JACK POEMS

In School-days

Still sits the school-house by the road,
A ragged beggar sleeping;
Around it still the sumachs grow,
And blackberry-vines are creeping.
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

I Don't Want You To Read My Poems And Remain The Same

I don't want you to read my poems and remain the same,
i want you to read my poems and get rabbies,
attacking every jack and jill smoking cannabis
i want you to read my poems and wonder if Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was true,
.....

Francis Ngwenya

Cultural Exchange

In the Quarter of the Negroes
Where the doors are doors of paper
Dust of dingy atoms
Blows a scratchy sound.
.....

Langston Hughes

Upstairs

I too have a garret of old playthings.
I have tin soldiers with broken arms upstairs.
I have a wagon and the wheels gone upstairs.
I have guns and a drum, a jumping-jack and a magic lantern.
.....

Carl Sandburg

The English Flag

Above the portico a flag-staff, bearing the Union Jack,
remained fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately
when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts,
and seemed to see significance in the incident. -- DAILY PAPERS.
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Maudlin

Mud-mattressed under the sign of the hag
In a clench of blood, the sleep-talking virgin
Gibbets with her curse the moon's man,
****-bearing Jack in his crackless egg :
.....

Sylvia Plath

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

The Jumblies

I

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
.....

Edward Lear

Epitaph On A Hare

Here lies, whom hound did neâ??er pursue,
Nor swiftewd greyhound follow,
Whose foot neâ??er tainted morning dew,
Nor ear heard huntsmanâ??s halloâ??,
.....

William Cowper

Cricket On The Hearth

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.....

Norman Rowland Gale

Losers

IF I should pass the tomb of Jonah
I would stop there and sit for awhile;
Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark
And came out alive after all.
.....

Carl Sandburg

Gignol

Addict of Punch and Judy shows
I was when I was small;
My kiddy laughter, I suppose,
Rang louder than them all.
.....

Robert Service

My Boy Jack?

'Have you news of my boy Jack? '
Not this tide.
'When d'you think that he'll come back? '
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Ezra On The Strike

Wal, Thanksgivin' do be comin' round.
With the price of turkeys on the bound,
And coal, by gum! Thet were just found,
Is surely gettin' cheaper.
.....

Ezra Pound

Crazy Jane On God

That lover of a night
Came when he would,
Went in the dawning light
Whether I would or no;
.....

William Butler Yeats

July

'Twas Jack-o'-Winter hailed it first,
But now more timid angels sing,
For what dull ear can fail to hear
Afar the fluting of the Spring?
.....

John Le Gay Brereton

Jack Of The Tules

Shrewdly you question, Senor, and I fancy
You are no novice. Confess that to little
Of my poor gossip of Mission and Pueblo
You are a stranger!
.....

Bret Harte

Jack Frost

The door was shut, as doors should be,
Before you went to bed last night;
Yet Jack Frost has got in, you see,
And left your window silver white.
.....

Gabriel Setoun

Miss Edith Makes Another Friend

Oh, you're the girl lives on the corner? Come in-if you want to-
come quick!
There's no one but me in the house, and the cook-but she's only a
stick.
.....

Bret Harte

Brothers

How lovely the elder brother's
Life all laced in the other's,
Lóve-laced!-what once I well
Witnessed; so fortune fell.
.....

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Song Of The Jellicles

Jellicle Cats come out tonight,
Jellicle Cats come one come all:
The Jellicle Moon is shining bright-
Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball.
.....

T. S. Eliot

That Nature Is A Heraclitean Fire And Of The Comfort Of The Resurrection

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows ‘flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs' they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ‘wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long' lashes lace, lance, and pair.
.....

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Ballad Of Salvation Bill

'Twas in the bleary middle of the hard-boiled Arctic night,
I was lonesome as a loon, so if you can,
Imagine my emotions of amazement and delight
When I bumped into that Missionary Man.
.....

Robert Service

The Night Before Larry Was Stretched

The night before Larry was stretched,
The boys they all paid him a visit;
A bait in their sacks, too, they fetched;
They sweated their duds till they riz it:
.....

Anonymous

Down Around The River

Noon-time and June-time, down around the river!
Have to furse with 'Lizey Ann--but lawzy! I fergive her!
Drives me off the place, and says 'at all 'at she's a-wishin',
Land o' gracious! time'll come I'll git enough o' fishin'!
.....

James Whitcomb Riley

Prologue

This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
.....

Dylan Thomas

Dear Lorca

Dear Lorca,

These letters are to be as temporary as our poetry is to be permanent. They will establish the bulk, the wastage that my sour-stomached contemporaries demand to help them swallow and digest the pure word. We will use up our rhetoric here so that it will not appear in our poems. Let it be consumed paragraph by paragraph, day by day, until nothing of it is left in our poetry and nothing of our poetry is left in it. It is precisely because these letters are unnecessary that they must be written.
In my last letter I spoke of the tradition. The fools that read these letters will think by this we mean what tradition seems to have meant latelyâ??an historical patchwork (whether made up of Elizabethan quotations, guide books of the poetâ??s home town, or obscure bits of magic published by Pantheon) which is used to cover up the nakedness of the bare word. Tradition means much more than that. It means generations of different poets in different countries patiently telling the same story, writing the same poem, gaining and losing something with each transformationâ??but, of course, never really losing anything. This has nothing to do with calmness, classicism, temperament, or anything else. Invention is merely the enemy of poetry.
.....

Jack Spicer

The Home

I paced alone on the road across the field while the sunset was
hiding its last gold like a miser.
The daylight sank deeper and deeper into the darkness, and the
widowed land, whose harvest had been reaped, lay silent.
.....

Rabindranath Tagore

Hawker, The Standard Bearer

The grey gull sat on a floating whale,
On a floating whale sat he,
And he told his tale of the storm and the gale,
And the ships that he saw with steam and sail,
.....

Banjo Paterson

The Farm

My father's farm is an apple blossomer.
He keeps his hills in dandelion carpet
and weaves a lane of lilacs between the rose
and the jack-in-the-pulpits.
.....

Joyce Sutphen

The Peasants' Revolt

THRO' the mists of years,
Thro' the lies of men,
Your bloody sweat and tears,
Your desperate hopes and fears
.....

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

The Chimney Sweeper (songs Of Innocence )

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep,
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.
.....

William Blake

To Jack

SO, Iâ??ve battled it through on my own, Jack,
I have done with all dreaming and doubt.
Though â??stoneyâ? to-night and alone, Jack,
I am watching the Old Year out.
.....

Henry Lawson

Bold Jack Donahoe (1)

'Twas of a valiant highwayman and outlaw of disdain
Who'd scorn to live in slavery or wear a convicts chain;
His name it was Jack Donahoe of courage and renown -
He'd scorn to live in slavery or humble to the Crown.
.....

Anonymous Oceania

When Old Jack Died

I.

When old Jack died, we staid from school (they said,
At home, we needn't go that day), and none
.....

James Whitcomb Riley

Our Jack

Twelve years ago our Jack was lost. All night,
Twelve years ago, the Spirit of the Storm
Sobbed round our camp. A wind of northern hills
That hold a cold companionship with clouds
.....

Henry Kendall

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

Lovers

The two men in the road were taken aback.
The lovers came out shading their eyes from the sun,
And never was white so white, or black so black,
As her cheeks and hair. `There are more things than one
.....

Edward Thomas

Richard Minutolo

IN ev'ry age, at Naples, we are told,
Intrigue and gallantry reign uncontrolled;
With beauteous objects in abundance blessed.
No country round so many has possessed;
.....

Jean De La Fontaine

The Candle Indoors

Some candle clear burns somewhere I come by.
I muse at how its being puts blissful back
With yellowy moisture mild night's blear-all black,
Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.
.....

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Since Then

I met Jack Ellis in town to-day --
Jack Ellis -- my old mate, Jack --
Ten years ago, from the Castlereagh,
We carried our swags together away
.....

Henry Lawson

Crazy Jane And Jack The Journeyman

I know, although when looks meet
I tremble to the bone,
The more I leave the door unlatched
The sooner love is gone,
.....

William Butler Yeats

The Story Of Uriah

Jack Barrett went to Quetta
Because they told him to.
He left his wife at Simla
On three-fourths his monthly screw.
.....

Rudyard Kipling

To A Young Beauty

Dear fellow-artist, why so free
With every sort of company,
With every Jack and Jill?
Choose your companions from the best;
.....

William Butler Yeats

The General

“Good-morning; good-morning!” the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
.....

Siegfried Sassoon

Talbragar

Jack Denver died on Talbragar when Christmas Eve began,
And there was sorrow round the place, for Denver was a man;
Jack Denverâ??s wife bowed down her headâ??her daughterâ??s grief was wild,
And big Ben Duggan by the bed stood sobbing like a child.
.....

Henry Lawson

Isaac And Archibald

(To Mrs. Henry Richards)

Isaac and Archibald were two old men.
I knew them, and I may have laughed at them
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Drumnotes

Days of the dead men, Danny.
Drum for the dead, drum on your
remembering heart.

.....

Carl Sandburg

Bold Jack Donahoo

In Dublin town I was brought up, in that city of great fame
My decent friends and parents, they will tell to you the same.
It was for the sake of five hundred pounds I was sent across the main,
For seven long years, in New South Wales, to wear a convict's chain
.....

Banjo Paterson

Patience

Red! Red! Red!
Is there no black?
Red like the bloody earth, this pack!
Knaves! Kings! Queens!- all red!
.....

Leon Gellert