LIQUID POEMS

I Am So Sure...

What is it? I want to whisper here, I am not so sure.
What words, I am to endorse here, I am not so sure.
What my fingers are up to, I am not so sure.
This mind! So playful! Playing what? I am not so sure.
.....

Aabby

To A Bird At Dawn

O bird that somewhere yonder sings,
In the dim hour 'twixt dreams and dawn,
Lone in the hush of sleeping things,
In some sky sanctuary withdrawn;
.....

Richard Le Gallienne

The Cup Of Joy

Let us mix a cup of Joy
That the wretched may employ,
Whom the Fates have made their toy.

.....

Madison Julius Cawein

Sonnet 005: Those Hours, That With Gentle Work Did Frame

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
.....

William Shakespeare

The Flower And The Leaf: Or, The Lady In The Arbour.[1]

A VISION.


Now turning from the wintry signs, the sun,
.....

John Dryden

Singing Water

I heard-'twas on a morning, but when it was and where,
Except that well I heard it, I neither know nor care-
I heard, and, oh, the sunlight was shining in the blue,
A little water singing as little waters do.
.....

R. C. Lehmann

Adonais

I weep for Adonais-he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
.....

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A June Night

Ten o'clock: the broken moon
Hangs not yet a half hour high,
Yellow as a shield of brass,
In the dewy air of June,
.....

Emma Lazarus

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

Endymion: Book Iv

Muse of my native land! loftiest Muse!
O first-born on the mountains! by the hues
Of heaven on the spiritual air begot:
Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot,
.....

John Keats

Rain

Millions of massive rain-drops
Have fallen all around;
They have danced on the house-tops,
They have hidden in the ground.
.....

Anonymous Americas

Mannahatta

I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon, lo! upsprang the aboriginal name!

Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient;
.....

Walt Whitman

Out Of The Cradle Endlessly Rocking

1

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
.....

Walt Whitman

When I Heard At The Close Of The Day

When I heard at the close of the day how my name
had been receiv'd with plaudits in the capitol, still
it was not a happy night for me that follow'd;
And else, when I carous'd, or when my plans were accomplish'd,
.....

Walt Whitman

The Spirit Of The Forest Spring

Over the rocks she trails her locks,
Her mossy locks that drip, drip, drip:
Her sparkling eyes smile at the skies
In friendship-wise and fellowship:
.....

Madison Julius Cawein

The Three Bares

Ma tried to wash her garden slacks but couldn't get 'em clean
And so she thought she'd soak 'em in a bucket o' benzine.
It worked all right. She wrung 'em out then wondered what she'd do
With all that bucket load of high explosive residue.
.....

Robert Service

April Rain Song

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
.....

Langston Hughes

The Human Face

I. Soon

Of all the springtimes of the world
This one is the ugliest
.....

Paul Eluard

Comus

A Masque Presented At Ludlow Castle, 1634, Before

The Earl Of Bridgewater, Then President Of Wales.

.....

John Milton

A Farewel To America

I.
Adieu, New-England's smiling meads,
Adieu, the flow'ry plain:
I leave thine op'ning charms, O spring,
.....

Phillis Wheatley

The "bull Spring."

When the burning sun of Summer shines from out a brassy sky,
And has parched and browned the meadows, and the creek's run dry,
O sweet it is to wander there and hear the water sing
It's rippling song of gladness from the
.....

George W. Doneghy

Seaward

Darling, you think it's love, it's just a midnight journey.
Best are the dales and rivers removed by force,
as from the next compartment throttles "Oh, stop it, Bernie,"
yet the rhythm of those paroxysms is exactly yours.
.....

Joseph Brodsky

A Toast

See this bowl of purple wine,
Life-blood of the lusty vine!
All the warmth of summer suns
In the vintage liquid runs,
.....

George Santayana

Vacation

When I asked my mother why they were called sand tarts,
she couldn't answer me-

perhaps this ravenous curiosity causes my brother
.....

Elizabeth Wilcox

Tamar

I
A night the half-moon was like a dancing-girl,
No, like a drunkard's last half-dollar
Shoved on the polished bar of the eastern hill-range,
.....

Robinson Jeffers

Sketches In The Exhibition

What various objects strike with various force,
Achilles, Hebe, and Sir Watkin's horse!
Here summer scenes, there Pentland's stormy ridge,
Lords, ladies, Noah's ark, and Cranford bridge!
.....

William Lisle Bowles

Midnight

WHEN to my Eyes
Whilst deep sleep others catches,
Thine host of spies,
The stars, shine in their watches,
.....

Henry Vaughan

The Wind

ACROSS the barren moors the wild, wild wind
Went sweeping on, and with his sobs and shrieks
Filled the still night, and tore the woof of clouds
Through which the moon did shed her cold clear light.
.....

Mathilde Blind

The Bells

I.

Hear the sledges with the bells-
Silver bells!
.....

Edgar Allan Poe

Amber

Hover
the imagined center, our tongues
grew long to please it, licking

.....

Nick Flynn

Of De Witt Williams On His Way To Lincoln Cemetery

He was born in Alabama.
He was bred in Illinois.
He was nothing but a
Plain black boy.
.....

Gwendolyn Brooks

An American Addresses Philomela

Procne, Philomela, and Itylus,
Your names are liquid, your improbable tale
Is recited in the classic numbers of the nightingale.
Ah, but our numbers are not felicitous,
.....

John Crowe Ransom

To Television

Not a "window on the world"
But as we call you,
A box a tube

.....

Robert Pinsky

Snow-bound: A Winter Idyl

To the Memory of the Household It Describes
This Poem is Dedicated by the Author:

"As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits,which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine lightof the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the CelestialFire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth thesame." -- Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy,
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

Cragwell End

I

There's nothing I know of to make you spend
A day of your life at Cragwell End.
.....

R. C. Lehmann

The Flaming Heart Upon The Book And Picture Of Saint Teresa

(As she is usually expressed with a Seraphim beside her.)


Well meaning readers! you that come as friends
.....

Richard Crashaw

Midsummer

After the May time, and after the June time,
Rare with blossoms and perfumes sweet,
Cometh the round world's royal noon time,
The red midsummer of blazing heat.
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Sonnet V: Those Hours, That With Gentle Work Did Frame

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
.....

William Shakespeare

Evening.

The light is drawn out of the leaves and grass,
And the sweet flowers grow pale in the gray air,
As if their beauty's essence e'en did pass
With the departing light from all things fair,
.....

Robert Crawford

The Monk

I

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

Archibald Lampman

The Organist

In his dim chapel day by day
The organist was wont to play,
And please himself with fluted reveries;
And all the spirit's joy and strife,
.....

Archibald Lampman

Patience, Hard Thing! The Hard Thing But To Pray

Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,
But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks
Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;
To do without, take tosses, and obey.
.....

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Mont Brevent

O dweller in the valley, lift thine eyes
To where, above the drift of cloud, the stone
Endures in silence, and to God alone
Upturns its furrowed visage, and is wise.
.....

George Santayana

The Soul's Destiny

In the liquid vault of ether hung the starry gems of light,
Blazing with unwonted splendor on the ebon brow of night;
Far across the arching concave like a train of silver lay,
Nebulous, and white, and dreamy, heaven's star-wrought Milky Way.
.....

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

From 'arcades'

O'RE the smooth enameld green
   Where no print of step hath been,
   Follow me as I sing,
   And touch the warbled string.
.....

John Milton

Habakkuk

Now leave the Porch, to vision now retreat,
Where the next rapture glows with varying heat;
Now change the time, and change the Temple scene,
The following Seer forewarns a future reign.
.....

Thomas Parnell

Delia. - An Ode.

Fair the face of orient day,
Fair the tints of op'ning rose,
But fairer still my Delia dawns,
More lovely far her beauty blows.
.....

Robert Burns

The Psoriad

The King of Scotland, years and years ago,
Convened his courtiers in a gallant row
And thus addressed them:

.....

Ambrose Bierce

The Vagabond

It was deadly cold in Danbury town
One terrible night in mid November,
A night that the Danbury folk remember
For the sleety wind that hammered them down,
.....

R. C. Lehmann

Deeds

'Tis well with words, oh masters, ye have sought,
To turn men's eyes yearning to the great and true,
Yet first take heed to what your own hands do;
By deeds not words the souls of men are taught;
.....

Archibald Lampman