Happy poems
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Mementos
© Charlotte Bronte
I scarcely think, for ten long years,
A hand has touched these relics old;
And, coating each, slow-formed, appears,
The growth of green and antique mould.
A Girl Sang a Song
© Alexander Blok
A girl sang a song in the temple's chorus,
About men, tired in alien lands,
About the ships that left native shores,
And all who forgot their joy to the end.
The Retreat
© Henry Vaughan
1 Happy those early days, when I
2 Shin'd in my angel-infancy!
3 Before I understood this place
4 Appointed for my second race,
Retirement
© Henry Vaughan
Fresh fields and woods! the Earth's fair face,
God's foot-stool, and man's dwelling-place.
I ask not why the first Believer
Did love to be a country liver?
I Walk'd the Other Day
© Henry Vaughan
1 I walk'd the other day, to spend my hour,
2 Into a field,
3 Where I sometimes had seen the soil to yield
4 A gallant flow'r;
The Hideous Chair
© Erin Belieu
This hideous,
upholstered in gift-wrap fabric, chromed
in places, design possibility
Break of Day
© Siegfried Sassoon
There seemed a smell of autumn in the air
At the bleak end of night; he shivered there
In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay,
Legs wrapped in sand-bags,lumps of chalk and clay
Morning-Glory
© Siegfried Sassoon
Clear the sunlit steeples chime
Marys coronation-time.
Loud the happy children quire
To the golden-windowed morn;
While the lord of their desire
Sleeps below the crimson thorn.
Stand-To: Good Friday Morning
© Siegfried Sassoon
Id been on duty from two till four.
I went and stared at the dug-out door.
Down in the frowst I heard them snore.
Stand to! Somebody grunted and swore.
Absolution
© Siegfried Sassoon
The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes
Till beauty shines in all that we can see.
War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise,
And, fighting for our freedom, we are free.
Sorrowing Love
© Katherine Mansfield
And again the flowers are come,
And the light shakes,
And no tiny voice is dumb,
And a bud breaks
On the humble bush and the proud restless tree.
Come with me!
Opposites
© Katherine Mansfield
The Half-Soled-Boots-With-Toecaps-Child
Walked out into the street
And splashed in all the pubbles till
She had such shocking feet
Fairy Tale
© Katherine Mansfield
Now this is the story of Olaf
Who ages and ages ago
Lived right on the top of a mountain,
A mountain all covered with snow.
A Fine Day
© Katherine Mansfield
After all the rain, the sun
Shines on hill and grassy mead;
Fly into the garden, child,
You are very glad indeed.
She, To Him III
© Thomas Hardy
I WILL be faithful to thee; aye, I will!
And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye
That he did not discern and domicile
One his by right ever since that last Good-bye!
The Caged Thrush Freed and Home Again (Villanelle)
© Thomas Hardy
"Men know but little more than we,
Who count us least of things terrene,
How happy days are made to be!
The Darkling Thrush
© Thomas Hardy
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
Self-Portrait
© Linda Pastan
After Adam ZagajewskiI am child to no one, mother to a few,
wife for the long haul.
On fall days I am happy
with my dying brethren, the leaves,
The Happiest Day
© Linda Pastan
It was early May, I think
a moment of lilac or dogwood
when so many promises are made
it hardly matters if a few are broken.
T?rnfallet
© Joseph Brodsky
There is a meadow in Sweden
where I lie smitten,
eyes stained with clouds'
white ins and outs.
