DRAIN POEMS

Wave Of Tears

The water that silently moves to the shore
reminds me of what I used to live for.
The sleepless nights
created the fire that burns, but never lights.
.....

Duwayne Frieslaar

The Ghost Speaks

A ghost is the freak of a sick man's brain?
Then why do ye start and shiver so?
That's the sob and drip of a leaky drain?
But it sounds like another noise we know!
.....

Don Marquis

My Namesake

Addressed to Francis Greenleaf Allison of Burlington, New Jersey.

You scarcely need my tardy thanks,
Who, self-rewarded, nurse and tend--
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

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

Two Backgrounds

I. LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR
HERE by the ample river's argent sweep,
Bosomed in tilth and vintage to her walls,
A tower-crowned Cybele in armoured sleep
.....

Edith Wharton

Punishment In Kindergarten

Today the world is a little more my own.
No need to remember the pain
A blue-frocked woman caused, throwing
Words at me like pots and pans, to drain
.....

Kamala Das

Canvas

Possibly there are an infinite possibility
to paint it my way, thoughts increasing to
a point beyond the limit, defying probabilities
Ideas in proximity I've got stability, also a piece of paper in peace with the moves of my pen
.....

Itz Abusedink

A Modest Request

Complied With After The Dinner At President Everett's Inauguration

Scene, - a back parlor in a certain square,
Or court, or lane, - in short, no matter where;
.....

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Endymion: Book Iii

There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
.....

John Keats

The Sea And The Skylark

On ear and ear two noises too old to end
Trench-right, the tide that ramps against the shore;
With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,
Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.
.....

Gerard Manley Hopkins

An Ode On The Popular Superstitions Of The Highlands Of Scotland, Considered As The Subject Of Poetr

Home, thou return'st from Thames, whose naiads long
Have seen thee ling'ring with a fond delay
'Mid those soft friends, whose hearts, some future day,
Shall melt, perhaps, to hear thy tragic song.
.....

William Collins

The End Of Beauty

There are always fields, filled
with flowers, or something sweeping, like wind
tickling the hairs of your arm, that sinking feeling

.....

Elizabeth H. Nearing

Iii. O Thou, Whose Stern Command And Precepts Pure...

O THOU, whose stern command and precepts pure
(Tho' agony in every vein should start,
And slowly drain the blood-drops from the heart)
Have bade the patient spirit still endure;
.....

William Lisle Bowles

Scots, Wha Hae Wi' Wallace Bled

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victory!
.....

Robert Burns

The King Of Thule

IN Thule lived a monarch,

Still faithful to the grave,
To whom his dying mistress
.....

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

My Bees: An Allegory

"O bees, sweet bees!" I said, "that nearest field
Is shining white with fragrant immortelles.
Fly swiftly there and drain those honey wells."
Then, spicy pines the sunny hive to shield,
.....

Helen Hunt Jackson

Vers De Societe

This chain of white arms round the room-
The demon waltz-bewilders me:
Or am I drunk with this good wine?
Vive la compagnie!
.....

Elizabeth Stoddard

Jaspar

Jaspar was poor, and want and vice
Had made his heart like stone,
And Jaspar look'd with envious eyes
On riches not his own.
.....

Robert Southey

My Garden

Sweet garden, wreathed in fruits and flowers,
And domed by blue Tyrolean skies,
Within thy rose-encircled bowers,
Secluded from all curious eyes,
.....

John L. Stoddard

Words

Out of us all
That make rhymes
Will you choose
Sometimes -
.....

Edward Thomas

Daphne

Daphne! Ladon's daughter, Daphne! Set thyself in silver light,
Take thy thoughts of fairest texture, weave them into words of white -
Weave the rhyme of rose-lipped Daphne, nymph of wooded stream and shade,
Flying love of bright Apollo, - fleeting type of faultless maid!
.....

Henry Kendall

Gemini And Virgo

Some vast amount of years ago,
Ere all my youth had vanished from me,
A boy it was my lot to know,
Whom his familiar friends called Tommy.
.....

Charles Stuart Calverley

Harvest-home

Once on a time did Eucritus and I
(With us Amyntas) to the riverside
Steal from the city. For Lycopeus' sons
Were that day busy with the harvest-home,
.....

Jon Corelis Theocritus

Veruca Salt, The Little Brute

'Veruca Salt, the little brute,
Has just gone down the garbage chute,
(And as we very rightly thought
That in a case like this we ought
.....

Roald Dahl

The Buccaneers.

Oh, not for us the easy mirth
Of men that never roam!
The crackling of the narrow hearth,
The cabined joys of home!
.....

Bliss Carman (william)

Hymn To Woden

God of the battle, hear our prayer!
By the lifted falchion's glare;
By the uncouth fane sublime,
Marked with many a Runic rhyme;
.....

William Lisle Bowles

Homework

Homage to Kenneth Koch


If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran
.....

Allen Ginsberg

A Legend Of The Foreign Office

This is the reason why Rustum Beg,
Rajah of Kolazai,
Drinketh the "simpkin" and brandy peg,
Maketh the money to fly,
.....

Rudyard Kipling

The Monk

I

In Nino's chamber not a sound intrudes
Upon the midnight's tingling silentness,
.....

Archibald Lampman

Three Seasons

“A cup for hope!” she said,
In springtime ere the bloom was old:
The crimson wine was poor and cold
By her mouth's richer red.
.....

Christina Rossetti

Dear Jack

Dear Jack, this white mug that with Guinness I fill,
And drink to the health of sweet Nan of the Hill,
Was once Tommy Tosspot's, as jovial a sot
As e'er drew a spigot, or drain'd a full pot-
.....

William Makepeace Thackeray

Snow At Changsha

over Hunan go
(Where few snows are):
A myriad homes makes cold
Far borne on the gale
.....

Du Fu

Idealism

I know the woman has no soul, I know
The woman has no possibilities
Of soul or mind or heart, but merely is
The masterpiece of flesh: well, be it so.
.....

Arthur Symons

The Laurentians

These mountains reign alone, they do not share
The transitory life of woods and streams;
Wrapt in the deep solemnity of dreams,
They drain the sunshine of the upper air.
.....

Frederick George Scott

Damætas

In law an infant, and in years a boy,
In mind a slave to every vicious joy;
From every sense of shame and virtue wean'd;
In lies an adept, in deceit a fiend;
.....

George Gordon Byron

The Booby-trap

I'm crawlin' out in the mangolds to bury wot's left o' Joe-
Joe, my pal, and a good un (God! ‘ow it rains and rains).
I'm sick o' seein' him lyin' like a ‘eap o' offal, and so
I'm crawlin' out in the beet-field to bury ‘is last remains.
.....

Robert Service

Guenevere

I was a queen, and I have lost my crown;
A wife, and I have broken all my vows;
A lover, and I ruined him I loved:-
There is no other havoc left to do.
.....

Sara Teasdale

Marmion

Heap on more wood!-the wind is chill;
But let it whistle as it will,
We'll keep our Christmas merry still.
Each age has deem'd the new-born year
.....

Sir Walter Scott

Scots Wha Hae

Scots, wha hae wi Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed
Or to victorie!
.....

Robert Burns

Song From Ælla

O sing unto my roundelay,
O drop the briny tear with me;
Dance no more at holyday,
Like a running river be:
.....

Thomas Chatterton

Contentment

If those who live in shepherd's bower,
Press not the rich and stately bed;
The new-mown hay and breathing flower
A softer couch beneath them spread.
.....

James Thomson

To J.r.

Last Sunday night I read the saddening story
Of the unanswered love of fair Elaine,
The `faith unfaithful' and the joyless glory
Of Lancelot, `groaning in remorseful pain.'
.....

Robert Fuller Murray

Frederic

(Time Night. Scene the woods.)


Where shall I turn me? whither shall I bend
.....

Robert Southey

A Hunting Song

Here's a health to every sportsman, be he stableman or lord,
If his heart be true, I care not what his pocket may afford;
And may he ever pleasantly each gallant sport pursue,
If he takes his liquor fairly, and his fences fairly, too.
.....

Adam Lindsay Gordon

Heat

From plains that reel to southward, dim,
The road runs by me white and bare;
Up the steep hill it seems to swim
Beyond, and melt into the glare.
.....

Archibald Lampman

Athanatos

Away with Death-away
With all her sluggish sleeps and chilling damps,
Impervious to the day,
Where nature sinks into inanity.
.....

Henry Kirk White

Rum And Water

Stifling was the air, and heavy; blowflies buzzed and held a levee,
And the mid-day sun shone hot upon the plains of Bungaroo,
As Tobias Mathew Carey, a devout bush missionary,
Urged his broken-winded horse towards the township of Warhoo.
.....

Thomas E. Spencer

The Old Keg Of Rum

My name is old Jack Palmer,
I'm a man of olden days,
And so I wish to sing a song
To you of olden praise.
.....

Banjo Paterson

October

1
A smudge for the horizon
that, on a clear day, shows
the hard edge of hills and
.....

May Swenson