Crewbawn
White clouds that change and pass,
And stars that shine awhile,
Dew water on the grass,
A fox upon a stile.
A river broad and deep,
A slow boat on the waves,
My sad thoughts on the sleep
That hollows out the graves.
Digte om emnet: death
Digte om emnet “death” på Poets.by.
A Peasant Woman
I saw you sit waiting with your sewing on your knees,
Till a man should claim the comfort of your body
And your industry and presence for his own.
I saw you sit waiting with your sewing on your knees,
Till the child growing hidden in your body
Should become a living creature in the light.
I saw you sit waiting with your sewing on your knees,
Till your child who had ventured to the city
Should return to the shelter of his home.
I saw you sit waiting with your sewing on your knees
--Your unreturning son was in the city--
Till Death should come along the cobbled street.
I saw you sit waiting with your sewing on your knees.
Minerva Jones
I am Minerva, the village poetess,
Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street
For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk,
And all the more when “Butch” Weldy
Captured me after a brutal hunt.
He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers;
And I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up,
Like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice.
Will some one go to the village newspaper,
And gather into a book the verses I wrote?—
I thirsted so for love
I hungered so for life!
Benjamin Fraser
Their spirits beat upon mine
Like the wings of a thousand butterflies.
I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating.
I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes
Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes,
And when they turned their heads;
And when their garments clung to them,
Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies.
Their spirits watched my ecstasy
With wide looks of starry unconcern.
Their spirits looked upon my torture;
They drank it as it were the water of life;
With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes,
The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt,
Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight.
And they cried to me for life, life, life.
Clarence Fawcett
The sudden death of Eugene Carman
Put me in line to be promoted to fifty dollars a month,
And I told my wife and children that night.
But it didn’t come, and so I thought
Old Rhodes suspected me of stealing
The blankets I took and sold on the side
For money to pay a doctor’s bill for my little girl.
Then like a bolt old Rhodes accused me,
And promised me mercy for my family’s sake
If I confessed, and so I confessed,
And begged him to keep it out of the papers,
And I asked the editors, too.
That night at home the constable took me
And every paper, except the Clarion,
Wrote me up as a thief
Because old Rhodes was an advertiser
For My Grandmother
This lovely flower fell to seed;
Work gently, sun and rain;
She held it as her dying creed
That she would grow again.
The Hangman at Home
What does the hangman think about
When he goes home at night from work?
When he sits down with his wife and
Children for a cup of coffee and a
Plate of ham and eggs, do they ask
Him if it was a good day's work
And everything went well or do they
Stay off some topics and talk about
The weather, base ball, politics
And the comic strips in the papers
And the movies? Do they look at his
Hands when he reaches for the coffee
Or the ham and eggs? If the little
Ones say, Daddy, play horse, here's
A rope — does he answer like a joke:
I seen enough rope for today?
Shenandoah
In the Shenandoah Valley, one rider gray and one rider
blue, and the sun on the riders wondering.
Piled in the Shenandoah, riders blue and riders gray,
piled with shovels, one and another, dust in the
Shenandoah taking them quicker than mothers take
children done with play.
The blue nobody remembers, the gray nobody remembers,
it's all old and old nowadays in the Shenandoah.
And all is young, a butter of dandelions slung on the
turf, climbing blue flowers of the wishing woodlands
wondering: a midnight purple violet claims the sun
among old heads, among old dreams of repeating
heads of a rider blue and a rider gray in the
Shenandoah.
Winter
The cold
With steely clutch
Grips all the land . . . alack,
The little people in the hills
Will die!
Youth
But me
They cannot touch,
Old Age and death . . . the strange
And ignominious end of old
Dead folk!
The Sick Rose
O rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
London
I wandered through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appalls,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.