All Poems
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Sez You
© Henry Lawson
When the heavy sand is yielding backward from your blistered feet,
And across the distant timber you can SEE the flowing heat;
When your head is hot and aching, and the shadeless plain is wide,
And it's fifteen miles to water in the scrub the other side --
Hermann And Dorothea - V. Polyhymnia
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THE COSMOPOLITE.
BUT the Three, as before, were still sitting and talking together,
The Song Of Old Joe Swallow
© Henry Lawson
When I was up the country in the rough and early days,
I used to work along ov Jimmy Nowlett's bullick-drays;
Then the reelroad wasn't heered on, an' the bush was wild an' strange,
An' we useter draw the timber from the saw-pits in the range --
Load provisions for the stations, an' we'd travel far and slow
Through the plains an' 'cross the ranges in the days of long ago.
Come, Pretty School-Girl!
© Henry Clay Work
On this rolling planet ever have you seen
A home so like a palace waiting for its queen? -
A dwelling place so fair,
So fill'd with treasures rare,
As the little white cottage on Evergreen Square?
Marshall's Mate
© Henry Lawson
You almost heard the surface bake, and saw the gum-leaves turn --
You could have watched the grass scorch brown had there been grass to burn.
In such a drought the strongest heart might well grow faint and weak --
'Twould frighten Satan to his home -- not far from Dingo Creek.
Naming of Parts
© Henry Reed
Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But today,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.
The Hunter of the Uruguay to his Love
© Louisa Stuart Costello
Would'st thou be happy, would'st thou be free,
Come to our woody islands with me!
The Flour Bin
© Henry Lawson
By Lawson's Hill, near Mudgee,
On old Eurunderee
The place they called "New Pipeclay",
Where the diggers used to be
A Poets Daughter
© Fitz-Greene Halleck
"A lady asks the Minstrel's rhyme."
A lady asks? There was a time
When, musical as play-bell's chime
To wearied boy,
That sound would summon dreams sublime
Of pride and joy.
Said Grenfell to my Spirit
© Henry Lawson
Said Grenfell to my spirit, "Youve been writing very free
Of the charms of other places, and you dont remember me.
You have claimed another native place and think its Natures law,
Since you never paid a visit to a town you never saw:
Yam by Bruce Guernsey : American Life in Poetry #238 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Though some teacher may have made you think that all poetry is deadly serious, chock full of coded meanings and obscure symbols, poems, like other works of art, can be delightfully playful. Here Bruce Guernsey, who divides his time between Illinois and Maine, plays with a common yam.
Yam
The Dons of Spain
© Henry Lawson
The Eagle screams at the beck of trade, so Spain, as the world goes round,
Must wrestle the right to live or die from the sons of the land she found;
For, as in the days when the buccaneer was abroad on the Spanish Main,
The national honour is one thing dear to the hearts of the Dons of Spain.
September On Jessore Road
© Allen Ginsberg
Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
No place to shit but sand channel ruts
Peter Anderson And Co.
© Henry Lawson
They tried everything and nothing 'twixt the shovel and the press,
And were more or less successful in their ventures -- mostly less.
Once they ran a country paper till the plant was seized for debt,
And the local sinners chuckle over dingy copies yet.
Autumn On Parade
© Millosh Gjergj Nikolla
An oak tree, reflected in the tears of heaven,
Tosses and bleeds in gigantic passion.
"To live! I want to live!" - it fights for breath,
Piercing the storm with cries of grief.
Dan, The Wreck
© Henry Lawson
Manner puts a man in mind of
Old club balls and evening dress,
Ugly with a handsome kind of
Ugliness.
Luminous mind, bright devil
© Pablo Neruda
Luminous mind, bright devil
of absolute clusterings, of upright noon---:
here we are at last, alone, without loneliness,
far from the savage city's delirium.
Scots of the Riverina
© Henry Lawson
The boy cleared out to the city from his home at harvest time --
They were Scots of the Riverina, and to run from home was a crime.
The old man burned his letters, the first and last he burned,
And he scratched his name from the Bible when the old wife's back was turned.
The Alchemist
© Rainer Maria Rilke
He capped a flask and hissed a quiet curse
Bleakly smiling, tapped a switch to bleed
A pressure vessel. (Clearly what he needs,
To manufacture his own Universe,
