Animal poems
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The Task: Book VI. -- The Winter Walk at Noon
© William Cowper
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitchd the ear is pleased
The Trains
© Judith Wright
Racing on iron errands, the trains go by,
and over the white acres of our orchards
hurl their wild summoning cry, their animal cry….
the trains go north with guns.
Self-Contained
© Walt Whitman
I think I could turn and live with the animals,
They are so placid and self-contained.
O Night O Trembling Night
© Stephen Spender
O night O trembling night O night of sighs
O night when my body was a rod O night
When my mouth was a vague animal cry
Pasturing on her flesh O night
When the close darkness was a nest
Made of her hair and filled with my eyes
The Tower Beyond Tragedy
© Robinson Jeffers
I
You'd never have thought the Queen was Helen's sister- Troy's
"The Undying One" - Canto I
© Caroline Norton
"My parch'd lips strove for utterance--but no,
I could but listen still, with speechless woe:
I stretch'd my quivering arms--'Away! away!'
She cried, 'and let me humbly kneel, and pray
For pardon; if, indeed, such pardon be
For having dared to love--a thing like thee!'
Admetus: To my friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson
© Emma Lazarus
He who could beard the lion in his lair,
To bind him for a girl, and tame the boar,
Sordello: Book the Sixth
© Robert Browning
The thought of Eglamor's least like a thought,
And yet a false one, was, "Man shrinks to nought
Port Bou
© Stephen Spender
As a child holds a pet,
Arms clutching but with hands that do not join,
And the coiled animal watches the gap
To outer freedom in animal air,
Going To The Horse Flats
© Robinson Jeffers
Sweet was the clear
Chatter of the stream now that our talk was hushed; the flitting
water-ouzel returned to her stone;
A lovely snake, two delicate scarlet lines down the dark back,
swam through the pool. The flood-battered
Trees by the stream are more noble than cathedral-columns.
Judging Distances
© Henry Reed
Not only how far away, but the way that you say it
Is very important. Perhaps You may never get
The knack of judging a distance, but at least you know
How to report on a landscape: the central sector,
The right of the arc and that, which we had last Tuesday,
And at least you know
L'Homme Moyen Sensuel
© Ezra Pound
Yet Radway went. A circumspectious prig!
And then that woman like a guinea-pig
Accosted, that's the word, accosted him,
Thereon the amorous calor slightly frosted him.
(I burn, I freeze, I sweat, said the fair Greek,
I speak in contradictions, so to speak.)
Cyder: Book I
© John Arthur Phillips
What Soil the Apple loves, what Care is due
To Orchats, timeliest when to press the Fruits,
Thy Gift, Pomona, in Miltonian Verse
Adventrous I presume to sing; of Verse
Nor skill'd, nor studious: But my Native Soil
Invites me, and the Theme as yet unsung.
An Inventor
© Augusta Davies Webster
I thought this time 'twas done at last,
the workings perfected, the life in it;
and there's the flaw again, the petty flaw,
the fretting small impossibility
that has to be made possible.
Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 2.
© William Cowper
How exquisitely sweet
This rich display of flowers,
This airy wild of fragrance,
So lovely to the eye,
And to the sense so sweet.
