Animal poems
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An Artist
© Robinson Jeffers
That sculptor we knew, the passionate-eyed son of a quarryman,
Who astonished Rome and Paris in his meteor youth, and then
was gone, at his high tide of triumphs,
Without reason or good-bye; I have seen him again lately, after
twenty years, but not in Europe.
Ye Wearie Wayfarer [A Dedication to the author of Holmby House"
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
Fytte I
By Wood and Wold
[A Preamble]
A Man's A Man For A' That
© Charles Mackay
"A man's a man," says Robert Burns,
"For a' that and a' that";
It Is The Sinners' Dust-Tongued Bell
© Dylan Thomas
It is the sinners' dust-tongued bell claps me to churches
When, with his torch and hourglass, like a sulpher priest,
His beast heel cleft in a sandal,
Time marks a black aisle kindle from the brand of ashes,
Grief with dishevelled hands tear out the altar ghost
And a firewind kill the candle.
The Temple of Fame
© Alexander Pope
In that soft season, when descending show'rs
Call forth the greens, and wake the rising flow'rs;
Nova
© Robinson Jeffers
That Nova was a moderate star like our good sun; it stored no
doubt a little more than it spent
Animal Tranquility And Decay
© William Wordsworth
The little hedgerow birds,
That peck along the roads, regard him not.
Sun And Flesh (Credo In Unam)
© Arthur Rimbaud
The vast heaven is open! the mysteries lie dead
Before erect Man, who folds his strong arms
Among the vast splendour of abundant Nature!
He sings... and the woods sing, the river murmurs
A song full of happiness which rises towards the light!...
- it is Redemption! it is love! it is love!...
Yin And Yang
© Kenneth Rexroth
It is spring once more in the Coast Range
Warm, perfumed, under the Easter moon.
The Forester
© Madison Julius Cawein
I met him here at Ammendorf one Spring.
It was the end of April and the Harz,
Not Knowing Why by Ann Struthers : American Life in Poetry #253 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-
© Ted Kooser
Animals are incapable of reason, or so we’ve been told, but we imaginative humans keep talking to our dogs and cats as if they could do algebra. In this poem, Ann Struthers looks into the mystery of instinctive behavior.
Autumn Plaint
© Stéphane Mallarme
Since Maria left me to go to another star - which one, Orion, Altair - or
you green Venus? - I have always loved solitude. How many long days I have passed alone with my cat. By alone I mean without a material being, and my cat is a mystic companion, a spirit. I can say then that I have passed long days alone with my cat and alone with one of the last authors of the Roman decadence; for since the white creature is no more I have loved, uniquely and strangely, everything summed up in the word: fall. So, in the year, my favourite season is the last slow part of summer that just precedes autumn, and, in the day, the hour when I walk is when the sun hesitates before vanishing, with rays of yellow bronze over the grey walls, and rays of red copper over the tiles. Literature, also, from which my spirit asks voluptuousness, that will be the agonised poetry of Romes last moments, so long as it does not breathe a breath of the reinvigorated stance of the Barbarians or stammer in childish Latin like Christian prose. I was reading then one of those dear poems (whose flakes of rouge have more charm for me than young flesh), and dipping a hand into the pure animal fur, when a street organ sounded languishingly and sadly under my window. It was playing in the great alley of poplars whose leaves, even in spring, seem mournful to me since Maria passed by them, on her last journey, lying among candles. The instrument of sadnesses, yes, certainly: the piano flashes, the violin gives off light from its torn fibres, but the street organ in memorys half-light made me dream despairingly. Now it murmured a delightfully common song that filled the faubourgs with joy, an old, banal tune: why did its words pierce my soul and make me cry, like any romantic ballad? I savoured it slowly and did not throw a coin through the window for fear of troubling my spirit and discovering that not only the instrument was playing.
Foresight And Patience
© George Meredith
Sprung of the father blood, the mother brain,
Are they who point our pathway and sustain.
They rarely meet; one soars, one walks retired.
When they do meet, it is our earth inspired.
Stray Birds 41 - 50
© Rabindranath Tagore
41
THE trees,
like the longings of the earth,
stand a-tiptoe to peep at the heaven.
The Conversation Of Eiros And Charmion
© Edgar Allan Poe
Dreams are with us no more;but of these mysteries
anon. I rejoice to see you looking life-like and rational.
The film of the shadow has already passed from off your
eyes. Be of heart, and fear nothing. Your allotted days of
stupor have expired, and to-morrow I will myself induct you
into the full joys and wonders of your novel existence.
The Modern Major-General
© William Schwenck Gilbert
I am the very pattern of a modern Major-Gineral,
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral;
Falconry
© Rainer Maria Rilke
A prince survives by unseen acts.
At night the chief advisor knocked
at Frederick's workroom in the tower
and found him formulating facts
for treatises on wingèd power
while his penman turned out text.
Home
© Zbigniew Herbert
A home above the year's seasons
home of children animals and apples
a square of empty space
under an absent star
Rural Sports: A Georgic - Canto I.
© John Gay
But when the sun displays his glorious beams,
And shallow rivers flow with silver streams,
Then the deceit the scaly breed survey,
Bask in the sun, and look into the day.
You now a more delusive art must try,
And tempt their hunger with the curious fly.
