RESPONSE POEMS

I

I whisper a prayer and it seems as if he doesn't hear.

I call upon his holy name and his response is faded I can barely hear.

.....

Mark Burrell

The Old Playhouse

You planned to tame a swallow, to hold her
In the long summer of your love so that she would forget
Not the raw seasons alone, and the homes left behind, but
Also her nature, the urge to fly, and the endless
.....

Kamala Das

Waiting For You

CALL:
Alone in this lofty and deserted place,
Have I patiently and eagerly waited.
Among men each day have I search your face;
.....

Evabeta Benefit

Moses

To grace those lines wch next appear to sight,
The Pencil shone with more abated light,
Yet still ye pencil shone, ye lines were fair,
& awfull Moses stands recorded there.
.....

Thomas Parnell

Tannhauser

To my mother. May, 1870.


The Landgrave Hermann held a gathering
.....

Emma Lazarus

Humanitad

It is full winter now: the trees are bare,
Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
The autumn's gaudy livery whose gold
.....

Oscar Wilde

Marmion: Canto Iii. - The Inn

I.

The livelong day Lord Marmion rode:
The mountain path the Palmer showed,
.....

Walter Scott (sir)

Why Did I Laugh Tonight? No Voice Will Tell

Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:
No God, no Demon of severe response,
Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell.
Then to my human heart I turn at once.
.....

John Keats

The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

Part I

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
.....

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton

I

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

T. S. Eliot

A Sign-seeker

I MARK the months in liveries dank and dry,
The day-tides many-shaped and hued;
I see the nightfall shades subtrude,
And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.
.....

Thomas Hardy

Equity

No bird can sing in tune but that the Lord
Sits throned in equity above the heaven,
And holds the righteous balance always even;
No heart can true response to love afford
.....

George Macdonald

Reality

These things alone endure;
'They are the solid facts,' that we may grasp,
Leading us on and upward if we clasp
And hold them firm and sure.
.....

Emma Lazarus

The Tourist

Lo! carpet-bag and bagger occupy the land,
And prove the touring season actively begun;
His personnel and purpose can none misunderstand,
For each upon his frontlet bears his honest brand-
.....

Hattie Howard

The Journey

The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs;
and the flowers were all merry by the roadside;
and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds
while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.
.....

Rabindranath Tagore

In Memory Of My Feelings

My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent
and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.
He has several likenesses, like stars and years, like numerals.

.....

Frank O'hara

Master Hugues Of Saxe-gotha

An imaginary composer.]

I.

.....

Robert Browning

Thanksgiving

I remember the first time i saw her.
Those brown eyes, beautiful nose and smile.
She caught my attention,
Quickly, something inside me wanted to talk to her.
.....

Blessings Mitembo

Minor Poem

The only response
to a child's grave is
to lie down before it and play dead

.....

Bill Knott

The Kessack Ferry-boat Fatality

'Twas on Friday the 2nd of March, in the year of 1894,
That the Storm Fiend did loudly laugh and roar
Along the Black Isle and the Kessack Ferry shore,
Whereby six men were drowned, which their friends will deplore.
.....

William Topaz Mcgonagall

The Lonely Sparrow

Thou from the top of yonder antique tower,
O lonely sparrow, wandering, hast gone,
Thy song repeating till the day is done,
And through this valley strays the harmony.
.....

Count Giacomo Leopardi

I Heard Immanuel Singing

(The poem shows the Master, with his work done, singing to free his heart
in Heaven.)

This poem is intended to be half said, half sung, very softly,
.....

Vachel Lindsay

Sojourns In The Parallel World

We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
.....

Denise Levertov

City Of Orgies

CITY of orgies, walks and joys!
City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day make
you illustrious,
Not the pageants of you--not your shifting tableaux, your spectacles,
.....

Walt Whitman

Canada Our Home

The following response to ' Canada, our Home,' was given
at a banquet of the Caledonian Society, Ingersoll.

In responding to the sentiment, 'Canada, our Home,'
.....

James Mcintyre

A Distance From The Sea

To Ernest Brace

"And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was
about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto
.....

Weldon Kees

The Last Song Of Sappho

SOUND on, thou dark unslumbering sea!
My dirge is in thy moan;
My spirit finds response in thee,
To its own ceaseless cry-'Alone, alone !'
.....

Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Ash-wednesday

Glittâ??ring balls and thoughtless revels
Fill up now each misspent nightâ??
â??Tis the reign of pride and folly,
The Carnival is at its height.
.....

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

Autumn Shade

1


The autumn shade is thin. Grey leaves lie faint
.....

Edgar Bowers

A Spirit's Return

��..'This is to be a mortal,
And seek the things beyond mortality!' ~ Manfred.


.....

Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Summer By The Lakeside: Lake Winnipesaukee

I. NOON.
White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep,
Light mists, whose soft embraces keep
The sunshine on the hills asleep!
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

In Response To A Rumor That The Oldest Whorehouse In Wheeling, West Virginia, Has Been Condemned

I will grieve alone,
As I strolled alone, years ago, down along
The Ohio shore.
I hid in the hobo jungle weeds
.....

James Arlington Wright

The Two Voices

A still small voice spake unto me,
"Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?"

.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Close By

So near at hand (our eyes o'erlooked its nearness
In search of distant things)
A dear dream lay--perchance to grow in dearness
Had we but felt its wings
.....

Emily Pauline Johnson

On An Old Roundel

Death, from thy rigour a voice appealed,
And men still hear what the sweet cry saith,
Crying aloud in thine ears fast sealed,
Death.
.....

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Aurora Leigh: Book Fourth

They met still sooner. 'Twas a year from thence
That Lucy Gresham, the sick sempstress girl,
Who sewed by Marian's chair so still and quick,
And leant her head upon its back to cough
.....

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Translation Of: The Odyssey Of Homer: Book Iii

ARGUMENT

Telemachus arriving at Pylus, enquires of Nestor concerning Ulysses. Nestor relates to him all that he knows or has heard of the Greecians since their departure from the siege of Troy, but not being able to give him any satisfactory account of Ulysses, refers him to Menelaus. At evening Minerva quits Telemachus, but discovers herself in going. Nestor sacrifices to the Goddess, and the solemnity ended, Telemachus sets forth for Sparta in one of Nestor's chariots, and accompanied by Nestor's son, Pisistratus.

.....

William Cowper

Orpheus.

About the land I wander, all forlorn,
About the land, with sorrow-quenchë"d eyes;
Seeking my love among the silent woods;
Seeking her by the fountains and the streams;
.....

Walter R. Cassels

The Pastor's Reverie.

The pastor sits in his easy-chair,
With the Bible upon his knee.
From gold to purple the clouds in the west
Are changing momently;
.....

Washington Gladden

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage - Canto The Second.

I.

Come, blue-eyed maid of heaven! - but thou, alas,
Didst never yet one mortal song inspire -
.....

George Gordon Byron

A New-year Ode

To Victor Hugo

I.
Twice twelve times have the springs of years refilled
.....

Algernon Charles Swinburne

A Midsummer Holiday:- Ix. On The Verge

Here begins the sea that ends not till the world's end. Where we stand,
Could we know the next high sea-mark set beyond these waves that gleam,
We should know what never man hath known, nor eye of man hath scanned.
Nought beyond these coiling clouds that melt like fume of shrines that steam
.....

Algernon Charles Swinburne

The Garden Of Cymodoce

Sea, and bright wind, and heaven of ardent air,
More dear than all things earth-born; O to me
Mother more dear than love's own longing, sea,
More than love's eyes are, fair,
.....

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Evening On The Broads

Over two shadowless waters, adrift as a pinnace in peril,
Hangs as in heavy suspense, charged with irresolute light,
Softly the soul of the sunset upholden awhile on the sterile
Waves and wastes of the land, half repossessed by the night.
.....

Algernon Charles Swinburne

The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner (in Seven Parts)

PART I

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
.....

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Response

There is a music of immaculate love,
That beats within the virgin veins of Spring,
And trillium blossoms, like the stars that cling
To fairies' wands; and, strung on sprays above,
.....

Madison Julius Cawein

The Excursion - Book Seventh - The Churchyard Among The Mountains - (continued)

While thus from theme to theme the Historian passed,
The words he uttered, and the scene that lay
Before our eyes, awakened in my mind
Vivid remembrance of those long-past hours;
.....

William Wordsworth

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

Summer By The Lakeside

Lake Winnipesaukee


I. NOON.
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

Nathalocus

I.

Bleak was the pathway and barren the mountain,
As the traveller passed on his wearisome way,
.....

James Clerk Maxwell