Art poems
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A Ballad of Ducks
© Andrew Barton Paterson
The railway rattled and roared and swung
With jolting and bumping trucks.
The sun, like a billiard red ball, hung
In the Western sky: and the tireless tongue
A Bush Christening
© Andrew Barton Paterson
On the outer Barcoo where the churches are few,
And men of religion are scanty,
On a road never cross'd 'cept by folk that are lost,
One Michael Magee had a shanty.
8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain
© Jim Carroll
1/
Genius is not a generous thing
In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover
And it resents fame
With bitter vengeance
A poem, on the rising glory of America
© Hugh Henry Brackenridge
LEANDER.
Or Roanoke's and James's limpid waves
The sound of musick murmurs in the gale;
Another Denham celebrates their flow,
In gliding numbers and harmonious lays.
A poem on divine revelation
© Hugh Henry Brackenridge
This is a day of happiness, sweet peace,
And heavenly sunshine; upon which conven'd
In full assembly fair, once more we view,
And hail with voice expressive of the heart,
At The Smithville Methodist Church
© Stephen Dunn
It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week,
but when she came home
with the "Jesus Saves" button, we knew what art
was up, what ancient craft.
A Mermaid Questions God
© Kelli Russell Agodon
As a girl, she hated the grain of anything
on her fins. Now she is part fire ant, part centipede.
Where dunes stretch into pathways, arteries appear.
Her blood pressure is temperature plus wind speed.
Snapshot of a Lump
© Kelli Russell Agodon
My breast is pressed flat - a torpedo,
a pyramid, a triangle, a rocket on this altar;
this can't be good for anyone.
Battalion-Relief
© Siegfried Sassoon
FALL in! Now get a move on. (Curse the rain.)
We splash away along the straggling village,
Out to the flat rich country, green with June...
And sunset flares across wet crops and tillage,
Parted
© Siegfried Sassoon
Sleepless I listen to the surge and drone
And drifting roar of the towns undertone;
Till through quiet falling rain I hear the bells
Tolling and chiming their brief tune that tells
The Fathers
© Siegfried Sassoon
Snug at the club two fathers sat,
Gross, goggle-eyed, and full of chat.
One of them said: My eldest lad
Writes cheery letters from Bagdad.
But Arthurs getting all the fun
At Arras with his nine-inch gun.
The Peasant's Confession
© Thomas Hardy
Good Father!
Twas an eve in middle June,
And war was waged anew
By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn
Mens bones all Europe through.
Doom and She
© Thomas Hardy
There dwells a mighty pair -
Slow, statuesque, intense -
Amid the vague Immense:
None can their chronicle declare,
Nor why they be, nor whence.
De Profundis
© Thomas Hardy
Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.
To An Orphan Child
© Thomas Hardy
A WhimseyAH, child, thou art but half thy darling mother's;
Hers couldst thou wholly be,
My light in thee would outglow all in others;
She would relive to me.
The Cave Of The Unborn
© Thomas Hardy
I rose at night and visited
The Cave of the Unborn,
And crowding shapes surrounded me
For tidings of the life to be,
Who long had prayed the silent Head
To speed their advent morn.
Not What Was Meant
© Bertolt Brecht
When the Academy of Arts demanded freedom
Of artistic expression from narrow-minded bureaucrats
There was a howl and a clamour in its immediate vicinity
But roaring above everything
Middle Passage
© Robert Hayden
Sails flashing to the wind like weapons,
sharks following the moans the fever and the dying;
horror the corposant and compass rose.
Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV, To Richard Boyle,
© Alexander Pope
Still follow sense, of ev'ry art the soul,
Parts answ'ring parts shall slide into a whole,
Spontaneous beauties all around advance,
Start ev'n from difficulty, strike from chance;
Nature shall join you; time shall make it grow
A work to wonder at--perhaps a Stowe.
The Rape of the Lock: Canto 3
© Alexander Pope
Oh thoughtless mortals! ever blind to fate,
Too soon dejected, and too soon elate!
Sudden, these honours shall be snatch'd away,
And curs'd for ever this victorious day.
