A Paumanok Picture. by Walt Whitman
TWO boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still, Ten fishermen waiting—they discover a thick school of mossbonkers—they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water, The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers, The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop […]
A March in the Ranks, Hard-prest. by Walt Whitman
A MARCH in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown; A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness; Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating; Till after midnight glimmer upon us, the lights of a dim-lighted building; We come to an open space in the woods, and […]
A Leaf for Hand in Hand. by Walt Whitman
A LEAF for hand in hand! You natural persons old and young! You on the Mississippi, and on all the branches and bayous of the Mississippi! You friendly boatmen and mechanics! You roughs! You twain! And all processions moving along the streets! I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for […]
A Hand-Mirror. by Walt Whitman
HOLD it up sternly! See this it sends back! (Who is it? Is it you?) Outside fair costume—within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye—no more a sonorous voice or springy step; Now some slave’s eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkard’s breath, unwholesome eater’s face, venerealee’s flesh, Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and […]
A Farm-Picture. by Walt Whitman
THROUGH the ample open door of the peaceful country barn, A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding; And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away. ————— 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 […]
A child said, What is the grass by Walt Whitman
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the […]
Yesterday by W. S. Merwin
Yesterday by W. S. Merwin My friend says I was not a good son you understand I say yes I understand he says I did not go to see my parents very often you know and I say yes I know even when I was living in the same city he says maybe I would […]
Wish by W. S. Merwin
Wish by W. S. Merwin The star in my Hand is falling All the uniforms know what’s no use May I bow to Necessity not To her hirelings ————— 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. […]
Whenever I Go There by W. S. Merwin
Whenever I Go There by W. S. Merwin Whenever I go there everything is changed The stamps on the bandages the titles Of the professors of water The portrait of Glare the reasons for The white mourning In new rocks new insects are sitting With the lights off And once more I remember that the […]
When You Go Away by W. S. Merwin
When You Go Away by W. S. Merwin When you go away the wind clicks around to the north The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls Showing the black walls The clock goes back to striking the same hour That has no place in the years And at night wrapped in […]
Vehicles by W. S. Merwin
Vehicles by W. S. Merwin This is a place on the way after the distances can no longer be kept straight here in this dark corner of the barn a mound of wheels has convened along raveling courses to stop in a single moment and lie down as still as the chariots of the Pharaohs […]
Unknown Bird by W. S. Merwin
Unknown Bird by W. S. Merwin Out of the dry days through the dusty leaves far across the valley those few notes never heard here before one fluted phrase floating over its wandering secret all at once wells up somewhere else and is gone before it goes on fallen into its own echo leaving a […]
The Speed Of Light by W. S. Merwin
The Speed Of Light by W. S. Merwin So gradual in those summers was the going of the age it seemed that the long days setting out when the stars faded over the mountains were not leaving us even as the birds woke in full song and the dew glittered in the webs it appeared […]
The Source by W. S. Merwin
The Source by W. S. Merwin There in the fringe of trees between the upper field and the edge of the one below it that runs above the valley one time I heard in the early days of summer the clear ringing six notes that I knew were the opening of the Fingal’s Cave Overture […]
The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence by W. S. Merwin
The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence by W. S. Merwin Moored to the same ring: The hour, the darkness and I, Our compasses hooded like falcons. Now the memory of you comes aching in With a wash of broken bits which never left port In which once we planned voyages, They come knocking like […]
The River Of Bees by W. S. Merwin
The River Of Bees by W. S. Merwin In a dream I returned to the river of bees Five orange trees by the bridge and Beside two mills my house Into whose courtyard a blind man followed The goats and stood singing Of what was older Soon it will be fifteen years He was old […]
The Burnt Child by W. S. Merwin
The Burnt Child by W. S. Merwin Matches among other things that were not allowed never would be lying high in a cool blue box that opened in other hands and there they all were bodies clean and smooth blue heads white crowns white sandpaper on the sides of the box scoring fire after fire […]
Term by W. S. Merwin
Term by W. S. Merwin At the last minute a word is waiting not heard that way before and not to be repeated or ever be remembered one that always had been a household word used in speaking of the ordinary everyday recurrences of living not newly chosen or long considered or a matter for […]
Some Last Questions by W. S. Merwin
Some Last Questions by W. S. Merwin What is the head A. Ash What are the eyes A. The wells have fallen in and have Inhabitants What are the feet A. Thumbs left after the auction No what are the feet A. Under them the impossible road is moving Down which the broken necked mice […]
One of the Lives by W. S. Merwin
One of the Lives by W. S. Merwin If I had not met the red-haired boy whose father had broken a leg parachuting into Provence to join the resistance in the final stage of the war and so had been killed there as the Germans were moving north out of Italy and if the friend […]
On the Subject of Poetry by W. S. Merwin
On the Subject of Poetry by W. S. Merwin I do not understand the world, Father. By the millpond at the end of the garden There is a man who slouches listening To the wheel revolving in the stream, only There is no wheel there to revolve. He sits in the end of March, but […]
My Friends by W. S. Merwin
My Friends by W. S. Merwin My friends without shields walk on the target It is late the windows are breaking My friends without shoes leave What they love Grief moves among them as a fire among Its bells My friends without clocks turn On the dial they turn They part My friends with names […]
Language by W. S. Merwin
Language by W. S. Merwin Certain words now in our knowledge we will not use again, and we will never forget them. We need them. Like the back of the picture. Like our marrow, and the color in our veins. We shine the lantern of our sleep on them, to make sure, and there they […]
It Is March by W. S. Merwin
It Is March by W. S. Merwin It is March and black dust falls out of the books Soon I will be gone The tall spirit who lodged here has Left already On the avenues the colorless thread lies under Old prices When you look back there is always the past Even when it has […]
William Stanley Merwin – William Stanley Merwin
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Green Fields by W. S. Merwin
Green Fields by W. S. Merwin By this part of the century few are left who believe in the animals for they are not there in the carved parts of them served on plates and the pleas from the slatted trucks are sounds of shadows that possess no future there is still game for the […]
For The Anniversary Of My Death by W. S. Merwin
For The Anniversary Of My Death by W. S. Merwin Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me And the silence will set out Tireless traveller Like the beam of a lightless star Then I will no longer Find myself in life as in a […]
For A Coming Extinction by W. S. Merwin
For A Coming Extinction by W. S. Merwin Gray whale Now that we are sinding you to The End That great god Tell him That we who follow you invented forgiveness And forgive nothing I write as though you could understand And I could say it One must always pretend something Among the dying When […]
Remorse For Intemperate Speech by William Butler Yeats
I ranted to the knave and fool, But outgrew that school, Would transform the part, Fit audience found, but cannot rule My fanatic heart. I sought my betters: though in each Fine manners, liberal speech, Turn hatred into sport, Nothing said or done can reach My fanatic heart. Out of Ireland have we come. Great […]
Red Hanrahan’s Song About Ireland by William Butler Yeats
The old brown thorn-trees break in two high over Cummen Strand, Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand; Our courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and dies, But we have hidden in our hearts the flame out of the eyes Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan. The […]
Reconciliation by William Butler Yeats
Some may have blamed you that you took away The verses that could move them on the day When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind With lightning, you went from me, and I could find Nothing to make a song about but kings, Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things That were […]
Quarrel In Old Age by William Butler Yeats
I met the Bishop on the road And much said he and I. ‘Those breasts are flat and fallen now, Those veins must soon be dry; Live in a heavenly mansion, Not in some foul sty.’ ‘Fair and foul are near of kin, And fair needs foul,’ I cried. ‘My friends are gone, but that’s […]
Presences by William Butler Yeats
This night has been so strange that it seemed As if the hair stood up on my head. From going-down of the sun I have dreamed That women laughing, or timid or wild, In rustle of lace or silken stuff, Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read All I had rhymed of that monstrous […]
Politics by William Butler Yeats
‘In our time the destiny of man prevents its meanings in political terms.’ — Thomas Mann. How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? Yet here’s a travelled man that knows What he talks about, And there’s a politician That has read and thought, […]
Players Ask For A Blessing On The Psalteries And On Themselves by William Butler Yeats
Three Voices [together]. Hurry to bless the hands that play, The mouths that speak, the notes and strings, O masters of the glittering town! O! lay the shrilly trumpet down, Though drunken with the flags that sway Over the ramparts and the towers, And with the waving of your wings. First Voice. Maybe they linger […]
Peace by William Butler Yeats
Ah, that Time could touch a form That could show what Homer’s age Bred to be a hero’s wage. ‘Were not all her life but storm Would not painters paint a form Of such noble lines,’ I said, ‘Such a delicate high head, All that sternness amid charm, All that sweetness amid strength?’ Ah, but […]
Paudeen by William Butler Yeats
Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite Of our old paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind Among the stones and thorn-trees, under morning light; Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought That on the lonely height where all are in God’s eye, There […]
Parting by William Butler Yeats
He. Dear, I must be gone While night Shuts the eyes Of the household spies; That song announces dawn. She. No, night’s bird and love’s Bids all true lovers rest, While his loud song reproves The murderous stealth of day. He. Daylight already flies From mountain crest to crest She. That light is from the […]
Parnell’s Funeral by William Butler Yeats
I Under the Great Comedian’s tomb the crowd. A bundle of tempestuous cloud is blown About the sky; where that is clear of cloud Brightness remains; a brighter star shoots down; What shudders run through all that animal blood? What is this sacrifice? Can someone there Recall the Cretan barb that pierced a star? Rich […]
Parnell by William Butler Yeats
Parnell came down the road, he said to a cheering man: ‘Ireland shall get her freedom and you still break stone.’ ————— 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 multilingual library of […]