Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50)

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Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) Page 255

by Homer

Or see the brown mice bob

  Round and round the oatmeal chest.

  For he comes, the human child,

  To the waters and the wild

  With a faery, hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  A Drinking Song

  WINE comes in at the mouth

  And love comes in at the eye;

  That’s all we shall know for truth

  Before we grow old and die.

  I lift the glass to my mouth,

  I look at you, and I sigh.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  The Lake Isle of Innisfree

  I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

  And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

  Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,

  And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

  And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

  Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

  There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

  And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

  I will arise and go now, for always night and day

  I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

  While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

  I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Leda And The Swan

  A SUDDEN blow: the great wings beating still

  Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

  By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

  He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

  How can those terrified vague fingers push

  The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

  And how can body, laid in that white rush,

  But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

  A shudder in the loins engenders there

  The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

  And Agamemnon dead.

  Being so caught up,

  So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

  Did she put on his knowledge with his power

  Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  The Wild Swans At Coole

  THE trees are in their autumn beauty,

  The woodland paths are dry,

  Under the October twilight the water

  Mirrors a still sky;

  Upon the brimming water among the stones

  Are nine-and-fifty Swans.

  The nineteenth autumn has come upon me

  Since I first made my count;

  I saw, before I had well finished,

  All suddenly mount

  And scatter wheeling in great broken rings

  Upon their clamorous wings.

  I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,

  And now my heart is sore.

  All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,

  The first time on this shore,

  The bell-beat of their wings above my head,

  Trod with a lighter tread.

  Unwearied still, lover by lover,

  They paddle in the cold

  Companionable streams or climb the air;

  Their hearts have not grown old;

  Passion or conquest, wander where they will,

  Attend upon them still.

  But now they drift on the still water,

  Mysterious, beautiful;

  Among what rushes will they build,

  By what lake’s edge or pool

  Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day

  To find they have flown away?

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  The Secret Rose

  FAR-OFF, most secret, and inviolate Rose,

  Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those

  Who sought thee in the Holy Sepulchre,

  Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir

  And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep

  Among pale eyelids, heavy with the sleep

  Men have named beauty. Thy great leaves enfold

  The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold

  Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes

  Saw the pierced Hands and Rood of elder rise

  In Druid vapour and make the torches dim;

  Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him

  Who met Fand walking among flaming dew

  By a grey shore where the wind never blew,

  And lost the world and Emer for a kiss;

  And him who drove the gods out of their liss,

  And till a hundred moms had flowered red

  Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;

  And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown

  And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown

  Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods:

  And him who sold tillage, and house, and goods,

  And sought through lands and islands numberless years,

  Until he found, with laughter and with tears,

  A woman of so shining loveliness

  That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,

  A little stolen tress. I, too, await

  The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.

  When shall the stars be blown about the sky,

  Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?

  Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,

  Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Sailing To Byzantium

  I

  That is no country for old men. The young

  In one another’s arms, birds in the trees

  — Those dying generations — at their song,

  The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

  Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long

  Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

  Caught in that sensual music all neglect

  Monuments of unaging intellect.

  II

  An aged man is but a paltry thing,

  A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

  Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

  For every tatter in its mortal dress,

  Nor is there singing school but studying

  Monuments of its own magnificence;

  And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

  To the holy city of Byzantium.

  III

  O sages standing in God’s holy fire

  As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

  Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

  And be the singing-masters of my soul.

  Consume my heart away; sick with desire

  And fastened to a dying animal

  It knows not what it is; and gather me

  Into the artifice of eternity.

  IV

  Once out of nature I shall never take

  My bodily form from any natural thing,

  But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

  Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

  To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

  Or set upon a golden bough to sing

  To lords and ladies of Byzantium

  Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  The Second Coming

  TURNING and turning in the widening gyre

>   The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

  Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity.

  Surely some revelation is at hand;

  Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

  The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

  When a vast image out of i{Spiritus Mundi}

  Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

  A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

  A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

  Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

  Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

  The darkness drops again; but now I know

  That twenty centuries of stony sleep

  Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

  And what rough beast, its hour come round at laSt,

  Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  James Joyce

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Ecce Puer

  Of the dark past

  A child is born.

  With joy and grief

  My heart is torn.

  Calm in his cradle

  The living lies.

  May love and mercy

  Unclose his eyes!

  Young life is breathed

  On the glass;

  The world that was not

  Comes to pass.

  A child is sleeping:

  An old man gone.

  O, father forsaken,

  Forgive your son!

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  My Love Is in a Light Attire

  My love is in a light attire

  Among the apple-trees,

  Where the gay winds do most desire

  To run in companies.

  There, where the gay winds stay to woo

  The young leaves as they pass,

  My love goes slowly, bending to

  Her shadow on the grass;

  And where the sky’s a pale blue cup

  Over the laughing land,

  My love goes lightly, holding up

  Her dress with dainty hand.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Dear Heart Why Will You Use Me So?

  Dear heart, why will you use me so?

  Dear eyes that gently me upbraid,

  Still are you beautiful — - but O,

  How is your beauty raimented!

  Through the clear mirror of your eyes,

  Through the soft sigh of kiss to kiss,

  Desolate winds assail with cries

  The shadowy garden where love is.

  And soon shall love dissolved be

  When over us the wild winds blow — -

  But you, dear love, too dear to me,

  Alas! why will you use me so?

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Bid Adieu to Maidenhood

  Bid adieu, adieu, adieu,

  Bid adieu to girlish days,

  Happy Love is come to woo

  Thee and woo thy girlish ways —

  The zone that doth become thee fair,

  The snood upon thy yellow hair,

  When thou hast heard his name upon

  The bugles of the cherubim

  Begin thou softly to unzone

  Thy girlish bosom unto him

  And softly to undo the snood

  That is the sign of maidenhood.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  O It Was Out by Donnycarney

  O, it was out by Donnycarney

  When the bat flew from tree to tree

  My love and I did walk together;

  And sweet were the words she said to me.

  Along with us the summer wind

  Went murmuring — - O, happily! — -

  But softer than the breath of summer

  Was the kiss she gave to me.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Be Not Sad

  Be not sad because all men

  Prefer a lying clamour before you:

  Sweetheart, be at peace again — -

  Can they dishonour you?

  They are sadder than all tears;

  Their lives ascend as a continual sigh.

  Proudly answer to their tears:

  As they deny, deny.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  All Day I Hear the Noise of Waters

  All day I hear the noise of waters

  Making moan,

  Sad as the sea-bird is when, going

  Forth alone,

  He hears the winds cry to the water’s

  Monotone.

  The grey winds, the cold winds are blowing

  Where I go.

  I hear the noise of many waters

  Far below.

  All day, all night, I hear them flowing

  To and fro.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Wilfred Owen

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  The Young Soldier

  It is not death

  Without hereafter

  To one in dearth

  Of life and its laughter,

  Nor the sweet murder

  Dealt slow and even

  Unto the martyr

  Smiling at heaven:

  It is the smile

  Faint as a (waning) myth,

  Faint, and exceeding small

  On a boy’s murdered mouth.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Winter Song

  The browns, the olives, and the yellows died,

  And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed

  Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide,

  And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed,

  Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed.

  From off your face, into the winds of winter,

  The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing;

  But they shall gleam with spiritual glinter,

  When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing,

  And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Dulce Et Decorum Est

  BENT double, like old beggars under sacks,

  Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

  Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

  And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

  Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

  But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

  Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

  Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

  Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling

  Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

  But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

  And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime. —

  Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

  As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

  In all my dreams before my helpless sight

  He plun
ges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

  If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

  Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

  And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

  His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,

  If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

  Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

  Bitter as the cud

  Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —

  My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

  To children ardent for some desperate glory,

  The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

  Pro patria mori.

  List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

  List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

  Disabled

  He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,

  And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,

  Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park

  Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,

  Voices of play and pleasure after day,

  Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

  About this time Town used to swing so gay

  When glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees,

  And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,-

  In the old times, before he threw away his knees.

 

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