RELAX POEMS

Fighting The Fastest Wing Of Communication

Fighting is not sinning,
fighting is cleaning
of social,political or economic injustices,
fighting is the wheel of justice! fighting is the fastest and easiest wing of communication!
.....

Francis Ngwenya

The Jailer

My night sweats grease his breakfast plate.
The same placard of blue fog is wheeled into position
With the same trees and headstones.
Is that all he can come up with,
.....

Sylvia Plath

To Arms!

World! to arms!
Do you shrink?
What! shrink when the hoofs of the Cossack are crushing
The bosom of mother, the tonsure of priest,
.....

Alfred Austin

The Deserted Village

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visits paid,
And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed:
.....

Oliver Goldsmith

Saxe

The mind thats sad it doth relax
The humor of the witty Saxe.
He puts us in a cheerful mood,
Mirthful as our own Tom Hood.
.....

James Mcintyre

Songs For The People

Let me make the songs for the people,
Songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry
Wherever they are sung.
.....

Frances E. W. Harper

One O'clock In The Morning

At last! I am alone! Nothing can be heard but the rumbling of a few belated and weary cabs. For a few hours at least silence will be ours, if not sleep. At last! The tyranny of the human face has disappeared, and now there will be no one but myself to make me suffer.

At last! I am allowed to relax in a bath of darkness! First a double turn of the key in the lock. This turn of the key will, it seems to me, increase my solitude and strengthen the barricades that, for the moment, separate me from the world.

.....

Charles Baudelaire

Gravikty

I
Fit for perpetual worship is the power
That holds our bodies safely to the earth.

.....

Harold Monro

Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages

(The Dry Salvages-presumably les trois sauvages
- is a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N.E.
coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced
to rhyme with assuages. Groaner: a whistling buoy.)
.....

T. S. Eliot

Man Carrying Bale

The tough hand closes gently on the load;
Out of the mind, a voice
Calls 'Lift!' and the arms, remembering well their work,
Lengthen and pause for help.
.....

Harold Monro

When The Old Man Smokes

In the forenoon's restful quiet,
When the boys are off at school,
When the window lights are shaded
And the chimney-corner cool,
.....

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Central Park Zoo

for Marian

Looking at the zoo the great white park
of a misty winter-s afternoon -You-re great!
.....

Lee Harwood

Love, Death, And Reputation

Reputation, Love, and Death,
(The Last all Bones, the First all Breath,
The Midd'st compos'd of Restless Fire)
From each other wou'd Retire;
.....

Anne Kingsmill Finch

Grey

Is the morning dim and cloudy? Does the wind drift up the leaves?
Is there mist upon the mountains, where the sun shone yesterday?
Are the little song-birds silent? Is the sky all blurred and grey?
Does the rain fall, patter, patter, from the eaves?
.....

Ada Cambridge

Ode To W. Kitchener, M.d.

Author of
The Cook's Oracle, Observations on Vocal Music, The Art of Invigorating and Prolonging Life, Practical Observations on Telescopes, Opera-Glasses, and Spectacles, The Housekeeper's Ledger
and
The Pleasure of Making a Will.
.....

Thomas Hood

Mesmerism

I.

All I believed is true!
I am able yet
.....

Robert Browning

Rokeby: Canto V.

I.
The sultry summer day is done,
The western hills have hid the sun,
But mountain peak and village spire
.....

Sir Walter Scott

Embrace Noir

I go back to the scene where the two men embrace
& grapple a handgun at stomach level between them.

They jerk around the apartment like that
.....

Nick Flynn

Exquisite Candidate

I can promise you this: food in the White House
will change! No more granola, only fried eggs
flipped the way we like them. And ham ham ham!
Americans need ham! Nothing airy like debate for me!
.....

Denise Duhamel

Relax

Do you recall that happy bike
With bundles on our backs?
How near to heaven it was like
To blissfully relax!
.....

Robert Service

Relax

Do you recall that happy bike
With bundles on our backs?
How near to heaven it was like
To blissfully relax!
.....

Robert William Service

The House Spider

The spider was there when we moved in
basking on a sunlit bit of wall
waving its front legs in greeting.
Dad said it was “a cheeky bastard”
.....

S. K. Kelen

Paradise Lost: Book 06

All night the dreadless Angel, unpursued,
Through Heaven's wide champain held his way; till Morn,
Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand
Unbarred the gates of light. There is a cave
.....

John Milton

Dolores (notre-dame Des Sept Douleurs)

Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
The heavy white limbs, and the cruel
Red mouth like a venomous flower;
.....

Algernon Charles Swinburne

From Anacreon: Ode 3

'Twas now the hour when Night had driven
Her car half round yon sable heaven;
Boötes, only, seem'd to roll
His Arctic charge around the Pole;
.....

George Gordon Lord Byron

A Domestic Film

This is the director's cut,
a traveling space in the folded crook
of your plotted hand like silver night
on a thousand platters spreading westward,
.....

Amy King

The Vision Of The Maid Of Orleans: The First Book

Orleans was hush'd in sleep. Stretch'd on her couch
The delegated Maiden lay: with toil
Exhausted and sore anguish, soon she closed
Her heavy eye-lids; not reposing then,
.....

Robert Southey

The Cremona Violin: Part 04

Frau Altgelt waited in the chilly street,
Hustled by lackeys who ran up and down
Shouting their coachmen's names; forced to retreat
A pace or two by lurching chairmen; thrown
.....

Amy Lowell

Love's Ordeal

A recollection and attempted completion of a prose fragment
read in boyhood.


.....

George Macdonald

Metabole

An Apostrophe To The Moon.


O, silvery moon, fair mistress of the night,
.....

Alfred Castner King

I'm Going Out

I'm going out,
flies, so relax,
make love.

.....

Kobayashi Issa

Sphincter

I hope my good old asshole holds out
60 years it's been mostly OK
Tho in Bolivia a fissure operation
survived the altiplano hospital--
.....

Allen Ginsberg

Maktoob

A shell surprised our post one day
And killed a comrade at my side.
My heart was sick to see the way
He suffered as he died.
.....

Alan Seeger

On Reading The Poem Of Paris. By The Rev George Croly, A.m.

Author of “The Angel of the World,” “Sebastian,” &c.


By the trim taper, and the blazing hearth,
.....

Thomas Gent

In The St. Gotthardt Pass

The storm which shook the silence of the hills
And sleeping pinnacles of ancient snow
Went muttering off in one last thunder throe
Mixed with a moan of multitudinous rills;
.....

Mathilde Blind

Solomon On The Vanity Of The World, A Poem. In Three Books. - Power. Book Iii.

The Argument
Solomon considers man through the several stages and conditions of life, and concludes, in general, that we are all miserable. He reflects more particularly upon the trouble and uncertainty of greatness and power; gives some instances thereof from Adam down to himself; and still concludes that All Is Vanity. He reasons again upon life, death, and a future being; finds human wisdom too imperfect to resolve his doubts; has recourse to religion; is informed by an angel what shall happen to himself, his family, and his kingdom, till the redemption of Israel; and, upon the whole, resolves to submit his inquiries and anxieties to the will of his Creator.

Come then, my soul: I call thee by that name,
.....

Matthew Prior

Thyrsis - A Monody

How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,
.....

Matthew Arnold

Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part Ii. - Iv - Deplorable His Lot Who Tills The Ground

Deplorable his lot who tills the ground,
His whole life long tills it, with heartless toil
Of villain-service, passing with the soil
To each new Master, like a steer or hound,
.....

William Wordsworth

Ye Wearie Wayfarer, Hys Ballad In Eight Fyttes: Fytte 04

In Utrumque Paratus
[A Logical Discussion]

“Then hey for boot and horse, lad!
.....

Adam Lindsay Gordon

Memorials Of A Tour In Italy, 1837 - I. - Musings Near Aquapendente - April 1837

Ye Apennines! with all your fertile vales
Deeply embosomed, and your winding shores
Of either sea an Islander by birth,
A Mountaineer by habit, would resound
.....

William Wordsworth

Balder Dead (an Episode)

I

SENDING

.....

Matthew Arnold

Empedocles On Etna - A Dramatic Poem

PERSONS:
EMPEDOCLES.
PAUSANIAS, a Physician.
CALLICLES, a young Harp-player.
.....

Matthew Arnold

Funeral

The gods held talk together, group'd in knots,
Round Balder's corpse, which they had thither borne;
And Hermod came down towards them from the gate.
And Lok, the Father of the Serpent, first
.....

Matthew Arnold

Ye Wearie Wayfarer, Hys Ballad - (in Eight Fyttes)

Fytte I
By Wood and Wold
[A Preamble]

.....

Adam Lindsay Gordon

Rokeby: Canto V.

I.
The sultry summer day is done,
The western hills have hid the sun,
But mountain peak and village spire
.....

Walter Scott (sir)

The Lord Of The Isles: Canto Ii

I.
Fill the bright goblet, spread the festive board!
Summon the gay, the noble, and the fair!
Through the loud hall, in joyous concert pour'd,
.....

Walter Scott (sir)

Fragments Of The Mystery Of The Fall 1

SCENE I.

Adam and Eve.

.....

Arthur Hugh Clough

Dolores

(NOTRE-DAME DES SEPT DOULEURS.)


Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
.....

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Paradise Lost - Book Vi

All night the dreadless Angel unpursu'd
Through Heav'ns wide Champain held his way, till Morn,
Wak't by the circling Hours, with rosie hand
Unbarr'd the gates of Light. There is a Cave
.....

John Milton

Retaliation

Of old, when Scarron his companions invited,
Each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united;
If our landlord supplies us with beef, and with fish,
Let each guest bring himself, and he brings the best dish:
.....

Oliver Goldsmith