The Caged Skylark

T
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage,
Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells —
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage
Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest —
Why, hear him, hear him babble & drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best,
But uncumberèd: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.

Rating:

Comment form:

*Max text - 1500. Manual moderation.

Similar Poems:

My Mother Would Be a Falconress by Robert Duncan
Robert Duncan
My mother would be a falconress,
And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist,
would fly to bring back
from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize,
where I dream in my little hood with many bells
jangling when I'd turn my head.

My mother would be a falconress,
and she sends me as far as her will goes.
Read Poem
0
100
Rating:

The Acts of Youth by John Wieners
John Wieners
And with great fear I inhabit the middle of the night
What wrecks of the mind await me, what drugs
to dull the senses, what little I have left,
what more can be taken away?

The fear of travelling, of the future without hope
or buoy. I must get away from this place and see
that there is no fear without me: that it is within
unless it be some sudden act or calamity
Read Poem
0
119
Rating:

from Lyrics of the Street: Street Yarn by Julia Ward Howe
Julia Ward Howe
Street Yarn Roses caged in windows, heighten
Your faint blooms today;
Read Poem
0
98
Rating:

Pauline Is Falling by Jean Nordhaus
Jean Nordhaus
from the cliff's edge,
kicking her feet in panic and despair
as the circle of light contracts and blackness
takes the screen. And that
is how we leave her, hanging—though we know
she will be rescued, only to descend
into fresh harm, the story flowing on,
disaster and reprieve—systole, diastole—split
Read Poem
0
110
Rating:

The Unknown by Edgar Lee Masters
Edgar Lee Masters
Ye aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown
Who lies here with no stone to mark the place.
As a boy reckless and wanton,
Wandering with gun in hand through the forest
Near the mansion of Aaron Hatfield,
I shot a hawk perched on the top
Of a dead tree.
He fell with guttural cry
Read Poem
0
115
Rating:

Thoughts in a Zoo by Countee Cullen
Countee Cullen
They in their cruel traps, and we in ours,
Survey each other’s rage, and pass the hours
Commiserating each the other’s woe,
To mitigate his own pain’s fiery glow.
Man could but little proffer in exchange
Save that his cages have a larger range.
That lion with his lordly, untamed heart
Has in some man his human counterpart,
Read Poem
0
109
Rating:

Pig Song by Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood
This is what you changed me to:
a greypink vegetable with slug
eyes, buttock
incarnate, spreading like a slow turnip,

a skin you stuff so you may feed
in your turn, a stinking wart
of flesh, a large tuber
of blood which munches
Read Poem
0
293
Rating:

Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
Christina Rossetti
Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpeck’d cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Read Poem
0
117
Rating:

The Anti-Suffragist by Eva Gore-Booth
Eva Gore-Booth
The princess in her world-old tower pined
A prisoner, brazen-caged, without a gleam
Of sunlight, or a windowful of wind;
She lived but in a long lamp-lighted dream.

They brought her forth at last when she was old;
The sunlight on her blanched hair was shed
Too late to turn its silver into gold.
“Ah, shield me from this brazen glare!” she said.
Read Poem
0
90
Rating:

Daily Trials by a Sensitive Man by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Oh, there are times
When all this fret and tumult that we hear
Do seem more stale than to the sexton’s ear
His own dull chimes.

Ding dong! ding dong!
The world is in a simmer like a sea
Over a pent volcano,—woe is me
Read Poem
0
152
Rating:

Collision by Miroslav Holub
Miroslav Holub
To think I might have been dead,
he said to himself, ashamed, as if this were
a curse of the heart, raising a bundle of bones
to a man’s height. As if it were suddenly
forbidden to touch even words that had dropped to the ground.
Besides, he was afraid of finding
his body in a metal press. Embarrassing
down to the capillaries.
Read Poem
0
115
Rating:

The Third Hour of the Night by Frank Bidart
Frank Bidart
When the eye

When the edgeless screen receiving
light from the edgeless universe

When the eye first

When the edgeless screen facing
outward as if hypnotized by the edgeless universe

When the eye first saw that it

Hungry for more light
Read Poem
0
153
Rating:

Full Moon by Elinor Wylie
Elinor Wylie
My bands of silk and miniver
Momently grew heavier;
The black gauze was beggarly thin;
The ermine muffled mouth and chin;
I could not suck the moonlight in.

Harlequin in lozenges
Of love and hate, I walked in these
Striped and ragged rigmaroles;
Read Poem
0
120
Rating:

Caged Bird by Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
Read Poem
0
159
Rating:

War Girls by Jessie Pope
Jessie Pope
There's the girl who clips your ticket for the train,
And the girl who speeds the lift from floor to floor,
There's the girl who does a milk-round in the rain,
And the girl who calls for orders at your door.
Strong, sensible, and fit,
They're out to show their grit,
And tackle jobs with energy and knack.
No longer caged and penned up,
They're going to keep their end up
Till the khaki soldier boys come marching back.

There's the motor girl who drives a heavy van,
There's the butcher girl who brings your joint of meat,
There's the girl who cries 'All fares, please!' like a man,
And the girl who whistles taxis up the street.
Read Poem
0
134
Rating:

Oh Great Spirit by Deena Metzger
Deena Metzger
In the name of Raven. In the name of Wolf. In the name of Whale. In
the name of Elephant. In the name of Snake.

Who have taught us. Who have guided us. Who have sustained us. Who
have healed us.

Please heal the animals.

In the name of Raven. In the name of Wolf. In the name of Whale. In
the name of Elephant. In the name of Snake.

Whom we have slaughtered. Whom we have feared. Whom we have
Read Poem
0
107
Rating:

On Pleasure by Kahlil Gibran
Kahlil Gibran
Then a hermit, who visited the city once
a year, came forth and said, Speak to us of
Pleasure.
And he answered, saying:
Pleasure is a freedom-song,
But it is not freedom.
It is the blossoming of your desires,
But it is not their fruit.
Read Poem
0
153
Rating:

The Skylark by John Clare
John Clare
The rolls and harrows lie at rest beside
The battered road; and spreading far and wide
Above the russet clods, the corn is seen
Sprouting its spiry points of tender green,
Where squats the hare, to terrors wide awake,
Like some brown clod the harrows failed to break.
Opening their golden caskets to the sun,
The buttercups make schoolboys eager run,
Read Poem
0
76
Rating:

Love in the Valley by George Meredith
George Meredith
Under yonder beech-tree single on the green-sward,
Couched with her arms behind her golden head,
Knees and tresses folded to slip and ripple idly,
Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.
Had I the heart to slide an arm beneath her,
Press her parting lips as her waist I gather slow,
Waking in amazement she could not but embrace me:
Then would she hold me and never let me go?
Read Poem
0
169
Rating:

Auguries of Innocence by William Blake
William Blake
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thr' all its regions
A dog starvd at his Masters Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State
A Horse misusd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fibre from the Brain does tear
A Skylark wounded in the wing
Read Poem
0
126
Rating: