A Zong Of Harvest Hwome by William Barnes
The ground is clear. There’s nar a ear O’ stannèn corn a-left out now, Vor win’ to blow or raïn to drow; ‘Tis all up seäfe in barn or mow. Here’s health to them that plough’d an’ zow’d; Here’s health to them that reap’d an’ mow’d, An’ them that had to pitch an’ lwoad, Or […]
A Wife A-Praïs’d by William Barnes
‘Twer Maÿ, but ev’ry leaf wer dry All day below a sheenèn sky; The zun did glow wi’ yollow gleäre, An’ cowslips blow wi’ yollow gleäre, Wi’ grægles’ bells a-droopèn low, An’ bremble boughs a-stoopèn low; While culvers in the trees did coo Above the vallèn dew. An’ there, wi’ heäir o’ glossy black, Bezide […]
A-Haulen O’ The Corn by William Barnes
Ah! yesterday, you know, we carr’d The piece o’ corn in Zidelèn Plot, An’ work’d about it pretty hard, An’ vound the weather pretty hot. ‘Twer all a-tied an’ zet upright In tidy hile o’ Monday night; Zoo yesterday in afternoon We zet, in eärnest, ev’ry woone A-haulèn o’ the corn. The hosses, wi’ the […]
A Good Father by William Barnes
No; mind thy father. When his tongue Is keen, he’s still thy friend, John, Vor wolder vo’k should warn the young How wickedness will end, John; An’ he do know a wicked youth Would be thy manhood’s beäne, An’ zoo would bring thee back ageän ‘Ithin the ways o’ truth. An’ mind en still when […]
A Bit O’ Fun by William Barnes
We thought you woulden leäve us quite So soon as what you did last night; Our fun jist got up to a height As you about got hwome. The friskèn chaps did skip about, An’ cou’se the maïdens in an’ out, A-meäkèn such a randy-rout, You coulden hear a drum. An’ Tom, a-springèn after Bet […]
Invictus by William Ernest Henley
Invictus [lwptoc] Invictus by William Ernest Henley Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but […]
Barmaid by William Ernest Henley
Though, if you ask her name, she says Elise, Being plain Elizabeth, e’en let it pass, And own that, if her aspirates take their ease, She ever makes a point, in washing glass, Handling the engine, turning taps for tots, And countering change, and scorning what men say, Of posing as a dove among the […]
Ballade of Dead Actors by William Ernest Henley
Where are the passions they essayed, And where the tears they made to flow? Where the wild humours they portrayed For laughing worlds to see and know? Othello’s wrath and Juliet’s woe? Sir Peter’s whims and Timon’s gall? And Millamant and Romeo? Into the night go one and all. Where are the braveries, fresh or […]
Youth And Beauty by William Carlos Williams
I bought a dishmop— having no daughter— for they had twisted fine ribbons of shining copper about white twine and made a tousled head of it, fastened it upon a turned ash stick slender at the neck straight, tall— when tied upright on the brass wallbracket to be a light for me and naked as […]
Heel & Toe To The End by William Carlos Williams
Gagarin says, in ecstasy, he could have gone on forever he floated at and sang and when he emerged from that one hundred eight minutes off the surface of the earth he was smiling. Then he returned to take his place among the rest of us from all that division and subtraction a measure to […]
from Book I, Paterson by William Carlos Williams
Paterson lies in the valley under the Passaic Falls its spent waters forming the outline of his back. He lies on his right side, head near the thunder of the waters filling his dreams! Eternally asleep, his dreams walk about the city where he persists incognito. Butterflies settle on his stone ear. Immortal he neither […]
Flowers By The Sea by William Carlos Williams
When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s edge, unseen, the salt ocean lifts its form-chicory and daisies tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone but color and the movement-or the shape perhaps-of restlessness, whereas the sea is circled and sways peacefully upon its plantlike stem ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, […]
Dedication For A Plot Of Ground by William Carlos Williams
This plot of ground facing the waters of this inlet is dedicated to the living presence of Emily Dickinson Wellcome who was born in England; married; lost her husband and with her five year old son sailed for New York in a two-master; was driven to the Azores; ran adrift on Fire Island shoal, met […]
Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams
If when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,— if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: “I am lonely, lonely, I was […]
Complete Destruction by William Carlos Williams
It was an icy day. We buried the cat, then took her box and set fire to it in the back yard. Those fleas that escaped earth and fire died by the cold. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the […]
Complaint by William Carlos Williams
They call me and I go. It is a frozen road past midnight, a dust of snow caught in the rigid wheeltracks. The door opens. I smile, enter and shake off the cold. Here is a great woman on her side in the bed. She is sick, perhaps vomiting, perhaps laboring to give birth to […]
Children’s Games by William Carlos Williams
I This is a schoolyard crowded with children of all ages near a village on a small stream meandering by where some boys are swimming bare-ass or climbing a tree in leaf everything is motion elder women are looking after the small fry a play wedding a christening nearby one leans hollering into an empty […]
Blizzard by William Carlos Williams
Snow falls: years of anger following hours that float idly down— the blizzard drifts its weight deeper and deeper for three days or sixty years, eh? Then the sun! a clutter of yellow and blue flakes— Hairy looking trees stand out in long alleys over a wild solitude. The man turns and there— his solitary […]
Berket And The Stars by William Carlos Williams
A day on the boulevards chosen out of ten years of student poverty! One best day out of ten good ones. Berket in high spirits—”Ha, oranges! Let’s have one!” And he made to snatch an orange from the vender’s cart. Now so clever was the deception, so nicely timed to the full sweep of certain […]
Aux Imagistes by William Carlos Williams
I think I have never been so exalted As I am now by you, O frost bitten blossoms, That are unfolding your wings From out the envious black branches. Bloom quickly and make much of the sunshine The twigs conspire against you Hear them! They hold you from behind You shall not take wing Except […]
Arrival by William Carlos Williams
And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom- feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind . . . ! ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem […]
April Is The Saddest Month by William Carlos Williams
There they were stuck dog and bitch halving the compass Then when with his yip they parted oh how frolicsome she grew before him playful dancing and how disconsolate he retreated hang-dog she following through the shrubbery ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. […]
Après le Bain by William Carlos Williams
I gotta buy me a new girdle. (I’ll buy you one) O.K. (I wish you’d wig- gle that way for me, I’d be a happy man) I GOTTA wig- gle for this. (You pig) ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — […]
Approach Of Winter by William Carlos Williams
The half-stripped trees struck by a wind together, bending all, the leaves flutter drily and refuse to let go or driven like hail stream bitterly out to one side and fall where the salvias, hard carmine— like no leaf that ever was— edge the bare garden. ————— The End And that’s the End of the […]
A Sort Of A Song by William Carlos Williams
Let the snake wait under his weed and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait, sleepless. —through metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones. Compose. (No ideas but in things) Invent! Saxifrage is my flower that splits the rocks. ————— The End And that’s the End of […]
A Goodnight by William Carlos Williams
Go to sleep—though of course you will not— to tideless waves thundering slantwise against strong embankments, rattle and swish of spray dashed thirty feet high, caught by the lake wind, scattered and strewn broadcast in over the steady car rails! Sleep, sleep! Gulls’ cries in a wind-gust broken by the wind; calculating wings set above […]
A Celebration by William Carlos Williams
A middle-northern March, now as always— gusts from the South broken against cold winds— but from under, as if a slow hand lifted a tide, it moves—not into April—into a second March, the old skin of wind-clear scales dropping upon the mold: this is the shadow projects the tree upward causing the sun to shine […]
Women And Roses by Robert Browning
I. I dream of a red-rose tree. And which of its roses three Is the dearest rose to me? II. Round and round, like a dance of snow In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go Floating the women faded for ages, Sculptured in stone, on the poet’s pages. Then follow women fresh and gay, […]
Venus, on a fur by Witty Fay
There is this alabaster elbow, Curling on the nameless letter Into a much too uttered name, Gilding a handful of words, Worn behind that rib of Adam That misses its maker in the rest Of the harrowed bones of content. My foul mouth flings at your wicked eyes, Before pouting into resilience – You look […]
Ultima Thule by William Ellery Leonard
It was not for the Arctic gold and a claim at the end of the great white trail; Nor yet for the Arctic lore — for a map of the floe and a graph of the gale: But the quest came out of a primitive urge in the blood of our common birth — The […]
To the Victor by William Ellery Leonard
Man’s mind is larger than his brow of tears; This hour is not my all of time; this place My all of earth; nor this obscene disgrace My all of life; and thy complacent sneers Shall not pronounce my doom to my compeers While the Hereafter lights me in the face, And from the Past, […]
The Image Of Delight by William Ellery Leonard
HOW came I that loved stars, moon, and flame, And unimaginable wind and sea, All inner shrines and temples of the free, Legends and hopes and golden books of fame; I that upon the mountain carved my name With cliffs and clouds and eagles over me, how came I to stoop to loving thee I […]
The First Part: Sonnet 5 – How that vast heaven intitled First is roll’d, by William Drummond
How that vast heaven intitled First is roll’d, If any other worlds beyond it lie, And people living in eternity, Or essence pure that doth this All uphold; What motion have those fixed sparks of gold, The wand’ring carbuncles which shine from high, By sprights, or bodies, contrare-ways in sky If they be turn’d, and […]
The First Part: Sonnet 4 – Fair is my yoke, though grievous be my pains, by William Drummond
Fair is my yoke, though grievous be my pains, Sweet are my wounds, although they deeply smart, My bit is gold, though shortened be the reins, My bondage brave, though I may not depart: Although I burn, the fire which doth impart Those flames, so sweet reviving force contains, That, like Arabia’s bird, my wasted […]
The First Part: Sonnet 3 – Ye who so curiously do paint your thoughts, by William Drummond
Ye who so curiously do paint your thoughts, Enlight’ning ev’ry line in such a guise, That they seem rather to have fall’n from skies, Than of a human hand be mortal draughts; In one part Sorrow so tormented lies, As if his life at ev’ry sigh would part; Love here blindfolded stands with bow and […]
The First Part: Sonnet 2 – I know that all beneath the moon decays by William Drummond
I know that all beneath the moon decays And what by mortals in this world is brought, In Time’s great periods shall return to nought; That fairest states have fatal nights and days; I know how all the Muse’s heavenly lays, With toil of spright which are so dearly bought, As idle sounds, of few […]
The First Part: Sonnet 14 – Nor Arne, nor Mincius, nor stately Tiber, by William Drummond
Nor Arne, nor Mincius, nor stately Tiber, Sebethus, nor the flood into whose streams He fell who burnt the world with borrow’d beams, Gold-rolling Tagus, Munda, famous Iber, Sorgue, Rhone, Loire, Garron, nor proud-banked Seine, Peneus, Phasis, Xanthus, humble Ladon, Nor she whose nymphs excel her who lov’d Adon, Fair Tamesis, nor Ister large, nor […]
The First Part: Sonnet 13 – O sacred blush, impurpling cheeks’ pure skies by William Drummond
O sacred blush, impurpling cheeks’ pure skies With crimson wings which spread thee like the morn; O bashful look, sent from those shining eyes, Which, though cast down on earth, couldst heaven adorn; O tongue, in which most luscious nectar lies, That can at once both bless and make forlorn; Dear coral lip, which beauty […]
The First Part: Sonnet 12 – Ah! burning thoughts, now let me take some rest, by William Drummond
Ah! burning thoughts, now let me take some rest, And your tumultuous broils a while appease; Is ‘t not enough, stars, fortune, love molest Me all at once, but ye must too displease? Let hope, though false, yet lodge within my breast, My high attempt, though dangerous, yet praise. What though I trace not right […]
The First Part: Sonnet 11 – Lamp of heaven’s crystal hall that brings the hours, by William Drummond
Lamp of heaven’s crystal hall that brings the hours, Eye-dazzler, who makes the ugly night At thine approach fly to her slumb’ry bow’rs, And fills the world with wonder and delight; Life of all lives, death-giver by thy flight To southern pole from these six signs of ours, Goldsmith of all the stars, with silver […]