Animal poems
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Common Nocturne
© Arthur Rimbaud
A breath opens operatic breaches
in the walls,-- blurs the pivoting of crumbling roofs,--
disperses the boundaries
of hearths,-- eclipses the windows.
Winter Cares
© Kristijonas Donelaitis
"Of course, the fire consumes a lot of kindling wood,
When we warm up the house or cook a boiling pot.
Just think what kind of food we'd have to eat each day,
If there were no wood to burn and no helpful fire.
We'd have naught but sodden, sour swill to eat, like swine.
Thanks
© Stephen Vincent Benet
For these my thanks, not that I eat or sleep,
Sweat or survive, but that at seventeen
Youth In Memory
© George Meredith
Days, when the ball of our vision
Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun;
Keep Your Whip In Your Hand
© George Ade
Each man is like a noble steed;
When he's a colt I take him;
The Victories Of Love. Book II
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
II
From Lady Clitheroe To Mary Churchill
Hymn To Mercury
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF HOMER.
I.
Sing, Muse, the son of Maia and of Jove,
The Herald-child, king of Arcadia
Rain at the Zoo by Kristen Tracy: American Life in Poetry #177 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
Kristen Tracy is a poet from San Francisco who here captures a moment at a zoo. It's the falling rain, don't you think, that makes the experience of observing the animals seem so perfectly truthful and vivid?
Rain at the Zoo
Louisiana Line by Betty Adcock: American Life in Poetry #129 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
North Carolina poet, Betty Adcock, has written scores of beautiful poems, almost all of them too long for this space. Here is an example of her shorter work, the telling description of a run-down border town.
Louisiana Line
The wooden scent of wagons,
the sweat of animalsâthese places
keep everythingâbreath of the cotton gin,
black damp floors of the icehouse.
Our Dum'd Animals
© Franklin Pierce Adams
What time I seek my virtuous couch to steal
Some surcease from the labours of the day,
Ere silence like a poultice comes to heal--
In short, when I prepare to hit the hay;
Ere slumber's chains (I quote from Moore) have bound me,
I hear a lot of noises all around me.
The Woodcutter's Hut
© Archibald Lampman
Far up in the wild and wintery hills in the heart of the cliff-broken
woods,
Conclusion
© Arthur Rimbaud
The pigeons which flutter in the meadow,
the game which runs and sees in the dark,
The Setting Of The Moon
© Giacomo Leopardi
As, in the lonely night,
Above the silvered fields and streams
Don Juan: Canto The Second
© George Gordon Byron
Oh ye! who teach the ingenuous youth of nations,
Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain,
Wreath For A Bridal
© Sylvia Plath
What though green leaves only witness
Such pact as is made once only; what matter
That owl voice sole yes, while cows utter
Low moos of approve; let sun surpliced in brightness
Stand stock still to laud these mated ones
Whose stark act all coming double luck joins.
The White Doe Of Rylstone, Or, The Fate Of The Nortons - Canto Third
© William Wordsworth
NOW joy for you who from the towers
Of Brancepeth look in doubt and fear,
Telling melancholy hours!
Proclaim it, let your Masters hear
The Microbe's Serenade
© George Ade
"O lovely metamorphic germ,
What futile scientific term
Can well describe your many charms?
Come to these embryonic arms,
Then hie away to my cellular home,
And be my little diatom!"
