Government poems
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Fears In Solitude
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
[Image][Image][Image][Image][Image] May my fears,
My filial fears, be vain ! and may the vaunts
And menace of the vengeful enemy
Pass like the gust, that roared and died away
In the distant tree : which heard, and only heard
In this low dell, bowed not the delicate grass.
Dream Song 19: Here, whence
© John Berryman
Here, whence
all have departed orwill do, here airless, where
that witchy ball
wanted, fought toward, dreamed of, all a green living
drops limply into one's hands
without pleasure or interest
Dream Song 22: Of 1826
© John Berryman
I am the little man who smokes & smokes.
I am the girl who does know better but.
I am the king of the pool.
I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut.
I am a government official & a goddamned fool.
I am a lady who takes jokes.
At the Top of My voice
© Vladimir Mayakovsky
Professor,
take off your bicycle glasses!
I myself will expound
those times
and myself.
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
© Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
Monuments For A Friendly Girl At A Tenth Grade Party
© William Stafford
Now I learn you died
serving among the natives of Garden City,
Kansas, part of a Peace Corps
before governments thought of it.
What Happened
© Rudyard Kipling
Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, pride of Bow Bazaar,
Owner of a native press, "Barrishter-at-Lar,"
Waited on the Government with a claim to wear
Sabres by the bucketful, rifles by the pair.
Public Waste
© Rudyard Kipling
By the Laws of the Family Circle 'tis written in letters of brass
That only a Colonel from Chatham can manage the Railways of State,
Because of the gold on his breeks, and the subjects wherein he must pass;
Because in all matters that deal not with Railways his knowledge is great.
One Viceroy Resigns
© Rudyard Kipling
So here's your Empire. No more wine, then?
Good.
We'll clear the Aides and khitmatgars away.
(You'll know that fat old fellow with the knife --
The Man Who Could Write
© Rudyard Kipling
Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen,
Is a dismal failure -- is a Might-have-been.
In a luckless moment he discovered men
Rise to high position through a ready pen.
The Lowestoft Boat
© Rudyard Kipling
In Lowestoft a boat was laid,
Mark well what I do say!
And she was built for the herring-trade,
But she has gone a-rovin', a-rovin', a-rovin',
The Lord knows where!
AN ELEGY Upon the most Incomparable K. Charles the First
© Henry King
Call for amazed thoughts, a wounded sense
And bleeding Hearts at our Intelligence.
Call for that Trump of Death the Mandrakes Groan
Which kills the Hearers: This befits alone
Upon His Majesty's Happy Return
© Edmund Waller
The rising sun complies with our weak sight,
First gilds the clouds, then shows his globe of light
At such a distance from our eyes, as though
He knew what harm his hasty beams would do.
Parnell's Funeral
© William Butler Yeats
The rest I pass, one sentence I unsay.
Had de Valera eaten parnell's heart
No loose-lipped demagogue had won the day.
No civil rancour torn the land apart.
The Princess (part 2)
© Alfred Tennyson
At break of day the College Portress came:
She brought us Academic silks, in hue
Boris Godunov
© Alexander Pushkin
Boyars, The People, Inspectors, Officers, Attendants, Guests,
a Boy in attendance on Prince Shuisky, a Catholic Priest, a
Polish Noble, a Poet, an Idiot, a Beggar, Gentlemen, Peasants,
Guards, Russian, Polish, and German Soldiers, a Russian
Prisoner of War, Boys, an old Woman, Ladies, Serving-women.
Godwin James
© Edgar Lee Masters
Harry Wilmans! You who fell in a swamp
Near Manila, following the flag,
You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream,
Or destroyed by ineffectual work,
Polyphemus
© Alfred Austin
ACIS ``You are brighter than either. I cannot descry you
From radiant ripple until I come nigh you.
I lose you, I find you, again you grow dimmer,
Till round me seems nothing but shadow and shimmer.
'Tis your golden-rayed ringlets that baffle and blind me.''
Mysterious Humanity
© Sukasah Syahdan
I must tell you stories as well about scores of troops dispatched to adjacent Aceh, Irian and Timor
brain-washed soldiers and a holy mission:
to seek and destroy the sons and daugthers
in search of water of justice on their ancestors' land
of which years later one might not even discover
traces of suppressed whispers evaporated in the air
To risk your Liberty
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Called The Hon Lizard Gizzard with aptness bearing fruit
from his septic yellow face to his pinstripe business suit,
famous for avowals starting, Government Approved,
and in relation to
delivered deadpan monotone, eyes
a distant, washed-out hue quartered in a trance.
