History poems
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Anthony Considine
© Andrew Barton Paterson
They fled together, as those must flee
Whom all men hold in blame;
Each to the other must all things be
Who cross the gulf of iniquity
And live in the land of shame.
The Seven Ages of Wise
© Andrew Barton Paterson
The next the Student,
Burning the midnight oil with Adam Smith
For Cobden Medals.
"We're All Australians Now"
© Andrew Barton Paterson
The man who used to "hump his drum",
On far-out Queensland runs
Is fighting side by side with some
Tasmanian farmer's sons.
Vienna, December 1999
© Jonathan Bohrn
I watched
the winter light die from the bridge,
the sky a sinking empire's battleship,
ice floes' jagged edges
clink their cold toast
to a stilled Danube.
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 Pastiche For Eve
© Weldon Kees
Unmanageable as history: these
Followers of Tammuz to the land
That offered no return, where dust
Grew thick on every bolt and door. And so the world
Landscape At The End Of The Century
© Stephen Dunn
The sky in the trees, the trees mixed up
with what's left of heaven, nearby a patch
of daffodils rooted down
where dirt and stones comprise a kind
Allegory Of The Cave
© Stephen Dunn
He climbed toward the blinding light
and when his eyes adjusted
he looked down and could see
Georgic on Memory
© Erin Belieu
Make your daily monument the Ego,
use a masochist's epistemology
of shame and dog-eared certainty
that others less exacting might forgo.
For Catherine: Juana, Infanta of Navarre
© Erin Belieu
Once you were a daughter, too,
then a wife and now the mother
of a baby with a Spanish name.
Ancient History
© Siegfried Sassoon
Grimly he thought of Abel, soft and fair
A lover with disaster in his face,
And scarlet blossom twisted in bright hair.
Afraid to fight; was murder more disgrace?
God always hated Cain He bowed his head
The gaunt wild man whose lovely sons were dead.
Zermatt to the Matterhorn.
© Thomas Hardy
Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,
Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,
Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height,
And four lives paid for what the seven had won.
In The Old Theatre, Fiesole.
© Thomas Hardy
I traced the Circus whose gray stones incline
Where Rome and dim Etruria interjoin,
Till came a child who showed an ancient coin
That bore the image of a Constantine.
Mute Opinion
© Thomas Hardy
I I traversed a dominion
Whose spokesmen spake out strong
Their purpose and opinion
Through pulpit, press, and song.
Rome at the Pyramid of Cestius Near the Graves of Shelley and Keats
© Thomas Hardy
Who, then, was Cestius,
And what is he to me? -
Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous
One thought alone brings he.
An Ancient To Ancients
© Thomas Hardy
Where once we danced, where once we sang,
Gentlemen,
The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang,
And cracks creep; worms have fed upon
Lines On The Loss Of The "Titanic"
© Thomas Hardy
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
The Convergence Of The Twain
© Thomas Hardy
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
III
My young son asks me...
© Bertolt Brecht
My young son asks me: Must I learn mathematics?
What is the use, I feel like saying. That two pieces
Of bread are more than one's about all you'll end up with.
My young son asks me: Must I learn French?
remember
© W. Jude Aher
i saw their broken eyes
those that returned
from vietnam,
a (so called)
american war.
