TEXAS POEMS

Thar's More In The Man Than Thar Is In The Land

I knowed a man, which he lived in Jones,
Which Jones is a county of red hills and stones,
And he lived pretty much by gittin' of loans,
And his mules was nuthin' but skin and bones,
.....

Sidney Lanier

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

Central Park Zoo

for Marian

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

Lee Harwood

Scenario

Had enough of the old lonesome-and-blue scenario?
Up for a shot at the old I-love-you scenario?

Man enough to leave your comfort zone
.....

Eric Torgersen

House

TWO Swede families live downstairs and an Irish policeman upstairs, and an old soldier, Uncle Joe.
Two Swede boys go upstairs and see Joe. His wife is dead, his only son is dead, and his two daughters in Missouri and Texas don't want him around.
The boys and Uncle Joe crack walnuts with a hammer on the bottom of a flatiron while the January wind howls and the zero air weaves laces on the window glass.
Joe tells the Swede boys all about Chickamauga and Chattanooga, how the Union soldiers crept in rain somewhere a dark night and ran forward and killed many Rebels, took flags, held a hill, and won a victory told about in the histories in school.
.....

Carl Sandburg

Moeurs Contemporaines

I

Mr. Styrax 1
Mr. Hecatomb Styrax, the owner of a large estate and of large muscles,
.....

Ezra Pound

How We Kept The Day.

I.
The great procession came up the street,
With clatter of hoofs and tramp of feet;
There was General Jones to guide the van,
.....

Will Carleton

A Word To Texas Jack

Texas Jack, you are amusinâ??. By Lord Harry, how I laughed
When I seen yer rig and saddle with its bulwarks fore-and-aft;
Holy smoke! In such a saddle how the dickens can yer fall?
Why, I seen a gal ride bareback with no bridle on at all!
.....

Henry Lawson

By The Waters Of Babylon: Little Poems In Prose: Part 05: Currents

1. Vast oceanic movements, the flux and reflux of immeasurable
tides, oversweep our continent.
2. From the far Caucasian steppes, from the squalid Ghettos of
Europe,
.....

Emma Lazarus

The Jedge Of Bowie County

HE WAS bo'n way down in Texas, where the sun is allus shinin'.
An' a cloud's so thin it's easy to observe the silver linin'.
An' he grew among the quaint folk an' the simple folk that labored
In the mint an' melon patches, an' with them for years he neighbored;
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Boy And Father

THE BOY Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer.
The leather law books of Alexander's father fill a room like hay in a barn.
Alexander has asked his father to let him build a house like bricklayers build, a house with walls and roofs made of big leather law books.

.....

Carl Sandburg

Thar's More In The Man Than Thar Is In The Land

I knowed a man, which he lived in Jones,
Which Jones is a county of red hills and stones,
And he lived pretty much by gittin' of loans,
And his mules was nuthin' but skin and bones,
.....

Sidney Lanier

Annie

Sur la côte du Texas
Entre Mobile et Galveston il y a
Un grand jardin tout plein de roses
Il contient aussi une villa
.....

Guillaume Apollinaire

Autobiography (polish It Like A Piece Of Silver)

I am standing in the cemetery at Byrds, Texas.
What did Judy say? 'God-forsaken is beautiful, too.'
A very old man who has cancer on his face and takes
care of the cemetery, is raking a grave in such a
.....

Richard Brautigan

Hell In Texas

The devil, we're told, in hell was chained,
and a thousand years he there remained,
and he never complained, nor did he groan,
but determined to start a hell of his own
.....

Anonymous Americas

The Hell-bound Train

A Texas cowboy lay down on a barroom floor,
Having drunk so much he could drink no more;
So he fell asleep with a troubled brain
To dream that he rode on a hell-bound train.
.....

Anonymous Americas

The Prairies

These are the gardens of the Desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name-
The Prairies. I behold them for the first,
.....

William Cullen Bryant

Oh! He's Nothing But A Soldier

'Oh! he's nothing but a soldier,'
But he's coming here tonight,
For I saw him pass this morning,
With his uniform so bright.
.....

Anonymous Americas

Hellbound Train

A Texas cowboy lay down on a barroom floor,
Having drunk so much he could drink no more;
So he fell asleep with a troubled brain
To dream that he rode on a hell-bound train.
.....

Anonymous Americas

Thou Orb Aloft Full-dazzling

THOU orb aloft full-dazzling! thou hot October noon!
Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand,
The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam,
And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue;
.....

Walt Whitman

As A Strong Bird On Pinious Free

AS a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America,
Such be the recitative I'd bring to-day for thee.
.....

Walt Whitman

Plutonian Ode

I

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
a new thing under the Sun?
.....

Allen Ginsberg

The Sins Of Kalamazoo

THE SINS of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.

The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater drab.

.....

Carl Sandburg

From Paumanok Starting

FROM Paumanock starting, I fly like a bird,
Around and around to soar, to sing the idea of all;
To the north betaking myself, to sing there arctic songs,
To Kanada, till I absorb Kanada in myself--to Michigan then,
.....

Walt Whitman

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy

What are you thinking about?

I am thinking of an early summer.
I am thinking of wet hills in the rain
.....

Jack Spicer

Texas Cowboy

From garden-beds I tend, it is not far
To those great ranges where he used to ride;
Timeâ??s shadowy Door still stands a rift ajar,
And Fancy, glancing backward and aside,
.....

Karle Wilson Baker

Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan

I

In a nation of one hundred fine, mob-hearted, lynching, relenting, repenting millions,
There are plenty of sweeping, swinging, stinging, gorgeous things to shout about,
.....

Vachel Lindsay

The Future Of Hands

All winter
The trees held up their silent hives
As if they mattered.
But on one main street of bars and lights,
.....

Larry Levis

To A Southern Statesman

IS this thy voice whose treble notes of fear
Wail in the wind? And dost thou shake to hear,
Actæon-like, the bay of thine own hounds,
Spurning the leash, and leaping o'er their bounds?
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

To David, About His Education

The world is full of mostly invisible things,
And there is no way but putting the mindâ??s eye,
Or its nose, in a book, to find them out,
Things like the square root of Everest
.....

Howard Nemerov

The Death Of Santa Claus

He's had the chest pains for weeks,
but doctors don't make house
calls to the North Pole,

.....

Charles Harper Webb

As Consequent, Etc.

AS consequent from store of summer rains,
Or wayward rivulets in autumn flowing,
Or many a herb-lined brook's reticulations,
Or subterranean sea-rills making for the sea,
.....

Walt Whitman

The Two Brave Soldiers

Air -- "The Texas Rangers"


My friends, I pray you listen,
.....

Julia Ann Moore

The Great Pax Whitie

In the beginning was the word
And the word was
Death
And the word was nigger
.....

Nikki Giovanni

The Republic

Not they the great
Who build authority around a State,
And firm on calumny and party hate
Base their ambition. Nor the great are they
.....

Madison Julius Cawein

The Prairies.

These are the gardens of the Desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name,
The Prairies. I behold them for the first,
.....

William Cullen Bryant

The House That Jack Built

Why don't they come to me to find the cause
Of Elenor Murray's death? The house is first;
That is the world, and Jack is God, you know;
The malt is linen, purple, wine and food,
.....

Edgar Lee Masters

Currents. (little Poems In Prose.)

1. Vast oceanic movements, the flux and reflux of immeasurable tides, oversweep our continent.

2. From the far Caucasian steppes, from the squalid Ghettos of Europe,

.....

Emma Lazarus

George Joslin On La Menken

Here, Coroner Merival, look at this picture!
Whom does it look like? Eyes too crystalline,
A head like Byron's, tender mouth, and neck,
Slender and white, a pathos as of smiles
.....

Edgar Lee Masters

The Washington Memorial Ode

Certain events, like architects, build up
Viewless cathedrals, in whose aisles the cup
Of some impressive sacrament is kist -
Where thankful nations taste the Eucharist.
.....

James Barron Hope

My Joy

Gently she stopped to enter a cab towards her destination,
And out of consciousness my heart glued to her good looking face.
In a soft voice I greeted her and in the same way she replied with no need for explanation,
This created talks between us with the expectation of graduating to the new phase.
.....

Olorode Samuel

Finding Of The Body

Elenor Murray, daughter of Henry Murray,
The druggist at LeRoy, a village near
The shadow of Starved Rock, this Elenor
But recently returned from France, a heart
.....

Edgar Lee Masters

I Want To Live And Go

I want to live and go,
But before i depart;
In my brain there is a big hole,
I want to fill with sciences and arts;
.....

Adebayo Sir Toby

How We Kept The Day

I.
The great procession came up the street,
With clatter of hoofs and tramp of feet;
There was General Jones to guide the van,
.....

William Mckendree Carleton