INTRICATE POEMS

As Once The Winged Energy Of Delight

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.
.....

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Sundays Of Satin-legs Smith

Inamoratas, with an approbation,
Bestowed his title. Blessed his inclination.

He wakes, unwinds, elaborately: a cat
.....

Gwendolyn Brooks

Stream And Sun At Glendalough

Through intricate motions ran
Stream and gliding sun
And all my heart seemed gay:
Some stupid thing that I had done
.....

William Butler Yeats

London In July

What ails my senses thus to cheat?
What is it ails the place,
That all the people in the street
Should wear one woman's face?
.....

Amy Levy

God

Day and night I wander widely through the wilderness of thought, Catching dainty things of fancy most reluctant to be caught. Shining tangles leading nowhere I persistently unravel, Tread strange paths of meditation very intricate to travel.

Gleaming bits of quaint desire tempt my steps beyond the decent.
I confound old solid glory with publicity too recent.
.....

Gamaliel Bradford

Wild Gratitude

Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey,
And put my fingers into her clean cat's mouth,
And rubbed her swollen belly that will never know kittens,
And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air,
.....

Edward Hirsch

The Fish

In a cool curving world he lies
And ripples with dark ecstasies.
The kind luxurious lapse and steal
Shapes all his universe to feel
.....

Rupert Brooke

Fish, The

In a cool curving world he lies
And ripples with dark ecstasies.
The kind luxurious lapse and steal
Shapes all his universe to feel
.....

Rupert Brooke

What Happens?

When thy hand touches mine, through all the mesh
Of intricate and interlaced veins
Shoot swift delights that border on keen pains:
Flesh thrills to thrilling flesh.
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Lit Instructor

Day after day up there beating my wings
with all the softness truth requires
I feel them shrug whenever I pause:
they class my voice among tentative things,
.....

William Stafford

The Contest

Our palm designed to grow
In deserts, sent roots seeking far and wide
Channels where waters flow.
And in the city found
.....

Lesbia Harford

The Orchid Of Beauty

Beauty, thou orchid of immortal bloom,
Sprung from the fire and dust of perished spheres,
How art thou tall in these autumnal years
With the red rain of immemorial doom,
.....

Clark Ashton Smith

O, Weak And Weary World!

O weak and weary world
Forever struggling on,
When will thy toils in comfort be impearled,
When will thy sorrows and thy cares be gone?
.....

Freeman E. Miller

Thinking For Berky

In the late night listening from bed
I have joined the ambulance or the patrol
screaming toward some drama, the kind of end
that Berky must have some day, if she isn't dead.
.....

William Stafford

Cut The Grass

The wonderful workings of the world: wonderful,
wonderful: I'm surprised half the time:
ground up fine, I puff if a pebble stirs:

.....

Archie Randolph Ammons

The View From An Attic Window

Among the high-branching, leafless boughs
Above the roof-peaks of the town,
Snowflakes unnumberably come down.

.....

Howard Nemerov

Our Mat

It came from the prison this morning,
Close-twisted, neat-lettered, and flat;
It lies the hall doorway adorning,
A very good style of a mat.
.....

Banjo Paterson

Eidà³lons

I MET a Seer,
Passing the hues and objects of the world,
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,
To glean Eidólons.
.....

Walt Whitman

The Way Is Difficult And Very Intricate

The way is difficult and very intricate.
Lalla discarded her books that told
about it, and through meditation
saw the truth that never comes
.....

Lalleshwari

The Marshes Of Glynn

Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,-
Emerald twilights,-
.....

Sidney Lanier

Good Night, Because We Must

114

Good night, because we must,
How intricate the dust!
.....

Emily Dickinson

Metamorphoses: Book 08

Now shone the morning star in bright array,
To vanquish night, and usher in the day:
The wind veers southward, and moist clouds arise,
That blot with shades the blue meridian skies.
.....

Ovid

Paradise Lost: Book 02

High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth or Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
.....

John Milton

Paradise Lost: Book 05

Now Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl,
When Adam waked, so customed; for his sleep
Was aery-light, from pure digestion bred,
.....

John Milton

The Moon Is Hiding In

the moon is hiding in
her hair.
The
lily
.....

E. E. Cummings

Spiders

Is the spider a monster in miniature?
His web is a cruel stair, to be sure,
Designed artfully, cunningly placed,
A delicate trap, carefully spun
.....

Delmore Schwartz

The Comedian As The Letter C: 02 - Concerning The Thunderstorms Of Yucatan

In Yucatan, the Maya sonneteers
Of the Caribbean amphitheatre,
In spite of hawk and falcon, green toucan
And jay, still to the night-bird made their plea,
.....

Wallace Stevens

Woman To Man

The eyeless labourer in the night,
the selfless, shapeless seed I hold,
builds for its resurrection day---
silent and swift and deep from sight
.....

Judith Wright

The Comedian As The Letter C: 04 - The Idea Of A Colony

Nota: his soil is man's intelligence.
That's better. That's worth crossing seas to find.
Crispin in one laconic phrase laid bare
His cloudy drift and planned a colony.
.....

Wallace Stevens

Sigh No More

The cuckoo and the coo-dove's ceaseless calling,
Calling,
Of a meaningless monotony is palling
All my morning's pleasure in the sun-fleck-scattered wood.
.....

D. H. Lawrence

Any Man Speaks

I, after difficult entry through my mother's blood
And stumbling childhood (hitting my head against the world);
I, intricate, easily unshipped, untracked, unaligned;
Cut off in my communications; stammering; speaking
.....

Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

Rhyme For A Phonetician

Brave English language, you are strong as trees,
Yet intricate and stately. Thus one sees
Through branches clear-embroidered stars. You please
Our sense as damask roses on the breeze,
.....

Frances Darwin Cornford

The Old Language

England, what have you done to make the speech
My fathers used a stranger to my lips,
An offence to the ear, a shackle on the tongue
That would fit new thoughts to an abiding tune?
.....

Ronald Stuart Thomas

The Comedian As The Letter C: 06 - And Daughters With Curls

Portentous enunciation, syllable
To blessed syllable affined, and sound
Bubbling felicity in cantilene,
Prolific and tormenting tenderness
.....

Wallace Stevens

Flight

Voices out of the shade that cried,
And long noon in the hot calm places,
And children's play by the wayside,
And country eyes, and quiet faces-
.....

Rupert Brooke

To A Dead Journalist

The busy trade of life is over now,
The intricate toil which was so hard for bread,
The strife each day renewed 'neath this poor brow
By this frail hand to be interpreted,
.....

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 07: Porcelain

You see that porcelain ranged there in the window-
Platters and soup-plates done with pale pink rosebuds,
And tiny violets, and wreaths of ivy?
See how the pattern clings to the gleaming edges!
.....

Conrad Aiken

In The Crowd

How happy they are, in all seeming,
How gay, or how smilingly proud,
How brightly their faces are beaming,
These people who make up the crowd!
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Journey Home

The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my
voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.
.....

Rabindranath Tagore

Web

Intricate and untraceable
weaving and interweaving,
dark strand with light:

.....

Denise Levertov

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 05: The Bitter Love-song

No, I shall not say why it is that I love you-
Why do you ask me, save for vanity?
Surely you would not have me, like a mirror,
Say ‘yes,-your hair curls darkly back from the temples,
.....

Conrad Aiken

Galahad, Knight Who Perished

A Poem Dedicated to All Crusaders against the
International and Interstate Traffic in Young Girls


.....

Vachel Lindsay

Earth

Grasshopper, your fairy song
And my poem alike belong
To the dark and silent earth
From which all poetry has birth;
.....

John Hall Wheelock

There Was Crimson Clash Of War.

There was crimson clash of war.
Lands turned black and bare;
Women wept;
Babes ran, wondering.
.....

Stephen Crane

Lincoln

I

Like a gaunt, scraggly pine
Which lifts its head above the mournful sandhills;
.....

John Gould Fletcher

The Eagle

1

It was one of those clear,sharp.mustless days
That summer and man delight in.
.....

E. E. Cummings

The Idols

An Ode
Luce intellettual, piena d' amore


.....

Robert Laurence Binyon

Lichens

Pale-green and black and bronze and grey,
In broken arabesque and foliate star,
They cling, so closely grown
Upon the sombre stone
.....

Clark Ashton Smith

Solomon On The Vanity Of The World, A Poem. In Three Books. - Power. Book Iii.

The Argument
Solomon considers man through the several stages and conditions of life, and concludes, in general, that we are all miserable. He reflects more particularly upon the trouble and uncertainty of greatness and power; gives some instances thereof from Adam down to himself; and still concludes that All Is Vanity. He reasons again upon life, death, and a future being; finds human wisdom too imperfect to resolve his doubts; has recourse to religion; is informed by an angel what shall happen to himself, his family, and his kingdom, till the redemption of Israel; and, upon the whole, resolves to submit his inquiries and anxieties to the will of his Creator.

Come then, my soul: I call thee by that name,
.....

Matthew Prior

The Prelude - Book Fourteenth

CONCLUSION

In one of those excursions (may they ne'er
Fade from remembrance!) through the Northern tracts
.....

William Wordsworth