All Poems

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Modesties

© Philip Larkin

Words as plain as hen-birds' wings
Do not lie,
Do not over-broider things -
Are too shy.

Of The Wooing Of Halbiorn The Strong

© William Morris

A STORY FROM THE LAND-SETTLING BOOK OF ICELAND, CHAPTER XXX.

This Is The First Thing

© Philip Larkin

This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.

"An upper chamber in a darkened house"

© Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

An upper chamber in a darkened house,

Where, ere his footsteps reached ripe manhood's brink,

Triple Time

© Philip Larkin

This empty street, this sky to blandness scoured,
This air, a little indistinct with autumn
Like a reflection, constitute the present --
A time traditionally soured,
A time unrecommended by event.

Weep Not, My Wanton

© Robert Greene

WEEP not, my wanton, smile upon my knee:

When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.

Is It For Now Or For Always

© Philip Larkin

Is it for now or for always,
The world hangs on a stalk?
Is it a trick or a trysting-place,
The woods we have found to walk?

A Foretaste

© Dante Gabriel Rossetti

AT length the then of my long hope was now;

Yet had my spirit an extreme unrest:

Maiden Name

© Philip Larkin

Marrying left yor maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfully confused

The Apparition: A Retrospect

© Herman Melville

Convulsions came; and, where the field

Long slept in pastoral green,

Breadfruit

© Philip Larkin

Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit,
Whatever they are,
As bribes to teach them how to execute
Sixteen sexual positions on the sand;

Cupid Turned Ploughman. - From Moschus

© Matthew Prior

His lamp, his bow, and quiver laid aside,

A rustic wallet o'er his shoulders tied,

Since The Majority Of Me

© Philip Larkin

Since the majority of me
Rejects the majority of you,
Debating ends forwith, and we
Divide. And sure of what to do

To Father Kronos

© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Now once more
Up the toilsome ascent
Hasten, panting for breath!
Up, then, nor idle be,-
Striving and hoping, up, up!

The Spirit Wooed

Once I believed in you,
And then you came,
Unquestionably new, as fame
Had said you were. But that was long ago.

Life

As late I journey'd o'er the extensive plain
Where native Otter sports his scanty stream,
Musing in torpid woe a Sister's pain,
The glorious prospect woke me from the dream.

Arrival

Morning, a glass door, flashes
Gold names off the new city,
Whose white shelves and domes travel
The slow sky all day.

To The Muse Of The North

O muse that swayest the sad Northern Song,

Thy right hand full of smiting & of wrong,

Skin

Obedient daily dress,
You cannot always keep
That unfakable young surface.
You must learn your lines -
Anger, amusement, sleep;
Those few forbidding signs