Age poems
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An Island
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Take it away, and swallow it yourself.
Ha! Look you, theres a rat.
Last night there were a dozen on that shelf,
And two of them were living in my hat.
Cassandra
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
I heard one who said: "Verily,
What word have I for children here?
Your Dollar is your only Word,
The wrath of it your only fear.
Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
You are a friend then, as I make it out,
Of our man Shakespeare, who alone of us
Will put an ass's head in Fairyland
As he would add a shilling to more shillings,
Octaves
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
I We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel --
For Some Poems by Matthew Arnold
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Still does a cry through sad Valhalla go
For Balder, pierced with Lok's unhappy spray --
For Balder, all but spared by Frea's charms;
And still does art's imperial vista show,
On the hushed sands of Oxus, far away,
Young Sohrab dying in his father's arms.
The Deserted Village
© Oliver Goldsmith
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.
To my little niece Anne Duyckinck, aged 9 years
© Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
To his charming black-eyed nieceUncle Harry wishest peace!Wishes roses over strow'dO'er her sublunary road!
Tokens
© Ingeborg Bachmann
Green mwold on zummer bars do show
That they've a-dripped in winter wet;
The hoof-worn ring o' groun' below
The tree do tell o' storms or het;
My Orcha'd in Linden Lea
© Ingeborg Bachmann
'Ithin the woodlands, flow'ry gleaded,
By the woak tree's mossy moot,
The sheenen grass-bleades, timber-sheaded,
Now do quiver under voot;
Nettles
© Vernon Scannell
My son aged three fell in the nettle bed.
'Bed' seemed a curious name for those green spears,
That regiment of spite behind the shed:
It was no place for rest. With sobs and tears
Death In The Lounge Bar
© Vernon Scannell
The bar he went inside was not
A place he often visited;
He welcomed anonymity;
No one to switch inquisitive
Ageing Schoolmaster
© Vernon Scannell
And now another autumn morning finds me
With chalk dust on my sleeve and in my breath,
Preoccupied with vague, habitual speculation
On the huge inevitability of death.
A City Remembered
© Vernon Scannell
Unlovely city, to which few tourists come
With squinting cameras and alien hats;
Left under a cloud by those who love the sun
And can afford to marry a cloud of bits
