BREAD POEMS

The Secret

She sought to breathe one word, but vainly;
Too many listeners were nigh;
And yet my timid glance read plainly
The language of her speaking eye.
.....

Friedrich Schiller

The Barefoot Boy

Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

Life

Life is a jest;
Take the delight of it.
Laughter is best;
Sing through the night of it.
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Democracy

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
.....

Langston Hughes

Canto Xlv

With Usura

With usura hath no man a house of good stone
each block cut smooth and well fitting
.....

Ezra Pound

The Prodigal Son

Here come I to my own again,
Fed, forgiven and known again,
Claimed by bone of my bone again
And cheered by flesh of my flesh.
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Wayfarer

A desert life, lonely it may seem
A long journey awaits
But aimless you feel
With no clear path to take
.....

Juana Liwanag

Life

A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in,
A minute to smile and an hour to weep in,
A pint of joy to a peck of trouble,
And never a laugh but the moans come double;
.....

Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Old Huntsman

I've never ceased to curse the day I signed
A seven years' bargain for the Golden Fleece.
'Twas a bad deal all round; and dear enough
It cost me, what with my daft management,
.....

Siegfried Sassoon

The Pilgrim

I fasted for some forty days on bread and buttermilk,
For passing round the bottle with girls in rags or silk,
In country shawl or Paris cloak, had put my wits astray,
And what's the good of women, for all that they can say
.....

William Butler Yeats

I Love You

I love you
like dipping bread into salt and eating
Like waking up at night with high fever
and drinking water, with the tap in my mouth
.....

Nazim Hikmet

Advent

We have tested and tasted too much, lover-
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
.....

Patrick Kavanagh

A Little Bread'a Crust'a Crumb

159

A little bread-a crust-a crumb-
A little trust-a demijohn-
.....

Emily Dickinson

Metho Drinker

Under the death of winter's leaves he lies
who cried to Nothing and the terrible night
to be his home and bread. 'O take from me
the weight and waterfall ceaseless Time
.....

Judith Wright

Bénédiction (benediction)

Lorsque, par un décret des puissances suprêmes,
Le Poète apparaît en ce monde ennuyé,
Sa mère épouvantée et pleine de blasphèmes
Crispe ses poings vers Dieu, qui la prend en pitié:
.....

Charles Baudelaire

Thanksgiving

[Nov. 26, 1857, during the great financial depression.]


Father, our thanks are due to thee
.....

Hanford Lennox Gordon

The Tower

It was deep night, and over Jerusalem's low roofs
The moon floated, drifting through high vaporous woofs.
The moonlight crept and glistened silent, solemn, sweet,
Over dome and column, up empty, endless street;
.....

Robert Nichols

Assumpta Maria

Mortals, that behold a Woman,
Rising 'twixt the Moon and Sun;
Who am I the heavens assume? an
All am I, and I am one.
.....

Francis Thompson

The Wind In The Hemlock

Steely stars and moon of brass,
How mockingly you watch me pass!
You know as well as I how soon
I shall be blind to stars and moon,
.....

Sara Teasdale

Poems For Piraye (9 To 10 O-clock Poems)

Remembering you is good
in prison
amid the news
of victory and death
.....

Nazim Hikmet

Locksley Hall Sixty Years After

Late, my grandson! half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts,
Watch'd again the hollow ridges roaring into cataracts,

Wander'd back to living boyhood while I heard the curlews call,
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Odyssey: Book 09

And Ulysses answered, “King Alcinous, it is a good thing to hear a
bard with such a divine voice as this man has. There is nothing better
or more delightful than when a whole people make merry together,
with the guests sitting orderly to listen, while the table is loaded
.....

Homer

Pretty Cow

Thank you, pretty cow, that made
Pleasant milk to soak my bread
Every day and every night,
Warm, and fresh, and sweet, and white.
.....

Jane Taylor

Ego Dominus Tuus

Hic. On the grey sand beside the shallow stream
Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still
A lamp burns on beside the open book
That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon,
.....

William Butler Yeats

Of Child With Bird At The Bush

My little bird, how canst thou sit
And sing amidst so many thorns?
Let me a hold upon thee get,
My love with honour thee adorns.
.....

John Bunyan

Song Of The Wild Bushman

Let the proud White Man boast his flocks,
And fields of foodful grain;
My home is 'mid the mountain rocks,
The Desert my domain.
.....

Thomas Pringle

Poverty

I saw an old cottage of clay,
And only of mud was the floor;
It was all falling into decay,
And the snow drifted in at the door.
.....

Jane Taylor

Solitude

I


How happy he, who free from care
.....

Alexander Pope

The Man With The Blue Guitar

as green.

They said, 'You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.'
.....

Wallace Stevens

The Wine

I cannot die, who drank delight
From the cup of the crescent moon,
And hungrily as men eat bread,
Loved the scented nights of June.
.....

Sara Teasdale

The Man Against The Sky

Between me and the sunset, like a dome
Against the glory of a world on fire,
Now burned a sudden hill,
Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher,
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Jobson Of The Star

Within a pub that's off the Strand and handy to the bar,
With pipe in mouth and mug in hand sat Jobson of the Star.
“Come, sit ye down, ye wond'ring wight, and have a yarn,” says he.
“I can't,” says I, “because to-night I'm off to Tripoli;
.....

Robert Service

Saadi

Trees in groves,
Kine in droves,
In ocean sport the scaly herds,
Wedge-like cleave the air the birds,
.....

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Wizard Way

[Dedicated to General J.C.F. Fuller]

Velvet soft the night-star glowed
Over the untrodden road,
.....

Aleister Crowley

The Self We Share

Thirst is angry with water. Hunger bitter
with bread.

The cave wants nothing to do with the sun.
.....

Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

The Lay Of The Laborer

A spade! a rake! a hoe!
A pickaxe, or a bill!
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye willâ??
.....

Thomas Hood

The Witch Of Wenham

I.
Along Crane River's sunny slopes
Blew warm the winds of May,
And over Naumkeag's ancient oaks
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Great Hunger

I
Clay is the word and clay is the flesh
Where the potato-gatherers like mechanised scarecrows move
Along the side-fall of the hill - Maguire and his men.
.....

Patrick Kavanagh

Goodbye To Tolerance

Genial poets, pink-faced
earnest witsâ??
you have given the world
some choice morsels,
.....

Denise Levertov

Michael Oaktree

Under an arch of glorious leaves I passed
Out of the wood and saw the sickle moon
Floating in daylight o'er the pale green sea.

.....

Alfred Noyes

Mysteries Remain

The mysteries remain,
I keep the same
cycle of seed-time
and of sun and rain;
.....

H. D.

Mice

The city mouse lives in a house;-
The garden mouse lives in a bower,
He's friendly with the frogs and toads,
And sees the pretty plants in flower.
.....

Christina Rossetti

Contemplations

Sometime now past in the Autumnal Tide,
When Phœbus wanted but one hour to bed,
The trees all richly clad, yet void of pride,
Were gilded o're by his rich golden head.
.....

Anne Bradstreet

Joey

I thought I would go daft when Joey died.
He was my first, and wise beyond his years.
For nigh a hundred nights I cried and cried,
Until my weary eyes burned up my tears.
.....

Robert Service

J.f.b.

How well this man unfolded to our view
The world's beliefs of Death and Heaven and Hell
This man whose own convictions none could tell,
Nor if his maze of reason had a clew.
.....

Ambrose Bierce

Life Is What We Make It

Life is a jest;
Take the delight of it.
Laughter is best;
Sing through the night of it.
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Enemy Conscript

What are we fighting for,
We fellows who go to war?
fighting for Freedom's sake!
(You give me the belly-ache.)
.....

Robert Service

Marie Antoinette

They told to Marie Antoinette:
“The beggers at your gate
Have eyes too sad for tears to wet,
And for your pity wait.”
.....

Robert Service

Coronation Poem And Prayer

The world has crowned a thousand kings:
But destiny has kept
Her weightiest hour of kingly power
To offer England's son.
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Vixi Puellis Nuper Idoneus

They flee from me that sometime did me seek,
With naked foot stalking within my chamber:
Once have I seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild, and do not once remember
.....

Sir Thomas Wyatt