Poetry Archives - Page 4 of 10

Sea Fever

12th March 2024 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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This is post 34 of 64 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

I must go down to the seas again, to the
      lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer
      her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and
      the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey
      dawn breaking.
I must go down to the seas again, for the call
      of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be
      denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white
      clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and
      the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the
      vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where
      the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing
      fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the
      long trick’s over.

John Masefield (1878–1967) was an English poet and children’s fiction writer.

To read more poems, click here.

A Crocodile

5th March 2024 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Thomas Lovell Beddoes

This is post 33 of 64 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

Photo by Kyle Nieber on Unsplash.

Hard by the lilied Nile I saw
A duskish river-dragon stretched along,
The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled
With sanguine almandines and rainy pearl:
And on his back there lay a young one sleeping,
No bigger than a mouse; with eyes like beads,
And a small fragment of its speckled egg
Remaining on its harmless, pulpy snout;
A thing to laugh at, as it gaped to catch
The baulking merry flies. In the iron jaws
Of the great devil-beast, like a pale soul
Fluttering in rocky hell, lightsomely flew
A snowy trochilus, with roseate beak
Tearing the hairy leeches from his throat.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803 – 1849) was an English poet, playwright and doctor.

Mark McGuinness reads and discusses the poem in his podcast A Mouthful of Air, a podcast of classic and contemporary poetry. Podcast transcription is available.

To read more poems, click here.

Sextain

27th February 2024 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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William Drummond of Hawthornden

This is post 32 of 64 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

Snowdon From Pernsarn, a painting by Charles Thomas Burt

Snowdon From Pernsarn by Charles Thomas Burt. Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash.

The Heaven doth not contain so many stars,
So many leaves not prostrate lie in woods
When autumn’s old and Boreas sounds his wars,
So many waves have not the ocean floods,
As my rent mind hath torments all the night,
And heart spends sighs when Phœbus brings the light.

Why should I have been partner of the light,
Who, crost in birth by bad aspéct of stars,
Have never since had happy day or night?
Why was not I a liver in the woods,
Or citizen of Thetis’s crystal floods,
Than made a man, for love and fortune’s wars?

I look each day when death should end the wars,
Uncivil wars, ’twixt sense and reason’s light;
My pains I count to mountains, meads, and floods,
And of my sorrow partners make the stars;
All desolate I haunt the fearful woods,
When I should give myself to rest at night.

With watchful eyes I ne’er behold the night,
Mother of peace, but ah! to me of wars,
And Cynthia, queen-like, shining through the woods,
When straight those lamps come in my thought, whose light
My judgment dazzled, passing brightest stars,
And then mine eyes en-isle themselves with floods.

Turn to their springs again first shall the floods,
Clear shall the sun the sad and gloomy night,
To dance about the pole cease shall the stars,
The elements renew their ancient wars
Shall first, and be deprived of place and light,
E’er I find rest in city, fields, or woods.

End these my days, indwellers of the woods,
Take this my life, ye deep and raging floods;
Sun, never rise to clear me with thy light,
Horror and darkness, keep a lasting night;
Consume me, care, with thy intestine wars,
And stay your influence o’er me, bright stars!

In vain the stars, indwellers of the woods,
Care, horror, wars, I call, and raging floods,
For all have sworn no night shall dim my sight.

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585 –1649) was a Scottish poet.

Mark McGuinness reads and discusses the poem in his podcast A Mouthful of Air, a podcast of classic and contemporary poetry. Podcast transcription is available.

To read more poems, click here.

To a Snowflake

13th February 2024 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Francis Thompson

This is post 31 of 64 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

Snow landscape with a bench by the sea and heavy falling snowflakes.

What heart could have thought you?—
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapour?—
“God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapour,
To lust of His mind;—
Thou could’st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost.

Francis Thompson (1859 –1907) was an English poet; he is best known for his poem “The Hound of Heaven.”

To read more poems, click here.

Sheep in Winter

6th February 2024 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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John Clare

This is post 30 of 64 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

The sheep get up and make their many tracks
And bear a load of snow upon their backs,
And gnaw the frozen turnip to the ground
With sharp quick bite, and then go noising round
The boy that pecks the turnips all the day
And knocks his hands to keep the cold away
And laps his legs in straw to keep them warm
And hides behind the hedges from the storm.
The sheep, as tame as dogs, go where he goes
And try to shake their fleeces from the snows,
Then leave their frozen meal and wander round
The stubble stack that stands beside the ground,
And lie all night and face the drizzling storm
And shun the hovel where they might be warm.

John Clare (1793 – 1864) was an English peasant poet of the Romantic school, and one of the English literature’s finest nature poets.

To read more poems, click here.

There is no Life or Death

23rd January 2024 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Mina Loy

This is post 29 of 64 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

There is no Life or Death,
Only activity
And in the absolute
Is no declivity.
There is no Love or Lust
Only propensity
Who would possess
Is a nonentity.
There is no First or Last
Only equality
And who would rule
Joins the majority.
There is no Space or Time
Only intensity,
And tame things
Have no immensity.

Mina Loy (1882 – 1966) was a British-born artist, writer, poet, and painter labeled as a Futurist, Dadaist, Surrealist, feminist, conceptualist, modernist, and post-modernist artist.

To read more poems, click here.

The Dark Cavalier

9th January 2024 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Margaret Widdemer

This is post 28 of 64 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

I am the Dark Cavalier; I am the Last Lover:
My arms shall welcome you when other arms are tired;
I stand to wait for you, patient in the darkness,
Offering forgetfulness of all that you desired.

I ask no merriment, no pretense of gladness,
I can love heavy lids and lips without their rose;
Though you are sorrowful you will not weary me;
I will not go from you when all the tired world goes.

I am the Dark Cavalier; I am the Last Lover;
I promise faithfulness no other lips may keep;
Safe in my bridal place, comforted by darkness,
You shall lie happily, smiling in your sleep.

Margaret Widdemer (1884 – 1978) was an American poet, novelist, and children’s writer.

To read more poems, click here.

Winter

2nd January 2024 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Anne Bradstreet

This is post 27 of 64 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

Cold, moist, young phlegmy winter now doth lie
In swaddling clouts, like new-born infancy;
Bound up with frosts, and fur’d with hail & snows,
And, like an infant, still it taller grows.
December is my first, and now the sun
To the southward Tropick his swift race doth run.
This month he’s hous’d in horned Capricorn,
From thence he ’gins to length the shortened morn,
Through Christendom with great festivity,
Now’s held (but guessed) for blest Nativity.
Cold, frozen January next comes in,
Chilling the blood, and shrinking up the skin.
In Aquarius now keeps the long-wish’d sun,
And northward his unwearied course doth run.
The day much longer than it was before,
The cold not lessened, but augmented more.
Now toes and ears, and fingers often freeze,
And travelers their noses sometimes leese.
Moist snowy February is my last,
I care not how the winter-time doth haste.
In Pisces now the golden sun doth shine,
And northward still approaches to the line.
The rivers ’gin to ope, the snows to melt,
And some warm glances from his face are felt;
Which is increased by the lengthen’d day,
Until by’s heat, he drive all cold away.
And thus the year in circle runneth round;
Where first it did begin, in th’ end its found.

Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672) was an England-born American poet, and the first woman to be recognized as an accomplished New World Poet.

To read more poems, click here.

A Rose Has Thorns As Well As Honey

19th December 2023 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Christina Rossetti

This is post 26 of 64 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

A rose has thorns as well as honey,
I’ll not have her for love or money;
An iris grows so straight and fine,
That she shall be no friend of mine;
Snowdrops like the snow would chill me;
Nightshade would caress and kill me;
Crocus like a spear would fright me;
Dragon’s-mouth might bark or bite me;
Convolvulus but blooms to die;
A wind-flower suggests a sigh;
Love-lies-bleeding makes me sad;
And poppy-juice would drive me mad:—
But give me holly, bold and jolly,
Honest, prickly, shining holly;
Pluck me holly leaf and berry
For the day when I make merry.

Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894) was one of the most important poets of the Victorian age in England.

To read more poems, click here.

The Crying of Water

12th December 2023 Mihaela Limberea

Poetry

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Arthur Symons

This is post 25 of 64 in the series “Poetry Tuesday”

This is a series of poems published every Tuesday.

O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,
All night long crying with a mournful cry,
As I lie and listen, and cannot understand
The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,
O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?
All night long the water is crying to me.

Unresting water, there shall never be rest
Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,
And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;
And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,
All life long crying without avail,
As the water all night long is crying to me.

Arthur Symons (1865 – 1945) was a British poet, short story writer, critic, translator, and editor.

To read more poems, click here.

Mihaela Limberea

Category: Poetry

Sea Fever

A Crocodile

Sextain

To a Snowflake

Sheep in Winter

There is no Life or Death

The Dark Cavalier

Winter

A Rose Has Thorns As Well As Honey

The Crying of Water

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