RELATION POEMS

Fear Of The Inexplicable

xistence of the individual; the relationship between
one human being and another has also been cramped by it,
as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of
endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the
.....

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Princess Betrothed To The King Of Garba

WHAT various ways in which a thing is told
Some truth abuse, while others fiction hold;
In stories we invention may admit;
But diff'rent 'tis with what historick writ;
.....

Jean De La Fontaine

Iris By Night

One misty evening, one another's guide,
We two were groping down a Malvern side
The last wet fields and dripping hedges home.
There came a moment of confusing lights,
.....

Robert Frost

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

Comus

A Masque Presented At Ludlow Castle, 1634, Before

The Earl Of Bridgewater, Then President Of Wales.

.....

John Milton

An Essay On Man: Epistle I.

THE DESIGN.

Having proposed to write some pieces on human life and manners, such as (to use my Lord Bacon's expression) come home to men's business and bosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering man in the abstract, his nature and his state; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its being.

.....

Alexander Pope

Mauberley

I
Turned from the 'eau-forte
Par Jaquemart'
To the strait head
.....

Ezra Pound

The Poor Relation

No longer torn by what she knows
And sees within the eyes of others,
Her doubts are when the daylight goes,
Her fears are for the few she bothers.
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Odyssey: Book 10

Thence we went on to the Aeoli island where lives Aeolus son of
Hippotas, dear to the immortal gods. It is an island that floats (as
it were) upon the sea, iron bound with a wall that girds it. Now,
Aeolus has six daughters and six lusty sons, so he made the sons marry
.....

Homer

Merlin Vi

“No kings are coming on their hands and knees,
Nor yet on horses or in chariots,
To carry me away from you again,”
Said Merlin, winding around Vivian's ear
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Verses On The Death Of Dr. Swift, D.s.p.d.

Dans l'adversité de nos meilleurs amis
nous trouvons quelque chose, qui ne nous déplaît pas.


.....

Jonathan Swift

The Orphan

MY father and mother are dead,
Nor friend, nor relation I know;
And now the cold earth is their bed,
And daisies will over them grow.
.....

Ann Taylor

At A Vacation Exercise In The Colledge, Part Latin, Part English. The Latin Speeches Ended, The Eng

Hail native Language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish tripps,
Half unpronounc't, slide through my infant-lipps,
.....

John Milton

The Orphan

My father and mother are dead,
Nor friend, nor relation I know;
And now the cold earth is their bed,
And daisies will over them grow.
.....

Jane Taylor

Childhood, A Poem: Part I

Pictured in memory's mellowing glass, how sweet
Our infant days, our infant joys, to greet;
To roam in fancy in each cherish'd scene,
The village churchyard, and the village green,
.....

Henry Kirk White

Fresh Air

I

At the Poem Society a black-haired man stands up to say
-You make me sick with all your talk about restraint and mature talent!
.....

Kenneth Koch

Requiem

Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless,
Where passion is silent and hearts never crave;
Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream,
In patience and peace thou art gone-to thy grave!
.....

George Meredith

The Family Party

ime family parties we gave so long ago,
When every near-relation and distant cousins, too,
The married ones with children, Aunt Mary and Aunt Sue,
The grandpas and the grandmas, yes, everyone of kin,
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

The View From An Attic Window

Among the high-branching, leafless boughs
Above the roof-peaks of the town,
Snowflakes unnumberably come down.

.....

Howard Nemerov

An Evening Walk, Addressed To A Young Lady

The young Lady to whom this was addressed was my Sister. It was
composed at school, and during my two first College vacations.
There is not an image in it which I have not observed; and now, in
my seventy-third year, I recollect the time and place where most
.....

William Wordsworth

Upon The Disobedient Child

Children become, while little, our delights!
When they grow bigger, they begin to fright's.
Their sinful nature prompts them to rebel,
And to delight in paths that lead to hell.
.....

John Bunyan

Woman's Love

'Dearly loved, devoted Sita! daughter of a royal line,
Part we now, for years of wand'ring in the pathless woods is mine,

For my father, promise-fettered, to Kaikeyi yields the sway,
.....

Valmiki

Eureka - A Prose Poem (an Essay On The Material And Spiritual Universe)

It is with humility really unassumed, it is with a sentiment even of awe, that I pen the opening sentence of this work: for of all conceivable subjects I approach the reader with the most solemn, the most comprehensive, the most difficult, the most august.

What terms shall I find sufficiently simple in their sublimity -- sufficiently sublime in their simplicity, for the mere enunciation of my theme?

.....

Edgar Allan Poe

The Comedian As The Letter C: 06 - And Daughters With Curls

Portentous enunciation, syllable
To blessed syllable affined, and sound
Bubbling felicity in cantilene,
Prolific and tormenting tenderness
.....

Wallace Stevens

The Painter Dreaming In The Scholar-s House

<i>in memory of the painters Paul Klee
and Paul Terence Feeley</i>

I
.....

Howard Nemerov

One Anguish'in A Crowd

565

One Anguish-in a Crowd-
A Minor thing-it sounds-
.....

Emily Dickinson

Paradise Lost: Book 05

Now Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl,
When Adam waked, so customed; for his sleep
Was aery-light, from pure digestion bred,
.....

John Milton

Paradise Regained: The Fourth Book

Perplexed and troubled at his bad success
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his hope
So oft, and the persuasive rhetoric
.....

John Milton

Paradise Regained: The Second Book

Meanwhile the new-baptized, who yet remained
At Jordan with the Baptist, and had seen
Him whom they heard so late expressly called
Jesus Messiah, Son of God, declared,
.....

John Milton

With Two Spoons For Two Spoons

How trifling shall these gifts appear
Among the splendid many
That loving friends now send to cheer
Harvey and Ellen Jenney.
.....

Eugene Field

The Lighthouse

i.

Impatient with spring's incendiary budding, we longed for the
irreconcilable tossing of summer's phenomenal vowels: brief cawing
.....

Jocelyn Emerson

A Broken Prayer

O Lord, my God, how long
Shall my poor heart pant for a boundless joy?
How long, O mighty Spirit, shall I hear
The murmur of Truth's crystal waters slide
.....

George Macdonald

On A Theme By Frost

Amherst never had a witch
O Coos or of Grafton

But once upon a time
.....

Robert Francis

Magi

The abstracts hover like dull angels:
Nothing so vulgar as a nose or an eye
Bossing the ethereal blanks of their face-ovals.

.....

Sylvia Plath

The Lottery

“Young fellow, listen to a friend:
Beware of wedlock-'tis a gamble,
It's MAN who holds the losing end
In every matrimonial scramble.”
.....

Robert Service

Songs Set To Music: 21. Set By Mr. De Fesch

Touch the lyre, touch every string;
Touch it, Orpheus; I will sing
A song which shall immortal be,
Since she I sing's a deity;
.....

Matthew Prior

The Men And Women, And The Monkeys

A FABLE

When beasts by words their meanings could declare,
Some well-dressed men and women did repair
.....

Charles Lamb

Mrs. Benjamin Pantier

I know that he told that I snared his soul
With a snare which bled him to death.
And all the men loved him,
And most of the women pitied him.
.....

Edgar Lee Masters

The Four Ages Of Man: 04 - Middle Age

Childhood and youth forgot, sometimes I've seen,
And now am grown more staid that have been green,
What they have done, the same was done by me:
As was their praise, or shame, so mine must be.
.....

Anne Bradstreet

One Anguish-in A Crowd

565

One Anguishâ??in a Crowdâ??
A Minor thingâ??it soundsâ??
.....

Emily Dickinson

Connection Of Heart

The connection of heart to heart is rare,
The relation of hearts are always fair.

If one gets hurt the other do weep.
.....

The Prelude - Book Sixth

CAMBRIDGE AND THE ALPS

The leaves were fading when to Esthwaite's banks
And the simplicities of cottage life
.....

William Wordsworth

The Knight Of Malta - Prose

To the Editor of the Knickerbocker

Sir: In the course of a tour which I made in Sicily, in the days of my juvenility, I passed some little time at the ancient city of Catania, at the foot of Mount Ætna. Here I became acquainted with the Chevalier L--, an old Knight of Malta. It was not many years after the time that Napoleon had dislodged the knights from their island, and he still wore the insignia of his order. He was not, however, one of those reliques of that once chivalrous body, who had been described was "a few worn-out old men, creeping about certain parts of Europe, with the Maltese cross on their breasts;" on the contrary, though advanced in life, his form was still light and vigorous; he had a pale, thin, intellectual visage, with a high forehead, and a bright, visionary eye. He seemed to take a fancy to me, as I certainly did to him, and we soon became intimate, I visited him occasionally, at his apartments, in the wing of an old palace, looking toward Mount Ætna. He was an antiquary, a virtuoso, and a connoisseur. His rooms were decorated with mutilated statues, dug up from Grecian and Roman ruins; old vases, lachrymals, and sepulchral lamps. He had astronomical and chemical instruments, and black-letter books, in various languages. I found that he had dipped a little in chimerical studies and had a hankering after astrology and alchymy. He affected to believe in dreams and visions, and delighted in the fanciful Rosicrucian doctrines. I cannot persuade myself, however, that he really believed in all these: I rather think he loved to let his imagination carry him away into the boundless fairy land which they unfolded.

.....

Washington Irving

A Forgiveness

I am indeed the personage you know.
As for my wife, what happened long ago
You have a right to question me, as I
Am bound to answer.
.....

Robert Browning

Paracelsus: Part Iii: Paracelsus

Scene. Basil; a chamber in the house of Paracelsus. 1526.
Paracelsus, Festus.


.....

Robert Browning

The Lawyer's Second Tale

Christian.


A highland inn among the western hills,
.....

Arthur Hugh Clough

Amours De Voyage - Canto Iii

CANTO III.

Yet to the wondrous St. Peter's, and yet to the solemn Rotonda,
Mingling with heroes and gods, yet to the Vatican Walls,
.....

Arthur Hugh Clough

Amours De Voyage - Canto V

CANTO V.

There is a city, upbuilt on the quays of the turbulent Arno,
Under Fiesole's heights, thither are we to return?
.....

Arthur Hugh Clough

Paradise Lost - Book V

Now Morn her rosie steps in th' Eastern Clime
Advancing, sow'd the Earth with Orient Pearle,
When Adam wak't, so customd, for his sleep
Was Aerie light, from pure digestion bred,
.....

John Milton

On A Cone Of The Big Trees

Brown foundling of the Western wood,
Babe of primeval wildernesses!
Long on my table thou hast stood
Encounters strange and rude caresses;
.....

Bret Harte