The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry

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  Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1931

  Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Koch

  Permanently

  One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.

  An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.

  The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.

  The next day a Verb drove up, and created

  the Sentence.

  Each Sentence says one thing—for example,

  "Although it was a dark rainy day when the

  Adjective walked by, I shall remember the

  pure and sweet expression on her face until

  the day I perish from the green, effective

  earth."

  Or, "Will you please close the window, Andrew?"

  Or, for example, "Thank you, the pink pot of

  flowers on the window sill has changed color

  recently to a light yellow, due to the heat

  from the boiler factory which exists nearby."

  In the springtime the Sentences and Nouns

  lay silently on the grass.

  A lonely Conjunction here and there would call,

  "And! But!"

  But the Adjective did not emerge.

  As the adjective is lost in the sentence,

  So am I lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat—

  You have enchanted me with a single kiss

  Which can never be undone

  Until the destruction of language.

  Kenneth Koch, 1962

  Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Nims

  Love Poem

  My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,

  At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,

  Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,

  And have no cunning with any soft thing

  Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people:

  The refugee uncertain at the door

  You make at home; deftly you steady

  The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.

  Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,

  Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime

  Yet leaping before red apoplectic streetcars—

  Misfit in any space. And never on time.

  A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only

  With words and people and love you move

  at ease;

  In traffic of wit expertly maneuver

  And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.

  Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,

  Your lipstick grinning on our coat,

  So gaily in love's unbreakable heaven

  Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.

  Be with me, darling, early and late.

  Smash glasses—

  I will study wry music for your sake.

  For should your hands drop white and empty

  All the toys of the world would break.

  John Frederick Nims, 1947

  Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Brooke

  Oh Death Will Find Me

  Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire

  Of watching you; and swing me suddenly

  Into the shade and loneliness and mire

  Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,

  One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing,

  See a slow light across the Stygian tide,

  And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,

  And tremble. And I shall know that you

  have died,

  And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling

  dream,

  Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,

  Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam—

  Most individual and bewildering ghost!

  And turn, and toss your brown delightful head

  Amusedly, among the ancient Dead.

  Rupert Brooke, 1911

  Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Whitman

  Long I thought that knowledge

  alone would suffice me

  Long I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me— O if I could but obtain knowledge!

  Then my lands engrossed me—Lands of the prairies, Ohio's land, the southern savannas, engrossed me— For them I would live— I would be their orator;

  Then I met the examples of old and new heroes— I heard of warriors, sailors, and all dauntless persons— And it seemed to me that I too had it in me to be as dauntless as any— and would be so;

  And then, to enclose all, it came to me to strike up the songs of the New World—And then I believed my life must be spent in singing;

  But now take notice, land of the prairies, land of the south savannas, Ohio's land,

  Take notice, you Kanuck woods—and you Lake Huron— and all that with you roll toward Niagara— and you Niagara also,

  And you, Californian mountains—That you each and all find somebody else to be your singer of songs,

  For I can be your singer of songs no longer— One who loves me is jealous of me, and withdraws me from all but love,

  With the rest I dispense—I sever from what I thought would suffice me, for it does not— it is now empty and tasteless to me,

  I heed knowledge, and the grandeur of The States, and the example of heroes, no more,

  I am indifferent to my own songs—I will go with him I love.

  It is to be enough for us that we are together— We never separate again.

  Walt Whitman, 1860

  Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Hughes

  Same in Blues

  I said to my baby,

  Baby, take it slow.

  I can't, she said, I can't!

  I got to go!

  There's a certain

  amount of traveling

  in a dream deferred.

  Lulu said to Leonard,

  I want a diamond ring.

  Leonard said to Lulu,

  You won't get a goddam thing!

  A certain

  amount of nothing

  in a dream deferred.

  Daddy, daddy, daddy,

  All I want is you.

  You can have me, baby—

  But my lovin' days is through

  A certain

  amount of impotence

  in a dream deferred

  Three parties

  On my party line—

  But that third party,

  Lord, ain't mine!

  There's liable

  to be confusion

  in a dream deferred.

  From river to river

  Uptown and down

  There's liable to be confusion

  when a dream gets kicked around.

  Langston Hughes, 1951

  Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Hughes

  50-50

  I'm all alone in this world, she said,

  Ain't got nobody to share my bed,

  Ain't got nobody to hold my hand—

  The truth of the matter's

  I ain't got no man.

  Big Boy opened his mouth and said,

  Trouble with you is

  You ain't got no head!

  If you had a head and used your mind

  You could have me with you

  All the time.

  She answered, Babe, what must I do?

  He said, Share your bed—

  And your money, too.

  Langston Hughes, 1942

  Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Sandburg

  Soiled Dove

  Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot

  until she married a corporation lawyer

  who picked her from a Ziegfeld chorus.

  Before then she never took anybody's money

  and paid for her silk stockings out of what

  she earned singing and dancing.

  She loved one man and he loved six women

  and the game was changing her looks,

  calling for more and more massage money

  and high coin
for the beauty doctors.

  Now she drives a long, underslung motor car

  all by herself, reads in the day's papers

  what her husband is doing to the inter-state

  commerce commission, requires a larger

  corsage from year to year, and wonders

  sometimes how one man is coming along

  with six women.

  Carl Sandburg, 1916

  Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Shakespeare

  Let me not to the marriage of

  true minds

  Let me not to the marriage of true minds

  Admit impediments. Love is not love

  Which alters when it alteration finds,

  Or bends with the remover to remove:

  O, no! it is an ever-fixèd mark,

  That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

  It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

  Whose worth's unknown, although his height

  be taken.

  Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and

  cheeks

  Within his bending sickle's compass come;

  Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

  But bears it out even to the edge of doom—

  If this be error and upon me proved,

  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

  William Shakespeare, 1594

  Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Keats

  When I Have Fears

  When I have fears that I may cease to be

  Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

  Before high-piled books, in charactery,

  Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;

  When I behold, upon the night's starred face,

  Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

  And think that I may never live to trace

  Their shadows, with the magic hand of

  chance;

  And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

  That I shall never look upon thee more,

  Never have relish in the faery power

  Of unreflecting love—then on the shore

  Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

  Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

  John Keats, 1818

  Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Pound

  The River Merchant's Wife:

  A Letter

  While my hair was still cut straight across

  my forehead

  I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.

  You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

  You walked about my seat, playing with

  blue plums.

  And we went on living in the village of Chokan:

  Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

  At fourteen I married My Lord you.

  I never laughed, being bashful.

  Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.

  Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

  At fifteen I stopped scowling,

  I desired my dust to be mingled with yours

  Forever and forever and forever.

  Why should I climb the look out?

  At sixteen you departed,

  You went into far Ku-to-yen,

  by the river of swirling eddies,

  And you have been gone five months.

  The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

  You dragged your feet when you went out.

  By the gate now, the moss is grown,

  the different mosses,

  Too deep to clear them away!

  The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

  The paired butterflies are already yellow with

  August

  Over the grass in the West garden;

  They hurt me. I grow older.

  If you are coming down through the narrows

  of the river Kiang,

  Please let me know beforehand,

  And I will come out to meet you

  As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

  Rihaku (Li Bai) 8th century

  Translated by Ezra Pound, 1915

  Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Lawrence

  Love on the Farm

  What large, dark hands are those at the window

  Grasping in the golden light

  Which weaves its way through the evening wind

  At my heart's delight?

  Ah, only the leaves! But in the west

  I see a redness suddenly come

  Into the evening's anxious breast—

  'Tis the wound of love goes home!

  The woodbine creeps abroad

  Calling low to her lover:

  The sunlit flirt who all the day

  Has poised above her lips in play

  And stolen kisses, shallow and gay

  Of pollen, now has gone away—

  She woos the moth with her sweet, low word;

  And when above her his moth-wings hover

  Then her bright breast she will uncover

  And yield her honey-drop to her lover.

  Into the yellow, evening glow

  Saunters a man from the farm below;

  Leans, and looks in at the low-built shed

  Where the swallow has hung her marriage bed.

  The bird lies warm against the wall.

  She glances quick her startled eyes

  Towards him, then she turns away

  Her small head, making warm display

  Of red upon the throat. Her terrors sway

  Her out of the nest's warm, busy ball,

  Whose plaintive cry is heard as she flies

  In one blue swoop from out the sties

  Into the twilight's empty hall.

  Oh, water-hen, beside the rushes,

  Hide your quaintly scarlet blushes,

  Still your quick tail, lie still as dead,

  Till the distance folds over his ominous tread!

  The rabbit presses back her ears,

  Turns back her liquid, anguished eyes

  And crouches low; then with wild spring

  Spurts from the terror of his oncoming;

  To be choked back, the wire ring

  Her frantic effort throttling:

  Piteous brown ball of quivering fears!

  Ah, soon in his large, hard hands she dies,

  And swings all loose from the swing of his walk!

  Yet calm and kindly are his eyes

  And ready to open in brown surprise

  Should I not answer to his talk

  Or should he my tears surmise.

  I hear his hand on the latch, and rise from

  my chair

  Watching the door open; he flashes bare

  His strong teeth in a smile, and flashes his eyes

  In a smile like triumph upon me;

  then careless-wise

  He flings the rabbit soft on the table board

  And comes toward me: he! the uplifted sword

  Of his hand against my bosom! and oh, the broad

  Blade of his glance that asks me to applaud

  His coming! With his hand he turns my face

  to him

  And caresses me with his fingers that still

  smell grim

  Of rabbit's fur! God, I am caught in a snare!

  I know not what fine wire is round my throat;

  I only know I let him finger there

  My pulse of life, and let him nose like a stoat

  Who sniffs with joy before he drinks the blood.

  And down his mouth comes to my mouth!

  and down

  His bright dark eyes come over me, like a hood

  Upon my mind! his lips meet mine, and a flood

  Of sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drown

  Against him, die, and find death good.

  D. H. Lawrence, 1911

  Next | TOC> If Ever Two Were One> Mew

  The Farmer's Bride

  Three summers since I chose a maid,


  Too young maybe—but more's to do

  At harvest time than bide and woo.

  When us was wed she turned afraid

  Of love and me and all things human;

  Like the shut of a winter's day.

  Her smile went out, and 'twasn't a woman—

  More like a little frightened fay.

  One night, in the Fall, she runned away.

  "Out 'mong the sheep, her be," they said,

  "Should properly have been abed;"

  But sure enough she wasn't there

  Lying awake with her wide brown stare.

  So over seven-acre field and up-along across

  the down

  We chased her, flying like a hare

  Before our lanterns. To Church Town

  All in a shiver and a scare

  We caught her, fetched her home at last

  And turned the key upon her, fast.

  She does the work about the house

  As well as most, but like a mouse:

  Happy enough to chat and play

  With birds and rabbits and such as they,

  So long as menfolk keep away.

  "Not near, not near!" her eyes beseech

  When one of us comes within reach.

  The women say that beasts in stall

  Look round like children at her call.

  I've hardly heard her speak at all.

  Shy as a leveret, swift as he,

  Straight and slight as a young larch tree,

  Sweet as the first wild violets, she

  To her wild self. But what to me?

  The short days shorten and the oaks are brown,

  The blue smoke rises to the low gray sky,

  One leaf in the still air falls slowly down,

  A magpie's spotted feathers lie

  On the black earth spread white with rime,

  The berries redden up to Christmas-time.

  What's Christmas time without there be

  Some other in the house than we!

  She sleeps up in the attic there

  Alone, poor maid. 'Tis but a stair

  Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down,

  The soft young down of her, the brown,

 

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