RENAISSANCE POEMS

Renaissance

O happy soul, forget thy self!
This that has haunted all the past,
That conjured disappointments fast,
That never could let well alone;
.....

Thomas Sturge Moore

Alive Together

Speaking of marvels, I am alive
together with you, when I might have been
alive with anyone under the sun,
when I might have been Abelard's woman
.....

Lisel Mueller

Le Masque (the Mask)

Statue allégorique dans le goût de la Renaissance

Contemplons ce trésor de grâces florentines;
Dans l'ondulation de ce corps musculeux
.....

Charles Baudelaire

Haymaking

The living quality of
the man's mind
stands out

.....

William Carlos Williams

On The Building Of Springfield

Let not our town be large, remembering
That little Athens was the Muses' home,
That Oxford rules the heart of London still,
That Florence gave the Renaissance to Rome.
.....

Vachel Lindsay

Renaissance





.....

Rene Francois Armand Prudhomme

The Death Of Allegory

I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions
that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings
and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance
displaying their capital letters like license plates.
.....

Billy Collins

The Mask

Allegorical Statue in the Style of the Renaissance

for Ernest Christophe, sculptor

.....

Charles Baudelaire

Vers La Mer

Comme des objets frêles,
Les vaisseaux blancs semblent posés
Sur la mer éternelle.

.....

Emile Verhaeren

Variations At Home And Abroad

It takes a lot of a person's life
To be French, or English, or American
Or Italian. And to be at any age. To live at any certain time.
The Polish-born resident of Manhattan is not merely a representative of
.....

Kenneth Koch

Peripeteia

Of course, the familiar rustling of programs,
My hair mussed from behind by a grand gesture
Of mink. A little craning about to see
If anyone I know is in the audience,
.....

Anthony Evan Hecht

Gioconda And Si-ya-u

to the memory of my friend SI-YA-U,
whose head was cut off in Shanghai

A CLAIM
.....

Nazim Hikmet

Les Semences Sont La Raison De Les Séduire

En ce jour
les jours ne sont beaux que dans les étoiles,
Et les lumières des étoiles sont les songes des voeux
et peut être même des bontés,
.....

Horsteen Perrer

The Italian Renaissance

How splendid and how vain in thee
The ancient quest, Italy!
Too strange that wreath, too strangely worn,
Apollo's laurel, Christ's red thorn!
.....

Margaret Steele Anderson

The Assignation (pons Asinorum)

Many devils are in woods, in waters, in wilderness and in dark,
pooly places ready to hurt. . . people, some are also in thick,
black clouds. ? Martin Luther

.....

Paul Cameron Brown

Water Fast (the Pearl Fishers)

Shopping in their heads
- a man a pair of shoes
right colour (tan, off-white) shape -
only good physiques need apply,
.....

Paul Cameron Brown

To William Theodore Peters On His Renaissance Cloak

The cherry-coloured velvet of your cloak
Time hath not soiled: its fair embroideries
Gleam as when centuries ago they spoke
To what bright gallant of Her Daintiness,
.....

Ernest Christopher Dowson

The Pelly, The Powder And The Snake

The cowboy's overriding presence in North America's mythology is not difficult to understand.

Perhaps the great lone land ethos of endurance, stamina, self-resourcefulness and "a man's got to do what a man's got to do," John Wayne brand of thoroughness, still endures more so than once admitted. Talking in these terms usually elicits a responsive chord. Everyone has felt that, at one time or the other, only his carabine (wits) stood between him and the fate accorded to the Sundance Kid. As life increases in complexity, in all probability there will be a tendency to create myths or revive tales from the past to help blaze trails. The westerner personifies close shaves with danger. So, too, surviving in the corporate jungle implies a similar fixation in manufacturing responsive heroes to see us through.

.....

Paul Cameron Brown

Revival Of Nature

Drenching the earth in the freshest ultraviolet radiation,
Is the cherry faced Sun,flush with exultation
Brimming with exuberance our feather-friends fly from afar,
Flapping their colourful plumes
.....

Lathu Gop

Bullet In The Heart Of Egwu Eke (inpursuit Of National Rebirth)

Not in deities
of my Ojoto koradji
but in sieges
of my burrowed civility
.....

Ifeanyichukwu Onwughalu

Another Garden Of Eden

Take me to the land of crystal rivers,
that glitter like a mirror for the gods.
Take me to the height for altruistic lords,
revered by the oppressed for being givers.
.....

Joseph Ogbonna

Flaccid Leadership

Leadership!
Adieu to leadership of old
Where grey hairs sit in power for ages,
Paradise turn dungeon
.....

Comfort Boluwatife Opakunbi