Poems

Two Words: A Wedding

There are things you have words for, things you do not

have words for. There are words that encompass all your

feelings & words that…

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things —

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple…

The Fish

wade

through black jade.

   Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one keeps

When I was Fair and Young

When I was fair and young, then favor graced me.

Of many was I sought their mistress for to be.

But I did scorn them all and answered them therefore:

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

Kubla Khan

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods

And over the walls I have wended;

I have climbed the hills of view

England in 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn, — mud from a muddy spring;

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow,

Though thou be black as night

And she made all of light,

O Captain! My Captain!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

Revenge

Ay, gaze upon her rose-wreathed hair,

And gaze upon her smile;

Seem as you drank the very air

400: Coming Home

You are still on the highway and the great light of

noon comes over the asphalt, the gravelled

shoulders. You are on the highway, there is a kind of

A Red, Red Rose

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes!

How shall I lure thee to my haunts forlorn!

For me wilt thou renew the withered rose,

Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Kay in Summer

Someone waiting in the lobby of a Hotel Imperial amid

the spaciousness tourists and peeling gold leaf

might see it all as too hesitant for truth

I Am

I am — yet what I am none cares or knows;

My friends forsake me like a memory lost:

I am the self-consumer of my woes —

They Flee From Me

They flee from me that sometime did me seek

With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

Newfoundland Sealing Disaster

Sent to the ice after white coats,

rough outfit slung on coiled rope belts,

they stooped to the slaughter: gaffed pups,

Break of Day

’Tis true, ’tis day, what though it be?

O wilt thou therefore rise from me?

Why should we rise because ’tis light?

Hymn of Worldwide Responsibility

I proclaim the brotherhood of natural, strong, sacred people.

A bond of incandescence, a bond of blazing lightning, bright labor, 

the mind and soul of the planet, we are, like you,

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

Channel Firing

That night your great guns, unawares,

Shook all our coffins as we lay,

And broke the chancel window-squares,

Give All to Love

Give all to love;

Obey thy heart;

Friends, kindred, days,

The Listeners

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

No Coward Soul Is Mine

No coward soul is mine

No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere

I see Heaven’s glories shine

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

After Li Po

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.

To the Ladies

Wife and servant are the same,

But only differ in the name:

For when that fatal knot is tied,

A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,

A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,

Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,

Boy Remembers in the Field

What if the sun comes out

And the new furrows do not look smeared?

This is April, and the sumach candles

Lord of My Heart’s Elation

Lord of my heart’s elation,

Spirit of things unseen,

Be thou my aspiration

Thoughtless Cruelty

There, Robert, you have kill’d that fly — ,

And should you thousand ages try

The life you’ve taken to supply,

The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is;

Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee,

A Hymn to God the Father

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,

grass

grass is unusual

it was invented by the Romans

unlike most people grass stays where it grows

if grass had gone to the moon it would be there today

because grass looks luxurious

people put it wherever they can

Break, Break, Break

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

Journey of the Magi

“A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey: