RELEASE POEMS

Let Me Be Free Today

Inside of me, there are words
that want to come out;
Words that detained me in sorrow and in pain;
For so many years it bound me in despair
.....

Ma. Cristina Colima

Love

You slept lonely without a presence
the young shall grow
Do you think I was blind
Putting canoe in your womb
.....

Saviour A Willie

Peace

A man must earn his hour of peace,
Must pay for it with hours of strife and care,
Must win by toil the evening's sweet release,
The rest that may be portioned for his share;
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

The Other

The forest ended. Glad I was
To feel the light, and hear the hum
Of bees, and smell the drying grass
And the sweet mint, because I had come
.....

Edward Thomas

Song Of Seventy Horses

Once again the Steamer at Calais, the tackles
Easing the car-trays on to the quay. Release her!
Sign-refill, and let me away with my horses
(Seventy Thundering Horses!)
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Goodnight

Goodnight; ensured release,
Imperishable peace,
Have these for yours,
While sea abides, and land,
.....

Alfred Edward Housman

Ode To Aphrodite

Deathless Aphrodite, throned in flowers,
Daughter of Zeus, O terrible enchantress,
With this sorrow, with this anguish, break my spirit
Lady, not longer!
.....

Sappho

The Debt

This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.
.....

Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Release

To-day within a grog-shop near
I saw a newly captured linnet,
Who beat against his cage in fear,
And fell exhausted every minute;
.....

Robert William Service

My Friends

The man above was a murderer, the man below was a thief;
And I lay there in the bunk between, ailing beyond belief;
A weary armful of skin and bone, wasted with pain and grief.

.....

Robert Service

The Nightingale's Nest

Up this green woodland-ride let's softly rove,
And list the nightingale-she dwells just here.
Hush! let the wood-gate softly clap, for fear
The noise might drive her from her home of love;
.....

John Clare

Outcast

For the dim regions whence my fathers came
My spirit, bondaged by the body, longs.
Words felt, but never heard, my lips would frame;
My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs.
.....

Claude Mckay

While Someone Telephones

Wasted, wasted minutes that couldn't be worse,
minutes of a barbaric condescension.
--Stare out the bathroom window at the fir-trees,
at their dark needles, accretions to no purpose
.....

Elizabeth Bishop

Sunday

O day most calm, most bright
The fruit of this, the next world's bud,
Th'endorsement of supreme delight,
Writ by a friend, and with his blood;
.....

George Herbert

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

Worn Out

You bid me hold my peace
And dry my fruitless tears,
Forgetting that I bear
A pain beyond my years.
.....

Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Dying Bondman

Life was trembling, faintly trembling
On the bondman's latest breath,
And he felt the chilling pressure
Of the cold, hard hand of Death.
.....

Frances E. W. Harper

The Bride-soul

When will that day dawn, Mother;
When the One I took birth for
Holds me to His heart with deathless love?
I long for the bliss of divine union.
.....

Kabir

Introduction: Pippa Passes

New Year's Day at Asolo in the Trevisan


Scene.-
.....

Robert Browning

The True Encounter

"Wolf!" cried my cunning heart
At every sheep it spied,
And roused the countryside.

.....

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Nightingale

NO easy matter 'tis to hold,
Against its owner's will, the fleece
Who troubled by the itching smart
Of Cupid's irritating dart,
.....

Jean De La Fontaine

The Golden Age

Is it the dawn of a Golden Age
And a swift release from pain?
The politicians fight and rage
Where doubt and chaos reign.
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Parted

Sleepless I listen to the surge and drone
And drifting roar of the town's undertone;
Till through quiet falling rain I hear the bells
Tolling and chiming their brief tune that tells
.....

Siegfried Sassoon

The Void

Pascal had his Void that went with him day and night.
- Alas! Itâ??s all Abyss, - action, longing, dream,
the Word! And I feel Panicâ??s storm-wind stream
through my hair, and make it stand upright.
.....

Charles Baudelaire

Tennyson

Poets they do pursue each theme
Under a gentle head of steam,
Save one, who needed fierce fire on,
The brilliant, passionate Byron.
.....

James Mcintyre

A Dream

On ev'ry new birth-day ye see,
A humble poet wishes.
My bardship here, at your Levee
On sic a day as this is,
.....

Robert Burns

Brahmā, Vişņu, Śiva

I THE DARK

In a worldless timeless lightless great emptiness
Four-faced Brahma broods.
.....

Rabindranath Tagore

In A Wood

In a Wood


Pale beech and pine-tree blue,
.....

Thomas Hardy

Elegy I

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
.....

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Magic Net

Do I see a contest yonder?
See I miracles or pastimes?
Beauteous urchins, five in number,
'Gainst five sisters fair contending,--
.....

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Power Of Love

Love, indeed thy strength is mighty
Thus, alone, such strife to bear --
Three 'gainst one, and never ceasing --
Death, and Madness, and Despair!
.....

Anne Brontë

A Brave And Startling Truth

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
.....

Maya Angelou

Lancelot 07

All day the rain came down on Joyous Gard,
Where now there was no joy, and all that night
The rain came down. Shut in for none to find him
Where an unheeded log-fire fought the storm
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

After Witnessing A Death-scene

Press close your lips,
And bow your heads to earth, for Death is here!
Mark ye not how across that eye so clear,
Steals his eclipse?
.....

George W. Sands

Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton

I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
.....

T. S. Eliot

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

Duns Scotus's Oxford

Towery city and branchy between towers;
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded;
The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did
Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers;
.....

Gerard Manley Hopkins

As From The Earth The Light Balloon

1630

As from the earth the light Balloon
Asks nothing but release-
.....

Emily Dickinson

Indifference

When I am dead I will not care
Forever more,
If sky be radiantly fair
Or tempest roar.
.....

Robert Service

London Bridge

“Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing-and what of it?
Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that?
If I were not their father and if you were not their mother,
We might believe they made a noise. . . . What are you-driving at!”
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Octaves

I

To get at the eternal strength of things,
And fearlessly to make strong songs of it,
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Alpine Holiday

He took the grade in second-quite a climb,
Dizzy and dangerous, yet how sublime!
The road went up and up; it curved around
The mountain and the gorge grew more profound.
.....

Robert Service

A Manchester Poem

'Tis a poor drizzly morning, dark and sad.
The cloud has fallen, and filled with fold on fold
The chimneyed city; and the smoke is caught,
And spreads diluted in the cloud, and sinks,
.....

George Macdonald

The Disciple

I.

The times are changed, and gone the day
When the high heavenly land,
.....

George Macdonald

Gentle Gaoler

Being a gaoler I'm supposed
To be a hard-boiled guy;
Yet never prison walls enclosed
A kinder soul than I:
.....

Robert Service

The Song Of The Pacifist

What do they matter, our headlong hates, when we take the toll of our Dead?
Think ye our glory and gain will pay for the torrent of blood we have shed?
By the cheers of our Victory will the heart of the mother be comforted?

.....

Robert Service

Wheels

Since I am sick of Wheels
That jar my day,
Unto the hush that heals
I steal away.
.....

Robert Service

On The Morning Of Christs Nativity

I

This is the Month, and this the happy morn
Wherin the Son of Heav'ns eternal King,
.....

John Milton

Monologue Of A Mother

This is the last of all, this is the last!
I must hold my hands, and turn my face to the fire,
I must watch my dead days fusing together in dross,
Shape after shape, and scene after scene from my past
.....

D. H. Lawrence

Sleep

Come Sleep; O Sleep! the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low;
.....

Sir Philip Sidney