RHYTHM POEMS

The African Child

Oh! African child
Today is your day
We all gathered
To celebrate you
.....

Ola Olawale

Our Nation Is Ill

OUR NATION IS ILL
Doom Days Drum
Blood and war on the hill
The centre is shattered
.....

Ola Olawale

Joyful Heart

Oh joyful heart!
On the highest wing, you soar,
Building your nest in the
heart of men
.....

Steve Anc

In This Land

What can be said of this land
With my people threading on it
It has become a wailing land
Life is born and given away
.....

Esther Ayanlowo

My Heartbeat

You are the flame in my candle,
that lights the darkness of my room.
You are the scented flowers,
that makes my heart full bloom.
.....

Wayne Swthrt

Your Poem

My poem may be yours indeed
In melody and tone,
If in its rhythm you can read
A music of your own;
.....

Robert Service

We Are Lonely In Your Crowd

We are lonely in your crowd
just like the deaf community
we are searching for humility,
we are lonely in your crowd
.....

Francis Ngwenya

Japan

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

.....

Billy Collins

Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer

This is a song to celebrate banks,
Because they are full of money and you go into them and all
you hear is clinks and clanks,
Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills,
.....

Ogden Nash

Artist's Life

Of all the waltzes the great Strauss wrote,
Mad with melody, rhythm-rife
From the very first to the final note.
Give me his “Artist's Life!”
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

How We Drove The Trotter

Oh, he was a handsome trotter, and he couldn't be completer,
He had such a splendid action and he trotted to this metre,
Such a pace and such a courage, such a record-killing power,
That he did his mile in two-fifteen, his twenty in the hour.
.....

William Thomas Goodge

When I Feel The Rain I Live

Outside it's raining and i'm watching at my window,
In silence of the world, only the dance of rain i could feel,
My thoughts are in torment of questions and answers,
Only the rain knows what i need.
.....

Cristina Teodor

The Rebel

Call me traitor to my country and a rebel to my God.
And the foe of â??law and orderâ?, well deserving of the rod,
But I scorn the biassed sentence from the temples of the creed
That was fouled and mutilated by the ministers of greed,
.....

Henry Lawson

Babylon Slim

Babylon slim
-ness of
evenslicing
eyes are chisels
.....

E. E. Cummings

A Hidden Life

Proudly the youth, sudden with manhood crowned,
Went walking by his horses, the first time,
That morning, to the plough. No soldier gay
Feels at his side the throb of the gold hilt
.....

George Macdonald

Preface

A book which needs to be written is one dealing
with the childhood of authors. It would be
not only interesting, but instructive; not merely
profitable in a general way, but practical in a
.....

Hilda Conkling

And They Are Dumb

I have been across the bridges of the years.
Wet with tears
Were the ties on which I trod, going back
Down the track
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Seaward

Darling, you think it's love, it's just a midnight journey.
Best are the dales and rivers removed by force,
as from the next compartment throttles "Oh, stop it, Bernie,"
yet the rhythm of those paroxysms is exactly yours.
.....

Joseph Brodsky

Brahmā, Vişņu, Śiva

I THE DARK

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

Rabindranath Tagore

Andrew Rykman-s Prayer

Andrew Rykman's dead and gone;
You can see his leaning slate
In the graveyard, and thereon
Read his name and date.
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

Captain Craig

I

I doubt if ten men in all Tilbury Town
Had ever shaken hands with Captain Craig,
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Lachrymæ Musarum

Low, like another's, lies the laurelled head:
The life that seemed a perfect song is o'er:
Carry the last great bard to his last bed.
Land that he loved, thy noblest voice is mute.
.....

William Watson

The Musicians

The strings of my heart were strung by Pleasure,
And I laughed when the music fell on my ear,
For he and Mirth played a joyful measure,
And they played so loud that I could not hear
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

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

Five Senses

Now my five senses
gather into a meaning
all acts, all presences;
and as a lily gathers
.....

Judith Wright

Maurine: Part 06

There was a week of bustle and of hurry;
A stately home echoed to voices sweet,
Calling, replying; and to tripping feet
Of busy bridesmaids, running to and fro,
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Captain Craig Ii

Yet that ride had an end, as all rides have;
And the days coming after took the road
That all days take,-though never one of them
Went by but I got some good thought of it
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Captain Craig Iii

I found the old man sitting in his bed,
Propped up and uncomplaining. On a chair
Beside him was a dreary bowl of broth,
A magazine, some glasses, and a pipe.
.....

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Guy Of The Temple

Down the dim West slow fails the stricken sun,
And from his hot face fades the crimson flush
Veiled in death's herald-shadows sick and gray.
Silent and dark the sombre valley lies
.....

John Hay

Teaching Xviii

Then said a teacher, "Speak to us of Teaching."

And he said:

.....

Khalil Gibran

The Splendid Ship

O soft enchantress, let me tell the truth
Of all the beauties decking out your youth!
I'll paint the charms for you to see
Of childhood married with maturity.
.....

Charles Baudelaire

Exhausting

Putrefaction of dream-created paradises

Blows around this mourning-filled, tired heart,

.....

Georg Trakl

In Winter In My Room

1670

In Winter in my Room
I came upon a Worm-
.....

Emily Dickinson

To A Poet

There is a lovely noise about your name,
Above the shoutings of the city clear,
More than a moment's merriment, whose claim
Will greater grow with every mellowed year.
.....

Claude Mckay

Battledore And Shuttlecock

The shuttlecock soars upward
In a parabola of whiteness,
Turns,
And sinks to a perfect arc.
.....

Amy Lowell

The Fish

In a cool curving world he lies
And ripples with dark ecstasies.
The kind luxurious lapse and steal
Shapes all his universe to feel
.....

Rupert Brooke

Sonnet Vii: The Face Of All The World

The face of all the world is changed, I think,
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul
Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole
Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
.....

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A Hall

The road led straight to the temple.
Notre Dame, though not Gothic at all.
The huge doors were closed. I chose one on the side,
Not to the main building-to its left wing,
.....

Czeslaw Milosz

Sonnet

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
.....

Elizabeth Bishop

Poetry

Poet exaggerate creative imagination,
Phrasing the words,
Narrating the stories,
Sing a sentimental song in rhyming rhythm,
.....

Norbu Dorji

The Hosts

Purged, with the life they left, of all
That makes life paltry and mean and small,
In their new dedication charged
With something heightened, enriched, enlarged,
.....

Alan Seeger

In Exile

“Since that day till now our life is one unbroken
paradise. We live a true brotherly life. Every evening
after supper we take a seat under the mighty oak and sing
our songs.”-Extract from a letter of a Russian
.....

Emma Lazarus

A Farewell

Good-bye, good-bye; it is not hard to part!
You have my heart-the heart that leaps to hear
Your name called by an echo in a dream;
You have my soul that, like an untroubled stream,
.....

E. (edith) Nesbit

First Poem From The

Pyotr Pavlovich (entering the room):
Zdagger Upper Ooster Ooster
I am carrying someone's elbow
Zdagger Upper Ooster Ooster
.....

Daniil Ivanovich Kharms

Central Park Zoo

for Marian

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

Lee Harwood

My Sister

It's ten o'clock at night; in the room in semidarkness
My sister is asleep, hands on her chest;
Her face is very white and very white her bed,
As if it understood, the light is almost unlit
.....

Alfonsina Storni

A Farewell

Good-bye, good-bye; it is not hard to part!
You have my heart--the heart that leaps to hear
Your name called by an echo in a dream;
You have my soul that, like an untroubled stream,
.....

Edith Nesbit

The Blonde Maiden

Though
she
depart, a vision flitting,
If I these thoughts in words exhale:
.....

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Making Peace

s
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war."
.....

Denise Levertov

Snow-bound: A Winter Idyl

To the Memory of the Household It Describes
This Poem is Dedicated by the Author:

"As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits,which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine lightof the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the CelestialFire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth thesame." -- Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy,
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier