and thinks it great fun.
......
Animals of the Wild
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
Eve of His Reign
facing the sunset
the lion king's on his hill
standing fierce and strong
Swans Drifting Away
a flock of mute swans
......
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.
......
When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom'D
by Walt Whitman
from Memories of President Lincoln
1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
......
Are You The New Person, Drawn Toward Me?
by Walt Whitman
ARE you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with, take warning--I am surely far different from what you
suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this façade--this smooth and tolerant
manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic
......
Song Of The Open Road
by Walt Whitman
AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune--I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.
The earth--that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
......
