Alone in the Wind, on the Prairie by Vachel Lindsay
I know a seraph who has golden eyes, And hair of gold, and body like the snow. Here in the wind I dream her unbound hair Is blowing round me, that desire’s sweet glow Has touched her pale keen face, and willful mien. And though she steps as one in manner born To tread the […]
Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight by Vachel Lindsay
In Springfield, Illinois IT is portentious, and a thing of state That here at midnight, in our little town A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, Near the old court-house, pacing up and down. Or by his homestead, or by shadowed yards He lingers where his children used to play, Or through the market, […]
Above the Battle’s Front by Vachel Lindsay
St. Francis, Buddha, Tolstoi, and St. John — Friends, if you four, as pilgrims, hand in hand, Returned, the hate of earth once more to dare, And walked upon the water and the land, If you, with words celestial, stopped these kings For sober conclave, ere their battle great, Would they for one deep instant […]
A Sense of Humor by Vachel Lindsay
NO man should stand before the moon To make sweet song thereon, With dandified importance, His sense of humor gone. Nay, let us don the motley cap, The jester’s chastened mien, If we would woo that looking-glass And see what should be seen. O mirror on fair Heaven’s wall, We find there what we bring. […]
A Rhyme About an Electrical Advertising Sign by Vachel Lindsay
I LOOK on the specious electrical light Blatant, mechanical, crawling and white, Wickedly red or malignantly green Like the beads of a young Senegambian queen. Showing, while millions of souls hurry on, The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn, By dart or by tumble of whirl within whirl, Starting new fads for the shame-weary […]
A Prayer to All the Dead among Mine Own People by Vachel Lindsay
Are these your presences, my clan from Heaven? Are these your hands upon my wounded soul? Mine own, mine own, blood of my blood be with me, Fly by my path till you have made me whole! ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. […]
A Net to Snare the Moonlight by Vachel Lindsay
[What the Man of Faith said] The dew, the rain and moonlight All prove our Father’s mind. The dew, the rain and moonlight Descend to bless mankind. Come, let us see that all men Have land to catch the rain, Have grass to snare the spheres of dew, And fields spread for the grain. Yea, […]
A Curse for Kings by Vachel Lindsay
A curse upon each king who leads his state, No matter what his plea, to this foul game, And may it end his wicked dynasty, And may he die in exile and black shame. If there is vengeance in the Heaven of Heavens, What punishment could Heaven devise for these Who fill the rivers of […]
Continual Conversation With A Silent Man by Wallace Stevens
The old brown hen and the old blue sky, Between the two we live and die– The broken cartwheel on the hill. As if, in the presence of the sea, We dried our nets and mended sail And talked of never-ending things, Of the never-ending storm of will, One will and many wills, and the […]
Bantams In Pine-Woods by Wallace Stevens
Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan Of tan with henna hackles, halt! Damned universal cock, as if the sun Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail. Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal. Your world is you. I am my world. You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat! Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines, […]
Gray Room by Wallace Stevens
Although you sit in a room that is gray, Except for the silver Of the straw-paper, And pick At your pale white gown; Or lift one of the green beads Of your necklace, To let it fall; Or gaze at your green fan Printed with the red branches of a red willow; Or, with one […]
A Postcard From The Volcano by Wallace Stevens
Children picking up our bones Will never know that these were once As quick as foxes on the hill; And that in autumn, when the grapes Made sharp air sharper by their smell These had a being, breathing frost; And least will guess that with our bones We left much more, left what still is […]
A High-Toned Old Christian Woman by Wallace Stevens
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame. Take the moral law and make a nave of it And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus, The conscience is converted into palms, Like windy citherns hankering for hymns. We agree in principle. That’s clear. But take The opposing law and make a peristyle, And from the peristyle […]
A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts by Wallace Stevens
The difficulty to think at the end of day, When the shapeless shadow covers the sun And nothing is left except light on your fur— There was the cat slopping its milk all day, Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk And August the most peaceful month. To be, in the grass, in the […]
Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour by Wallace Stevens
Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good. This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. It is in that thought that we collect ourselves, Out of all the indifferences, into one thing: Within a single thing, a single […]
Domination Of Black by Wallace Stevens
At night, by the fire, The colors of the bushes And of the fallen leaves, Repeating themselves, Turned in the room, Like the leaves themselves Turning in the wind. Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks Came striding. And I remembered the cry of the peacocks. The colors of their tails Were like the […]
Disillusionment Of Ten O’clock by Wallace Stevens
The houses are haunted By white night-gowns. None are green, Or purple with green rings, Or green with yellow rings, Or yellow with blue rings. None of them are strange, With socks of lace And beaded ceintures. People are not going To dream of baboons and periwinkles. Only, here and there, an old sailor, Drunk […]
Anecdote Of The Jar by Wallace Stevens
I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill. The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. The jar was round upon the ground And tall and of a port in air. It took dominion everywhere. The jar was […]
Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself by Wallace Stevens
At the earliest ending of winter, In March, a scrawny cry from outside Seemed like a sound in his mind. He knew that he heard it, A bird’s cry, at daylight or before, In the early March wind. The sun was rising at six, No longer a battered panache above snow… It would have been […]
Metaphors Of A Magnifico by Wallace Stevens
Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, Into twenty villages, Or one man Crossing a single bridge into a village. This is old song That will not declare itself . . . Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are Twenty men crossing a bridge Into a […]
Looking Across The Fields And Watching The Birds Fly by Wallace Stevens
Among the more irritating minor ideas Of Mr. Homburg during his visits home To Concord, at the edge of things, was this: To think away the grass, the trees, the clouds, Not to transform them into other things, Is only what the sun does every day, Until we say to ourselves that there may be […]
Life Is Motion by Wallace Stevens
In Oklahoma, Bonnie and Josie, Dressed in calico, Danced around a stump. They cried, “Ohoyaho, Ohoo” … Celebrating the marriage Of flesh and air. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry. Poetry Monster — the […]
Le Monocle de Mon Oncle by Wallace Stevens
“Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds, O sceptre of the sun, crown of the moon, There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing, Like the clashed edges of two words that kill.” And so I mocked her in magnificent measure. Or was it that I mocked myself alone? I wish that I might be […]
Infanta Marina by Wallace Stevens
Her terrace was the sand And the palms and the twilight. She made of the motions of her wrist The grandiose gestures Of her thought. The rumpling of the plumes Of this creature of the evening Came to be sleights of sails Over the sea. And thus she roamed In the roamings of her fan, […]
Hymn From A Watermelon Pavilion by Wallace Stevens
You dweller in the dark cabin, To whom the watermelon is always purple, Whose garden is wind and moon, Of the two dreams, night and day, What lover, what dreamer, would choose The one obscured by sleep? Here is the plantain by your door And the best cock of red feather That crew before the […]
Gubbinal by Wallace Stevens
That strange flower, the sun, Is just what you say. Have it your way. The world is ugly, And the people are sad. That tuft of jungle feathers, That animal eye, Is just what you say. That savage of fire, That seed, Have it your way. The world is ugly, And the people are sad. […]
Frogs Eat Butterflies, Snakes Eat Frogs, Hogs Eat Snakes, Men Eat Hogs by Wallace Stevens
It is true that the rivers went nosing like swine, Tugging at banks, until they seemed Bland belly-sounds in somnolent troughs, That the air was heavy with the breath of these swine, The breath of turgid summer, and Heavy with thunder’s rattapallax, That the man who erected this cabin, planted This field, and tended it […]
Farewell To Florida by Wallace Stevens
I Go on, high ship, since now, upon the shore, The snake has left its skin upon the floor. Key West sank downward under massive clouds And silvers and greens spread over the sea. The moon Is at the mast-head and the past is dead. Her mind will never speak to me again. I am […]
Fabliau Of Florida by Wallace Stevens
Barque of phosphor On the palmy beach, Move outward into heaven, Into the alabasters And night blues. Foam and cloud are one. Sultry moon-monsters Are dissolving. Fill your black hull With white moonlight. There will never be an end To this droning of the surf. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem […]
Earthy Anecdote by Wallace Stevens
Every time the bucks went clattering Over Oklahoma A firecat bristled in the way. Wherever they went, They went clattering, Until they swerved In a swift, circular line To the right, Because of the firecat. Or until they swerved In a swift, circular line To the left, Because of the firecat. The bucks clattered. The […]
A Dish Of Peaches In Russia by Wallace Stevens
With my whole body I taste these peaches, I touch them and smell them. Who speaks? I absorb them as the Angevine Absorbs Anjou. I see them as a lover sees, As a young lover sees the first buds of spring And as the black Spaniard plays his guitar. Who speaks? But it must be […]
Depression Before Spring by Wallace Stevens
The cock crows But no queen rises. The hair of my blonde Is dazzling, As the spittle of cows threading the wind. Ho! Ho! But ki-ki-ri-ki Brings no rou-cou, No rou-cou-cou. But no queen comes In slipper green. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and […]
A Clear Day And No Memories by Wallace Stevens
No soldiers in the scenery, No thoughts of people now dead, As they were fifty years ago, Young and living in a live air, Young and walking in the sunshine, Bending in blue dresses to touch something, Today the mind is not part of the weather. Today the air is clear of everything. It has […]
In The Carolinas by Wallace Stevens
The lilacs wither in the Carolinas. Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins. Already the new-born children interpret love In the voices of mothers. Timeless mothers, How is it that your aspic nipples For once vent honey? The pine-tree sweetens my body The white iris beautifies me. ————— The End And that’s the End of […]
Another Weeping Woman by Wallace Stevens
Pour the unhappiness out From your too bitter heart, Which grieving will not sweeten. Poison grows in this dark. It is in the water of tears Its black blooms rise. The magnificent cause of being, The imagination, the one reality In this imagined world Leaves you With him for whom no phantasy moves, And you […]
Anecdote Of Canna by Wallace Stevens
Huge are the canna in the dreams of X, the mighty thought, the mighty man. They fill the terrace of his capitol. His thought sleeps not. Yet thought that wakes In sleep may never meet another thought Or thing… Now day-break comes… X promenades the dewy stones, Observes the canna with a clinging eye, Observes […]
The Huntsmen by Walter de la Mare
The Huntsmen by Walter de la Mare Three jolly gentlemen, In coats of red, Rode their horses Up to bed. Three jolly gentlemen Snored till morn, Their horses champing The golden corn. Three jolly gentlemen At break of day, Came clitter-clatter down the stairs And galloped away. ————— The End And that’s the End of […]
The Ghost by Walter de la Mare
The Ghost by Walter de la Mare Peace in thy hands, Peace in thine eyes, Peace on thy brow; Flower of a moment in the eternal hour, Peace with me now. Not a wave breaks, Not a bird calls, My heart, like a sea, Silent after a storm that hath died, Sleeps within me. All […]
Snow by Walter de la Mare
Snow by Walter de la Mare No breath of wind, No gleam of sun – Still the white snow Whirls softly down Twig and bough And blade and thorn All in an icy Quiet, forlorn. Whispering, rustling, Through the air On still and stone, Roof,; everywhere, It heaps its powdery Crystal flakes, Of every tree […]
The Mocking Fairy by Walter de la Mare
The Mocking Fairy by Walter de la Mare ‘Won’t you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill?’ Quoth the Fairy, nidding, nodding in the garden; ‘Can’t you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill?’ Quoth the Fairy, laughing softly in the garden; But the air was still, the cherry boughs were still, And the ivy-tod […]