Poems

Poems List

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Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

After Schiller

After Schiller
Knight, a true sister-love
This heart retains;
Ask me no other love,
That way lie pains!
Calm must I view thee come,

183
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?

Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?
"Ah, are you digging on my grave,
My loved one? -- planting rue?"
-- "No: yesterday he went to wed
One of the br…

340
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

A Wife in London (December, )

A Wife in London (December, )
I--The Tragedy
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the City lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold on fold

295
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

A Wasted Illness

A Wasted Illness
Through vaults of pain,
Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness,
I passed, and garish spectres moved my brain
To dire di…

249
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

A Meeting With Despair

A Meeting With Despair
AS evening shaped I found me on a moor
Which sight could scarce sustain:
The black lean land, of featureless contour,
Was …

257
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

A Spot

A Spot
In years defaced and lost,
Two sat here, transport-tossed,
Lit by a living love
The wilted world knew nothing of:
Scared momently …

288
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

A Confession To A Friend in Trouble

A Confession To A Friend in Trouble
YOUR troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
I even smile old smiles--…

258
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

A Commonplace Day

A Commonplace Day
The day is turning ghost,
And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,
To join the anonymous host
Of those that throng…

227
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

[Greek Title]

[Greek Title]
Long have I framed weak phantasies of Thee,
O Willer masked and dumb!
Who makest Life become, -
As though by labouring all-unknowin…

247
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

A Christmas Ghost Story.

A Christmas Ghost Story.
South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
A mouldering soldier lies--your countryman.
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones, <…

206
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

I Need Not Go

"I Need Not Go"
I need not go
Through sleet and snow
To where I know
She waits for me;
She will wait me there
Till I find it fair…

218
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

How Great My Grief (Triolet)

"How Great My Grief" (Triolet)
How great my grief, my joys how few,
Since first it was my fate to know thee!
- Have the slow years not brought to view

207
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes

Work and Play

Work and Play

The swallow of summer, she toils all the summer,
A blue-dark knot of glittering voltage,
A whiplash swimmer, a fish of the air.

363
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

Between Us Now

"Between Us Now"
Between us now and here -
Two thrown together
Who are not wont to wear
Life's flushest feather -
Who see the scenes slid…

242
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes

Thistles

Thistles


Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air
And crackle open under a blue-black…

554
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes

Tractor

Tractor


The tractor stands frozen - an agony
To think of. All night
Snow packed its open entrails. Now a head-pincering gale,
A s…

446
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes

The Warm and the Cold

The Warm and the Cold

Freezing dusk is closing
Like a slow trap of steel
On trees and roads and hills and all
That can no longer feel.

708
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes

The Seven Sorrows

The Seven Sorrows

The first sorrow of autumn
Is the slow goodbye
Of the garden who stands so long in the evening-
A brown poppy head,

710
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes

September

September


We sit late, watching the dark slowly unfold:
No clock counts this.
When kisses are repeated and the arms hold
There is…

433
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes

The Minotaur

The Minotaur

The mahogany table-top you smashed
Had been the broad plank top
Of my mother's heirloom sideboard-
Mapped with the scars of m…

378
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes

Macaw and Little Miss

Macaw and Little Miss

In a cage of wire-ribs
The size of a man's head, the macaw bristles in a staring
Combustion, suffers the stoking devils of …

401
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes

Pike

Pike


Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.

811
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes

Hawk Roosting

Hawk Roosting

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in s…

602
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes

Lineage

Lineage


In the beginning was Scream
Who begat Blood
Who begat Eye
Who begat Fear
Who begat Wing
Who begat Bone

298