POWDER POEMS

A Man May Make A Remark

952

A Man may make a Remark-
In itself-a quiet thing
.....

Emily Dickinson

L' Envoi

There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield
And the ricks stand gray to the sun,
Singing:-'Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover
And your English summer's done.'
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Independence Day

WHAT does it all mean anyway,
Noise of cannon and boom of gun,
Deafening, colorful fire display
Starting in with the rising sun?
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

The Flower And The Leaf: Or, The Lady In The Arbour.[1]

A VISION.


Now turning from the wintry signs, the sun,
.....

John Dryden

Cleared

(In Memory of a Commission)

Help for a patriot distressed, a spotless spirit hurt,
Help for an honourable clan sore trampled in the dirt!
.....

Rudyard Kipling

Saul

I.

Said Abner, ``At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak,
``Kiss my cheek, wish me well!'' Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek.
.....

Robert Browning

Aliens

The chatter of little people
Breaks on my purpose
Like the water-drops which slowly wear the rocks to powder.
And while I laugh
.....

Amy Lowell

In The Public Library

Standing on tiptoe, head back, eyes and arm
Upraised, Kate groped to reach the higher shelf.
Her sleeve slid up like darkness in alarm
At gleam of dawn. Impatient with herself
.....

Lesbia Harford

April Rise

If ever I saw blessing in the air
I see it now in this still early day
Where lemon-green the vaporous morning drips
Wet sunlight on the powder of my eye.
.....

Laurie Lee

A Cook

They had a cook with them who stood alone For boiling chicken with a marrow-bone, Sharp flavouring powder and a spice for savour. He could distinguish London ale by flavour, And he could roast and boil and seethe and fry, Make good thick soup and bake a tasty pie... As for blancmange, he made it with the best.



.....

Geoffrey Chaucer

Time

Everyday before work, went into the powder room and cried.
Came out acting normal cause i didnt want people asking why.
Hid so many things because im afraid no one understands.
Cried many tears but i came out looking happy, fine.
.....

Elisheba Watson

The Flow Of Death

Can u feel it.
The wind blowing.
Your face cloud
Can u feel your soul dying
.....

Nicole Fryer

Pensive On Her Dead Gazing, I Heard The Mother Of All

Pensive, on her dead gazing, I heard the Mother of All,
Desperate, on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battle-fields gazing;
(As the last gun ceased-but the scent of the powder-smoke linger'd;)
As she call'd to her earth with mournful voice while she stalk'd:
.....

Walt Whitman

The Broken Heart

He is stark mad, who ever says,
That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
But that it can ten in less space devour;
.....

John Donne

Scenes

Observe ye not yon high cliff's brow,
Up which a wanderer clambers slow,
‘T is by a hoary ruin crown'd,
Which rocks when shrill winds whistle round;
.....

George Borrow

The Farm

My father's farm is an apple blossomer.
He keeps his hills in dandelion carpet
and weaves a lane of lilacs between the rose
and the jack-in-the-pulpits.
.....

Joyce Sutphen

Er Caffettiere Fisolofo (the Philosophizing Barman)

L'ommini de sto monno sò l'istesso
Che vaghi de caffè ner macinino:
C'uno prima, uno doppo, e un'antro appresso,
Tutti quanti però vanno a un distino.
.....

Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli

Contraband

The tree of knowledge was the tree of reason.
That's why the taste of it
drove us from Eden. That fruit
was meant to be dried and milled to a fine powder
.....

Denise Levertov

Dust

Here is a problem, a wonder for all to see.
Look at this marvelous thing I hold in my hand!
This is a magic surprising, a mystery
Strange as a miracle, harder to understand.
.....

Celia Thaxter

Yet Dish

I
Put a sun in Sunday, Sunday.
Eleven please ten hoop. Hoop.
Cousin coarse in coarse in soap.
.....

Gertrude Stein

On The Idle Hill Of Summer

On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.
.....

A. E. Housman

Sisina

Imaginez Diane en galant équipage,
Parcourant les forêts ou battant les halliers,
Cheveux et gorge au vent, s'enivrant de tapage,
Superbe et défiant les meilleurs cavaliers!
.....

Charles Baudelaire

Gettysburg: A Battle Ode

I

Victors, living, with laureled brow,
And you that sleep beneath the sward!
.....

George Parsons Lathrop

The Elms

Fine as the dust of plumy fountains blowing
Across the lanterns of a revelling night,
The tiny leaves of April's earliest growing
Powder the trees- so vaporously light,
.....

Aldous Huxley

Tiresias

I wish I were as in the years of old
While yet the blessed daylight made itself
Ruddy thro' both the roofs of sight, and woke
These eyes, now dull, but then so keen to seek
.....

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Poems From "a Shropshire Lad" - Xxxv

On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.
.....

Alfred Edward Housman

Drum-taps

Aroused and angry,
I thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war;
But soon my fingers fail'd me, my face droop'd, and I resign'd myself,
To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead.
.....

Walt Whitman

The Dissolution

She's dead; and all which die
To their first elements resolve;
And we were mutual elements to us,
And made of one another.
.....

John Donne

Grumpy Grandpa

Grand-daughter of the Painted Nails,
As if they had been dipped in gore,
I'd like to set you lugging pails
And make you scrub the kitchen floor.
.....

Robert Service

The Lady's Dressing Room

Five hours, (and who can do it less in?)
By haughty Celia spent in dressing;
The goddess from her chamber issues,
Arrayed in lace, brocades, and tissues.
.....

Jonathan Swift

Moon

Thee too, modest tressèd maid,
When thy fallen stars appear;
When in lawn of fire array'd
Sov'reign of yon powder'd sphere;
.....

Henry Rowe

Grierson's Raid

Mount to horse-mount to horse;
Forward, Battalion!
Gallop the gallant force;
Down with Rebellion!
.....

Hanford Lennox Gordon

Mary Ambree

(Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 230.)


When captaines couragious, whom death cold not daunte,
.....

Andrew Lang

Statuary

Bees may be trusted, always,
to discover the best, nay, the only

human, solution. Let me cite
.....

Nick Flynn

A Letter

'TIS over, Moses! All is lost!
I hear the bells a-ringing;
Of Pharaoh and his Red Sea host
I hear the Free-Wills singing.*
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Woodman And The Money Hunter

Throughout our rambles much we find;
The bee trees burst with honey;
Wild birds we tame of every kind,
At once they seem to be resign'd;
.....

George Moses Horton

To Stang

May Seventeenth in Eidsvold's church united,
To hallow after fifty years the day
When they who there our charter free indited,
Together for our land were met to pray,-
.....

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

The Fate Of An Innocent Dog

When Tiger left his native yard,
He did not many ills regard,
A fleet and harmless cur;
Indeed, he was a trusty dog,
.....

George Moses Horton

Legends

CLOWNS DYINGFIVE circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers told their lives, how each one horizontal in a last gesture of hands arranged by an undertaker, shook thousands into convulsions of laughter from behind rouge-red lips and powder-white face.

STEAMBOAT BILLWhen the boilers of the Robert E. Lee exploded, a steamboat winner of many races on the Mississippi went to the bottom of the river and never again saw the wharves of Natchez and New Orleans.
And a legend lives on that two gamblers were blown toward the sky and during their journey laid bets on which of the two would go higher and which would be first to set foot on the turf of the earth again.
.....

Carl Sandburg

Of Him I Love Day And Night

OF him I love day and night, I dream'd I heard he was dead;
And I dream'd I went where they had buried him I love--but he was not
in that place;
And I dream'd I wander'd, searching among burial-places, to find him;
.....

Walt Whitman

Robin And Harry

Robin to beggars with a curse,
Throws the last shilling in his purse;
And when the coachman comes for pay,
The rogue must call another day.
.....

Jonathan Swift

Accountability

Cold nights outside the taverns in Wyoming
pickups and big semis lounge idling, letting their
haunches twitch now and then in gusts of powder snow,
their owners inside for hours, forgetting as well
.....

William Stafford

The Lady's Dressing Room

By haughty Celia spent in dressing;
The goddess from her chamber issues,
Arrayed in lace, brocades, and tissues.
Strephon, who found the room was void
.....

Jonathan Swift

Run To Death

A True Incident of Pre-Revolutionary French History.


Now the lovely autumn morning breathes its freshness in earth's face,
.....

Amy Levy

The Odyssey: Book 1

Tell me, o muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide
after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit,
and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was
acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save
.....

Homer

This

self-congratulatory nonsense as the
famous gather to applaud their seeming
greatness

.....

Charles Bukowski

The Laboratory-ancien Régime

I.
Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,
May gaze thro' these faint smokes curling whitely,
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil's-smithy---
.....

Robert Browning

For The Better

A Quack, to no true Skill in Physick bred,
With frequent Visits cursed his Patient's Bed;
Enquiring, how he did his Broths digest,
How chim'd his Pulse, and how he took his Rest:
.....

Anne Kingsmill Finch

Alcidor

While Monarchs in stern Battle strove
For proud Imperial Sway;
Abandon'd to his milder Love,
Within a silent peaceful Grove,
.....

Anne Kingsmill Finch

Sam's Christmas Pudding

It was Christmas Day in the trenches
In Spain in Penninsular War,
And Sam Small were cleaning his musket
A thing as he'd ne're done before.
.....

Marriott Edgar