PUBLIC POEMS

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The Bridge Between The Past And The Present-"the Actual Matter Of Fact"

Several ministers were replaced in years;
Is there the one who hasn't given tears?

Position and power was their inclined foothold;
.....
Karnika Barthwal

Karnika Barthwal
Michael: A Pastoral Poem

If from the public way you turn your steps
Up the tumultuous brook of Green-head Ghyll,
You will suppose that with an upright path
Your feet must struggle; in such bold ascent
.....
William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth
Grace Darling

Among the dwellers in the silent fields
The natural heart is touched, and public way
And crowded street resound with ballad strains,
Inspired by one whose very name bespeaks
.....
William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth
Vellore Days

Two pairs of notebook, four pairs of dress,
Matching top with footwear was a worry, BUT there was no stress.

Waking up for 8 Am class was hard, running to SJT was a pain,
.....
Roshni Kumari

Roshni Kumari
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

William Butler Yeats
Auguries Of Innocence

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
.....
William Blake

William Blake
Miscalculation

Miscalculation
They are voicing out their freedom
They say
Shamelessly shading crocodile tears in public.
.....
Emmanuel Mtema

Emmanuel Mtema
In All Ways A Woman

In my young years I took pride in the fact that luck was called a lady. In fact, there were so few public acknowledgments of the female presence that I felt personally honored whenever nature and large ships were referred to as feminine. But as I matured, I began to resent being considered a sister to a changeling as fickle as luck, as aloof as an ocean, and as frivolous as nature. The phrase 'A woman always has the right to change her mind' played so aptly into the negative image of the female that I made myself a victim to an unwavering decision. Even if I made an inane and stupid choice, I stuck by it rather than 'be like a woman and change my mind.'

Being a woman is hard work. Not without joy and even ecstasy, but still relentless, unending work. Becoming an old female may require only being born with certain genitalia, inheriting long-living genes and the fortune not to be run over by an out-of-control truck, but to become and remain a woman command the existence and employment of genius.

.....
Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou
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
Religio Laici

Dim, as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers,
Is reason to the soul; and as on high,
Those rolling fires discover but the sky
.....
John Dryden

John Dryden
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

W. H. Auden
Absalom And Achitophel

In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin;
When man, on many, multipli'd his kind,
Ere one to one was cursedly confin'd:
.....
John Dryden

John Dryden
Sonnet 025: Let Those Who Are In Favour With Their Stars

Let those who are in favour with their stars
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,
Unlooked for joy in that I honour most.
.....
William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare
Sonnet 036: Let Me Confess That We Two Must Be Twain

Let me confess that we two must be twain,
Although our undivided loves are one;
So shall those blots that do with me remain,
Without thy help, by me be borne alone.
.....
William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare
Crisis

Have you not seen death enough?
Innocent bodies streaming the floor.
Have you not sent death errand enough?
Your special convoy at war ceremonies.
.....
Paciolo Pen Saint

Paciolo Pen Saint
In Praise Of Limestone

If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones,
Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly
Because it dissolves in water. Mark these rounded slopes
With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath,
.....
W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden
God Has Pity On Kindergarten Children

God has pity on kindergarten children,
He pities school children -- less.
But adults he pities not at all.

.....

Yehuda Amichai
Canto 13

Kung walked
by the dynastic temple
and into the cedar grove,
and then out by the lower river,
.....
Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound
Artist

He gave a picture exhibition,
Hiring a little empty shop.
Above its window: FREE ADMISSION
Cajoled the passers-by to stop;
.....
Robert Service

Robert Service
An Octopus

of ice. Deceptively reserved and flat,
it lies “in grandeur and in mass”
beneath a sea of shifting snow-dunes;
dots of cyclamen-red and maroon on its clearly defined
.....
Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore
Easter-day

HOW very hard it is to be
A Christian! Hard for you and me,
â??Not the mere task of making real
That duty up to its ideal,
.....
Robert Browning

Robert Browning
September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
.....
W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden
The Unknown Citizen

(To JS/07/M/378/ This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
.....
W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden
A Man And His Image

All day the nations climb and crawl and pray
In one long pilgrimage to one white shrine,
Where sleeps a saint whose pardon, like his peace,
Is wide as death, as common, as divine.
.....
G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton
In The Public Library

Standing on tiptoe, head back, eyes and arm
Upraised, Kate groped to reach the higher shelf.
Her sleeve slid up like darkness in alarm
At gleam of dawn. Impatient with herself
.....

Lesbia Harford
Loving And Liking - Irregular Verses - Addressed To A Child (by My Sister)

There's more in words than I can teach:
Yet listen, Child! I would not preach;
But only give some plain directions
To guide your speech and your affections.
.....
William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth
The Odyssey: Book 03

But as the sun was rising from the fair sea into the firmament of
heaven to shed Blight on mortals and immortals, they reached Pylos the
city of Neleus. Now the people of Pylos were gathered on the sea shore
to offer sacrifice of black bulls to Neptune lord of the Earthquake.
.....

Homer
The Odyssey: Book 2

Now when the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared,
Telemachus rose and dressed himself. He bound his sandals on to his
comely feet, girded his sword about his shoulder, and left his room
looking like an immortal god. He at once sent the criers round to call
.....

Homer
The Ballad Of Cockatoo Dock

Of all the docks upon the blue
There was no dockyard, old or new,
To touch the dock at Cockatoo.

.....

Banjo Paterson
Thousand Star Hotel, Hanoi

I.

Over the road from the three star Galaxy Hotel is our hotel,
the old park on Phan Dinh Phung Street,
.....

S. K. Kelen
The Odyssey: Book 17

When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared,
Telemachus bound on his sandals and took a strong spear that suited
his hands, for he wanted to go into the city. “Old friend,” said he to
the swineherd, “I will now go to the town and show myself to my
.....

Homer
The Odyssey: Book 20

Ulysses slept in the cloister upon an undressed bullock's hide, on
the top of which he threw several skins of the sheep the suitors had
eaten, and Eurynome threw a cloak over him after he had laid himself
down. There, then, Ulysses lay wakefully brooding upon the way in
.....

Homer
Burdened

“Genius, a man's weapon, a woman's burden.”-Lamartine.

Dear God! there is no sadder fate in life
Than to be burdened so that you can not
.....
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Christmas Eve

I

Out of the little chapel I burst
Into the fresh night-air again.
.....
Robert Browning

Robert Browning
The Ballad Of Ben Hall's Gang

Come all ye wild colonials And listen to my tale;
A story of bushrangers' deeds I will to you unveil.
'Tis of those gallant heroes, Game fighters one and all;
And we'll sit and sing, Long Live the King,
.....

Anonymous Oceania
Band Concert

Band concert public square Nebraska city. Flowing and circling dresses, summer-white dresses. Faces, flesh tints flung like sprays of cherry blossoms. And gigglers, God knows, gigglers, rivaling the pony whinnies of the Livery Stable Blues.

Cowboy rags and nigger rags. And boys driving sorrel horses hurl a cornfield laughter at the girls in dresses, summer-white dresses. Amid the cornet staccato and the tuba oompa, gigglers, God knows, gigglers daffy with lifeâ??s razzle dazzle.

.....
Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg
Thersites

So, in the Sunday papers _you_, Del Mar,
Damn, all great Englishmen in English speech?
I am no Englishman, but in my reach
A rogue shall never rail where heroes are.
.....

Ambrose Bierce
A List Of Some Observation...

A list of some observation. In a corner, it's warm.
A glance leaves an imprint on anything it's dwelt on.
Water is glass's most public form.
Man is more frightening than its skeleton.
.....

Joseph Brodsky
Answer To Dr. Delany's Fable Of The Pheasant And Lark.

1730


In ancient times, the wise were able
.....
Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above:
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love:
.....
William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats
There Is A Flower That Bees Prefer

380

There is a flower that Bees prefer-
And Butterflies-desire-
.....
Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson
Privacy

Oh you who are shy of the popular eye,
(Though most of us seek to survive it)
Just think of the goldfish who wanted to die
Because she could never be private.
.....
Robert Service

Robert Service
On Receipt Of My Mother's Picture

Oh that those lips had language! Life has pass'd
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine-thy own sweet smiles I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
.....
William Cowper

William Cowper
Philemon

Ye blooming youth, possest of every grace,
Which can delight the eye, or please the ear,
Who boast a polish'd mind and faultless face,
Awhile the councils of Philemon hear!
.....
Matilda Betham

Matilda Betham
But Then Who Cares For Figures

An argument sometimes used against paying women as highly as men for the
same work is that women are only temporarily in industry.

Forty-four per cent of the women teachers in the public schools of New
.....

Alice Duer Miller
The Hermit

Far in a wild, unknown to public view,
From youth to age a rev'rend hermit grew;
The moss his bed, the cave his humble cell,
His food the fruits, his drink the crystal well:
.....
Thomas Parnell

Thomas Parnell
Ode To Rae Wilson Esq.

A WANDERER, Wilson, from my native land,
Remote, O Rae, from godliness and thee,
Where rolls between us the eternal sea,
Besides some furlongs of a foreign sand,â??
.....
Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood
To A Vain Lady

Ah! heedless girl! why thus disclose
What ne'er was meant for other ears:
Why thus destroy thine own repose
And dig the source of future tears?
.....

George Gordon Byron
Banjo Dog Variations

Tramps on the road: floating clouds. OLD CHINESE POEM

1

.....

Donald Justice
The Great Tribunal

John in vision saw the day
When the Judge will hasten down;
Heav'n and earth shall flee away
From the terror of his frown:
.....

John Newton