Ruins

R
Stone worn
Overgrown
Pristine thorns
Sheep shorn
Tinkling below
Roofless walls
Rooks overlook
I told you so
Babbles the brook
Rating:

Comment form:

*Max text - 1500. Manual moderation.

Similar Poems:

On Ukrainian Independence by Brodsky Joseph
Brodsky Joseph
Dear Charles XII, the Poltava battle Has been fortunately lost. To quote Lenin’s burring rattle, “Time will show you Kuzka’s mother”, ruins along the waste, Bones of post-mortem bliss with a Ukrainian aftertaste.
It’s not the green flag , eaten by the isotope , It’s the yellow-and-blue flying over Konotop , Made out of canvas – must be a gift from Toronto – Alas, it bears no cross, but the Khokhly don’t want to.
Oh, rushnyks and roubles, sunflowers in summer season!
Read Poem
0
276
Rating:

Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I
I weep for Adonais—he is dead!
Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!"

II
Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierc'd by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania
Read Poem
0
156
Rating:

The Ivy Green by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green,
That creepeth o’er ruins old!
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.
The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed,
To pleasure his dainty whim:
And the mouldering dust that years have made
Is a merry meal for him.
Read Poem
0
111
Rating:

The Skull of Shakespeare by George Sterling
George Sterling
I
Without how small, within how strangely vast!
What stars of terror had their path in thee!
What music of the heavens and the sea
Lived in a sigh or thundered on the blast!
Here swept the gleam and pageant of the Past,
As Beauty trembled to her fate’s decree;
Here swords were forged for armies yet to be,
Read Poem
0
130
Rating:

Hertha by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
I am that which began;
Out of me the years roll;
Out of me God and man;
I am equal and whole;
God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.

Before ever land was,
Before ever the sea,
Or soft hair of the grass,
Or fair limbs of the tree,
Or the fresh-coloured fruit of my branches, I was, and thy soul was in me.

First life on my sources
First drifted and swam;
Out of me are the forces
Read Poem
0
166
Rating:

Lines Written Near San Francisco by Louis Simpson
Louis Simpson
I wake and feel the city trembling.
Yes, there is something unsettled in the air
And the earth is uncertain.

And so it was for the tenor Caruso.
He couldn’t sleep—you know how the ovation
Rings in your ears, and you re-sing your part.

And then the ceiling trembled
And the floor moved. He ran into the street.
Read Poem
0
181
Rating:

Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.—
Confess. St. August. Earth, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood!
If our great Mother has imbued my soul
With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
Read Poem
0
143
Rating:

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
‘Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:Σίβυλλα τίθέλεις; respondebat illa:άποθανεîνθέλω.’ For Ezra Pound
il miglior fabbro. I. The Burial of the Dead
Read Poem
0
159
Rating:

An Immigrant Woman by Anne Winters
Anne Winters
PART ONE

I

Slip-pilings on the Brooklyn littoral
—the poles still tarry, flimsy; the ferry terminus
with its walledup doors wan doorshapes
on eroded sills. Downstream, the strutwork
of the Williamsburg cable tower
threw its cool shadow half a mile inland
Read Poem
0
261
Rating:

Vowel Movements by Daryl Hine
Daryl Hine
Take a statement, the same as yesterday’s dictation:
Lately pain has been there waiting when I awake.
Creative despair and failure have made their patient.
Anyway, I’m afraid I have nothing to say.
Those crazy phrases I desecrated the paper
With against the grain ... Taste has turned away her face
Temporarily, like a hasty, ill-paid waitress
At table, barely capable but very vague.
Read Poem
0
164
Rating:

Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg by William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
When first, descending from the moorlands,
I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide
Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.

When last along its banks I wandered,
Through groves that had begun to shed
Their golden leaves upon the pathways,
Read Poem
0
125
Rating:

from Chanting at the Crystal Sea by Susan Howe
Susan Howe
All male Quincys are now dead, excepting one.
John Wheelwright, “Gestures to the Dead” 1
Vast oblong space
Read Poem
0
121
Rating:

Another Night in the Ruins by Galway Kinnell
Galway Kinnell
1
In the evening
haze darkening on the hills,
purple of the eternal,
a last bird crosses over,
‘flop flop,’ adoring
only the instant.

2
Read Poem
0
92
Rating:

An Essay on Criticism: Part 3 by Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Learn then what morals critics ought to show,
For 'tis but half a judge's task, to know.
'Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join;
In all you speak, let truth and candour shine:
That not alone what to your sense is due,
All may allow; but seek your friendship too.

Be silent always when you doubt your sense;
Read Poem
0
115
Rating:

Afterimages by Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde

I
However the image enters
its force remains within
my eyes
rockstrewn caves where dragonfish evolve
wild for life, relentless and acquisitive
learning to survive
Read Poem
0
129
Rating:

An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England by Geoffrey Hill
Geoffrey Hill
the spiritual, Platonic old England …
S. T. COLERIDGE, Anima Poetae

‘Your situation’, said Coningsby, looking up the green and silent valley, ‘is absolutely poetic.’
‘I try sometimes to fancy’, said Mr Millbank, with a rather fierce smile, ‘that I am in the New World.’
BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Coningsby
Read Poem
0
147
Rating:

Salter's Gate by Anne Stevenson
Anne Stevenson
There, in that lost
corner of the ordnance survey.
Drive through the vanity —
two pubs and a garage — of Satley,
then right, cross the A68
past down-at-heel farms and a quarry,

you can't miss it, a 'T' instead of a 'plus'
where the road meets a wall.
Read Poem
0
105
Rating:

Pyrography by John Ashbery
John Ashbery
Out here on Cottage Grove it matters. The galloping
Wind balks at its shadow. The carriages
Are drawn forward under a sky of fumed oak.
This is America calling:
The mirroring of state to state,
Of voice to voice on the wires,
The force of colloquial greetings like golden
Pollen sinking on the afternoon breeze.
Read Poem
0
110
Rating:

Psalm 58 by Christopher Smart
Christopher Smart
Ye congregation of the tribes,
On justice do you set your mind;
And are ye free from guile and bribes
Ye judges of mankind?

Nay, ye of frail and mortal mould
Imagine mischief in your heart;
Your suffrages and selves are sold
Unto the general mart.

Men of unrighteous seed betray
Perverseness from their mother’s womb;
As soon as they can run astray,
Against the truth presume.

Read Poem
0
133
Rating:

In Death Valley by Edwin Markham
Edwin Markham
There came gray stretches of volcanic plains,
Bare, lone and treeless, then a bleak lone hill
Like to the dolorous hill that Dobell saw.
Around were heaps of ruins piled between
The Burn o’ Sorrow and the Water o’ Care;
And from the stillness of the down-crushed walls
One pillar rose up dark against the moon.
There was a nameless Presence everywhere;
Read Poem
0
116
Rating: