The Old Song
by G. K. Chesterton

A livid sky on London
And like the iron steeds that rear
A shock of engines halted
And I knew the end was near:
And something said that far away, over the hills and far away
There came a crawling thunder and the end of all things here.
For London Bridge is broken down, broken down, broken down,
As digging lets the daylight ( Read more... )

The Conundrum of the Workshops
Rudyard Kipling

When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold ( Read more... )

At Melville's Tomb
by Hart Crane (1899-1932)

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
The dice of drowned men's bones he saw bequeath
An embassy.  Their numbers as he watched,
Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
The calyx of death's bounty giving back
A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
The portent ( Read more... )

marauderswolf was wonderful enough to remind me that April is Poetry Month -- so let's see some poems in those livejournals! (if you're not already posting...)  Old favourites, new favourites, poems that aren't even favourites but you can't get them out of your head -- that's what the month is for.  I'm going to try and post two a day for the ( Read more... )

I really meant to post one poem a day this month, but events conspired against me.  So here's the last one, for the last day of the month -- but that doesn't mean that you all shouldn't keep reading poetry.

Threes
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

I was a boy when I heard three red words
a thousand Frenchman died in the streets
for:  Liberty, Equality, ( Read more... )

The River Merchant's Wife:  A Letter
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

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 ( Read more... )

Chaplinesque
Hart Crane (1899-1932)

We make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow converts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
( Read more... )

Shakespeare
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

Others abide our question.  Thou art free.
We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge.  For the loftiest hill
That to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the ( Read more... )

...is well known, and so's this poem -- but it's always been one of my favourites.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
( Read more... )

House on a Cliff
Louis MacNeice

Indoors the tang of a tiny oil lamp.  Outdoors
The winking signal on the waste of sea.
Indoors the sound of the wind.  Outdoors the wind.
Indoors the locked heart and the lost key.

Outdoors the chill, the cold, the siren.  Indoors
The strong man pained to find his red blood cools,
While the blind clock grows louder, faster ( Read more... )