All Poems
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William Street
© Kenneth Slessor
The red globe of light, the liquor green,
the pulsing arrows and the running fire
spilt on the stones, go deeper than a stream;
You find this ugly, I find it lovely
On Hearing Of A Death
© Rainer Maria Rilke
We lack all knowledge of this parting. Death
does not deal with us. We have no reason
to show death admiration, love or hate;
his mask of feigned tragic lament gives us
Thief of the Moon
© Kenneth Slessor
Break, break thy strings, thou lutanists of earth,
Thy musics touch me not-let midnight cover
With pitchy seas those leaves of orange and lime,
I'll not repent. The world's no longer worth
One smile from thee, dear pirate of place and time,
Thief of old loves that haunted once thy lover!
The Dead Kings
© Francis Ledwidge
All the dead kings came to me
At Rosnaree, where I was dreaming.
A few stars glimmered through the morn,
And down the thorn the dews were streaming.
South Country
© Kenneth Slessor
And over the flat earth of empty farms
The monstrous continent of air floats back
Coloured with rotting sunlight and the black,
Bruised flesh of thunderstorms:
North Country
© Kenneth Slessor
North Country, filled with gesturing wood,
With trees that fence, like archers' volleys,
The flanks of hidden valleys
Where nothing's left to hide
The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part IV: Vita Nova: CII
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
THE VENUS OF MILO
What art thou? Woman? Goddess? Aphrodite?
Yet never such as thou from the cold foam
Of ocean, nor from cloudy heaven might come,
Mangroves
© Kenneth Slessor
O silent ones that drink these timeless pools,
Eternal brothers, bending so deeply over,
Your branches tremble above my tears again...
And even my songs are stolen from some old lover
Who cried beneath your leaves like other fools,
While still they whisper "in vain...in vain...in vain..."
Song (Untitled #6)
© George Meredith
The flower unfolds its dawning cup,
And the young sun drinks the star-dews up,
At eve it droops with the bliss of day,
And dreams in the midnight far away.
Five Bells
© Kenneth Slessor
Deep and dissolving verticals of light
Ferry the falls of moonshine down. Five bells
Coldly rung out in a machine's voice. Night and water
Pour to one rip of darkness, the Harbour floats
In the air, the Cross hangs upside-down in water.
Lament Of An Icarus
© Charles Baudelaire
Lovers of whores dont care,
happy, calm and replete:
But my arms are incomplete,
grasping the empty air.
Harlan Sewall
© Edgar Lee Masters
You never understood, O unknown one,
Why it was I repaid
Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations
First with diminished thanks,
Getting Her A Valentine
© Edgar Albert Guest
GIVE me the prettiest valentine
You've got in the shop," said he,
"One with the tenderest sort o' line,
In type that her eyes can see.
One that she won't need her specs to read,
'I love you my darling,' is all I need.
Magrady Graham
© Edgar Lee Masters
Tell me, was Altgeld elected Governor?
For when the returns began to come in
And Cleveland was sweeping the East,
It was too much for you, poor old heart,
Rutherford McDowell
© Edgar Lee Masters
They brought me ambrotypes
Of the old pioneers to enlarge.
And sometimes one sat for me
Some one who was in being
Who Ever Felt As I
© Walter Savage Landor
Mother, I cannot mind my wheel;
My fingers ache, my lips are dry:
Oh! if you felt the pain I feel!
But oh, who ever felt as I?
Perry Zoll
© Edgar Lee Masters
My thanks, friends of the County Scientific Association,
For this modest boulder,
And its little tablet of bronze.
Twice I tried to join your honored body,
Planting a Dogwood by Roy Scheele: American Life in Poetry #73 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
Those of us who have planted trees and shrubs know well that moment when the last spade full of earth is packed around the root ball and patted or stamped into place and we stand back and wish the young plant good fortune. Here the poet Roy Scheele offers us a few well-chosen words we can use the next time.
Wallace Ferguson
© Edgar Lee Masters
There at Geneva where Mt. Blanc floated above
The wine-hued lake like a cloud, when a breeze was blown
Out of an empty sky of blue, and the roaring Rhone
Hurried under the bridge through chasms of rock;
