Dreams poems
/ page 232 of 232 /
Bewick Finzer
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Time was when his half million drew
The breath of six per cent;
But soon the worm of what-was-not
Fed hard on his content;
And something crumbled in his brain
When his half million went.
Ballad of Broken Flutes
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
So, Rock, I join the common fray,
To fight where Mammon may decree;
And leave, to crumble as they may,
The broken flutes of Arcady.
The Dead Village
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Now there is nothing but the ghosts of things,
No life, no love, no children, and no men;
And over the forgotten place there clings
The strange and unrememberable light
That is in dreams. The music failed, and then
God frowned, and shut the village from His sight.
Merlin
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see,
So far beyond the faint edge of the world?
Dye look to see the lady Vivian,
Pursued by divers ominous vile demons
The Man Against the Sky
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Between me and the sunset, like a dome
Against the glory of a world on fire,
Now burned a sudden hill,
Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher,
Captain Craig
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
II doubt if ten men in all Tilbury Town
Had ever shaken hands with Captain Craig,
Or called him by his name, or looked at him
So curiously, or so concernedly,
Aunt Imogen
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Aunt Imogen was coming, and therefore
The childrenJane, Sylvester, and Young George
Were eyes and ears; for there was only one
Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world,
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.
The Dark House
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Where a faint light shines alone,
Dwells a Demon I have known.
Most of you had better say
"The Dark House," and go your way.
Do not wonder if I stay.
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 --
Thomas Hood
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
The man who cloaked his bitterness within
This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries,
God never gave to look with common eyes
Upon a world of anguish and of sin:
To A Sad Daughter
© Michael Ondaatje
One day I'll come swimming
beside your ship or someone will
and if you hear the siren
listen to it. For if you close your ears
only nothing happens. You will never change.
To the Memory of Henry Welles Livingston
© Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
A gentle spirit now above
Once animated what lies here
Till heav'n announc'd in tenderest love
"Ascend Immortal to yon sphere."
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
© John Ashbery
As Parmigianino did it, the right hand
Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer
And swerving easily away, as though to protect
What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams,
The Pleasure of Princes
© Alec Derwent Hope
What pleasures have great princes? These: to know
Themselves reputed mad with pride or power;
To speak few words -- few words and short bring low
This ancient house, that city with flame devour;
Standardization
© Alec Derwent Hope
When, darkly brooding on this Modern Age,
The journalist with his marketable woes
Fills up once more the inevitable page
Of fatuous, flatulent, Sunday-paper prose;
Music
© Walter de la Mare
When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,
And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.
