Truth poems
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The Woman and the Wife
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
"You ask me for one more proof that I speak right,
But I can answer only what I know;
You look for just one lie to make black white,
But I can tell you only what is true--
God never made me for the wife of you.
This we can say,--believe me! . . . Tell me so!"
Old King Cole
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
In Tilbury Town did Old King Cole
A wise old age anticipate,
Desiring, with his pipe and bowl,
No Khans extravagant estate.
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,
Late Summer
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Confused, he found her lavishing feminine
Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable;
And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrors
Be as they were, without end, her playthings?
Another Dark Lady
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
I cannot hate you, for I loved you then.
The woods were golden then. There was a road
Through beeches; and I said their smooth feet showed
Like yours. Truth must have heard me from afar,
For I shall never have to learn again
That yours are cloven as no beechs are.
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.
Peace on Earth
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
I could not pass the fellow by.
Do you believe in God? said I;
And is there to be Peace on Earth?
Ballad of Dead Friends
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
And thus we all are nighing
The truth we fear to know:
Death will end our crying
For friends that come and go.
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 --
For Some Poems by Matthew Arnold
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Still does a cry through sad Valhalla go
For Balder, pierced with Lok's unhappy spray --
For Balder, all but spared by Frea's charms;
And still does art's imperial vista show,
On the hushed sands of Oxus, far away,
Young Sohrab dying in his father's arms.
The Deserted Village
© Oliver Goldsmith
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.
A Tenant of Mrs. Van Kleeck
© Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
My very good landlady, Mistress Van Kleeck,
(For the tears that o'erwhelm me I scarcely can speak)
I know that I promis'd you hogs two or three
(But who knows his destiny? Certain not me!)
Acrostic -- Eliza Hughes
© Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
E v'ry grace in her combine,L ove and truth and friendship join,I n one source without reserve,Z ealous all her friends to serve,A nd diffuse true harmony
The nymph's reply to the shepherd
© John Bodenham
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Syringa
© John Ashbery
Orpheus liked the glad personal quality
Of the things beneath the sky. Of course, Eurydice was a part
Of this. Then one day, everything changed. He rends
Rocks into fissures with lament. Gullies, hummocks
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,
Phallus
© Alec Derwent Hope
This was the gods' god,
The leashed divinity,
Divine divining rod
And Me within the me.
