ISOLATION POEMS

Short Speech To My Friends

A political art, let it be
tenderness, low strings the fingers
touch, or the width of autumn
climbing wider avenues, among the virtue
.....

Amiri Baraka

In Memory Of W.b. Yeats

I

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
.....

W. H. Auden

One Crown That No One Seeks

1735

One crown that no one seeks
And yet the highest head
.....

Emily Dickinson

Poems On Life

Life is given to us,
we earn it by giving it.

Let the dead have the immortality of fame,
.....

Rabindranath Tagore

The Journey Of A Poem Compared To All The Sad Variety Of Travel

A poem moves forward,
Like the passages and percussions of trains in progress
A pattern of recurrence, a hammer of repetetiveoccurrence

.....

Delmore Schwartz

Isolation: To Marguerite

We were apart; yet, day by day,
I bade my heart more constant be.
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee;
.....

Matthew Arnold

Captain Craig Ii

Yet that ride had an end, as all rides have;
And the days coming after took the road
That all days take,-though never one of them
Went by but I got some good thought of it
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Tortoise Gallantry

Making his advances
He does not look at her, nor sniff at her,
No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank.
Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skin
.....

David Herbert Lawrence

Tortoise Family Connections

On he goes, the little one,
Bud of the universe,
Pediment of life.
Setting off somewhere, apparently.
.....

D. H. Lawrence

Requiem

shared all this with my own people
There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
[1961]

.....

Anna Akhmatova

Three Balls

JABOWSKY'S place is on a side street and only the rain washes the dusty three balls.
When I passed the window a month ago, there rested in proud isolation:
A family bible with hasps of brass twisted off, a wooden clock with pendulum gone,
And a porcelain crucifix with the glaze nicked where the left elbow of Jesus is represented.
.....

Carl Sandburg

Isolation - To Marguerite

We were apart; yet, day by day,
I bade my heart more constant be.
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee;
.....

Matthew Arnold

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 45. The Baby New To Earth And Sky

The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that "this is I":
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

In Memoriam A. H. H. Obiit Mdcccxxxiii: Part 045

The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that ‘this is I:'
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Isolation

THERE'S a lonely spot in the soul of man,
More lone than the moonless sea;
And a gulf, that never a bridge can span,
'Tween him and all that be;
.....

Frederick George Scott

Mounting A Mountain

I always gape
At your giant pyramid peak.
How you got that tall?
Did God
.....

Rose Marie Juan Austin

Religious Isolation

Children (as such forgive them) have I known,
Ever in their own eager pastime bent
To make the incurious bystander, intent
On his own swarming thoughts, an interest own;
.....

Matthew Arnold

Sonnet Iv

Peace is happiness, but war is our plight
Under the heavens. He -- prince of the night,
Severe captain-- and the World's vanity
Work for our corruption diligently.
.....

Mikolaj Sep Szarzynski

Invita Minerva

Not of desire alone is music born,
Not till the Muse wills is our passion crowned;
Unsought she comes; if sought, but seldom found,
Repaying thus our longing with her scorn.
.....

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Summer

Remember the days of our first happiness,
how strong we were, how dazed by passion,
lying all day, then all night in the narrow bed,
sleeping there, eating there too: it was summer,
.....

Louise Gluck

Isolation.

He came by unknown ways, and stood
At evening in the fading wood,
Which when the glowing hills were gone
Would as in a dream murmur on,
.....

Robert Crawford

Hymns For The Victory Of Flesh

Whirling sounds of storm
Deliquescing in the spiral state of mind
Voices of devoured souls
Floating through, coming through like
.....

What Spain Was Like

Spain was a taut, dry drum-head
Daily beating a dull thud
Flatlands and eagle's nest
Silence lashed by the storm.
.....

Pablo Neruda

The Palace Of Art

I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house,
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.
I said, “O Soul, make merry and carouse,
Dear soul, for all is well.”
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Princess (part Vi)

My dream had never died or lived again.
As in some mystic middle state I lay;
Seeing I saw not, hearing not I heard:
Though, if I saw not, yet they told me all
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

In Memoriam A.h.h (entire Poem!!)

OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII.


Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Isolation : A Fragment

My Maker shunneth me :
Even as a wretch stricken with leprosy,
So hold I pestilent supremacy.
Yea! He Instil fled far as the uttermost star,
.....

Isaac Rosenberg

The Confiteor Of The Artist

How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who drowns his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea. Solitude, silence, the incomparable chastity of the azure a little sail trembling upon the horizon, by its very littleness and isolation imitating my irremediable existence the melodious monotone of the surge all these things thinking through me and I through them (for in the grandeur of the reverie the Ego is swiftly lost); they think, I say, but musically and picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions.
These thoughts, as they arise in me or spring forth from external objects, soon become always too intense.
The energy working within pleasure creates an uneasiness, a positive suffering. My nerves are too tense to give other than clamouring and dolorous vibrations.
And now the profundity of the sky dismays me! its limpidity exasperates me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle, revolt me. Ah, must one eternally suffer, for ever be a fugitive from Beauty?
.....

Charles Baudelaire

Australia Federata

Australia! land of lonely lake
And serpent-haunted fen;
Land of the torrent and the fire
And forest-sundered men:
.....

James Lister Cuthbertson

Australian Federata

AUSTRALIA! land of lonely lake
And serpent-haunted fen;
Land of the torrent and the fire
And forest-sundered men:
.....

James Lister Cuthbertson

What The Poet Was Telling Himself In 1848

You mustn't seek out power, mustn't grab the helm
Your work lies elsewhere, spirit of another realm,
In innocence withdraw before this moment here.
Lover of thought in mourning both sweet and severe-,
.....

Victor Marie Hugo

Tortoise Gallantry

Making his advances
He does not look at her, nor sniff at her,
No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank.
Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skin
.....

D. H. Lawrence

The Coast-road

A horseman high alone as an eagle on the spur of the mountain
over Mirmas Canyon draws rein, looks down
At the bridge-builders, men, trucks, the power-shovels, the teeming
end of the new coast-road at the mountain's base.
.....

Robinson Jeffers

On The Porch At The Frost Place, Franconia, N. H.

So here the great man stood,
fermenting malice and poems
we have to be nearly as fierce
against ourselves as he
.....

William Matthews

Tortoise Family Connections

On he goes, the little one,
Bud of the universe,
Pediment of life.
Setting off somewhere, apparently.
.....

David Herbert Lawrence

The Face Of Qana

The face of Qana
Pale, like that of Jesus
and the sea breeze of Aprilâ?¦
Rains of blood.. and tears..
.....

Nizar Qabbani

Peripeteia

Of course, the familiar rustling of programs,
My hair mussed from behind by a grand gesture
Of mink. A little craning about to see
If anyone I know is in the audience,
.....

Anthony Evan Hecht

My Head On Fire, Dull But Glowing

I

A miniature salamander rears
his tiny head in the halls
.....

Amy King

Sunday Morning

1
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
.....

Wallace Stevens

The Tombs Of The Kings

Where the mummied Kings of Egypt, wrapped in linen fold on fold,
Couched for ages in their coffins, crowned with crowns of dusky gold,

Lie in subterranean chambers, biding to the day of doom,
.....

Mathilde Blind

The Princess (part 6)

My dream had never died or lived again.
As in some mystic middle state I lay;
Seeing I saw not, hearing not I heard:
Though, if I saw not, yet they told me all
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Fireflies

My fancies are fireflies, â??
Specks of living light
twinkling in the dark.

.....

Rabindranath Tagore