All Poems
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Song.
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
Written for the dinner given to Charles DICKENS
by the young men of Boston, February 1, 1842
Mr Bleaney
© Philip Larkin
'This was Mr Bleaney's room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.' Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
Fall to within five inches of the sill,
Blanche
© Alfred Austin
Breeze! brisk breeze! that movest with the morn!
Breeze! lithe breeze! that creepest through the corn!
Breeze! O breeze! that fannest the forlorn!
Oh linger by the lattice of sweet Blanche of mine!
Toads
© Philip Larkin
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
A Study Of Reading Habits
© Philip Larkin
When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.
An Arundel Tomb
© Philip Larkin
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.
Sad Steps
© Philip Larkin
Groping back to bed after a piss
I part the thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.
Love Again
© Philip Larkin
Love again: wanking at ten past three
(Surely he's taken her home by now?),
The bedroom hot as a bakery,
The drink gone dead, without showing how
To meet tomorrow, and afterwards,
And the usual pain, like dysentery.
Sonnet To Fanny Alexander
© James Russell Lowell
Unconscious as the sunshine, simply sweet
And generous as that, thou dost not close
Epitaph To Rome
© Mikolaj Sep Szarzynski
If midst Rome you wish to see Rome, pilgrim,
Tho in Rome naught of Rome might you see,
The Trees
© Philip Larkin
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
The Grog-an'Grumble Steeplechase
© Henry Lawson
'Twixt the coastline and the border lay the town of Grog-an'-Grumble
In the days before the bushman was a dull 'n' heartless drudge,
Church Going
© Philip Larkin
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
In the Hour of Trial
© James Montgomery
In the hour of trial, Jesus, plead for me,
Lest by base denial I depart from Thee.
When Thou seest me waver, with a look recall,
Nor for fear or favor suffer me to fall.
A Love Song
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ah, love, my love is like a cry in the night,
A long, loud cry to the empty sky,
The cry of a man alone in the desert,
With hands uplifted, with parching lips,
The Whitsun Weddings
© Philip Larkin
That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
A Fable
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
SILENT and sunny was the way
Where Youth and I danced on together:
So winding and embowered o'er,
We could not see one rood before.
Annus Mirabilis
© Philip Larkin
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
